"In January 1980 when I visited Beijing, Professor Z X Wang, my MSc thesis advisor of many years ago, gave me a copy of his book with Mr D R Guo on Special Functions. On many occasions in the later years, I had consulted the book for various things such as the hypergeometric series and the elliptic functions. The book is systematic, clear and to the point, as one would expect from Professor Wang's style and personality. It is great news that the book is now being published in an English translation. It will benefit many students and research workers who do not read Chinese." Foreword from C N Yang" Nobel Laureate "This is quite a comprehensive treatise on special functions ... This book should very well serve as a reference book for the topics listed above." Monatshefte fur Mathematik, 1991 "The book is a welcome addition to the classical works on special functions. The presentation is very clear. The great variety of topics makes it a useful and instructive source of information for many workers in physics, engineering and applied mathematics." Mathematics Abstracts