Publisher's Synopsis
This monograph deals with the general principles of the theory of extremal problems. In particular, the author discusses Lagrange's principle, the duality principle, the complete elimination of restrictions, the Hamilton-Jacobi principle, the extension of extremal problems, and the invariance principle. These principles enable a variety of different extremal problems (for example, the calculus of variations, optimal control, and convex programming), to be considered from a unified point of view.