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Samizdat Press

Samizdat Press, founded in the 1990’s by John Scales and Martin Smith, is devoted to the free distribution of books, lecture notes and software. The main focus of this archive is on materials of pedagogical nature. If you have anything that you are willing to distribute freely, or would like to support the project, please email Larry Irons or Ilya Tsvankin

All materials at this website are free and may be copied and distributed without permission.

Free Material

Induced Polarization: Process and Properties by J.B. Merriam
Waves and Rays in Elastic Continua by Michael Slawinski
Ray Theory: Characteristics and Asymptotics by Andrej Bóna and Michael Slawinski
Theory of Elastic Waves by Gerhard Müller
Linear Algebra and Multidimensional Geometry by Ruslan Sharipov
Course of Differential Geometry by Ruslan Sharipov
Quick Introduction to Tensor Analysis by Ruslan Sharipov
Classical Electrodynamics and the Theory of Relativity by Ruslan Sharipov
Solving the Sealevel Equation by Giorgio Spada
The Taboo Post-Glacial Rebound Calculator by Giorgio Spada
Continuum Mechanics by George Backus
Lecture Notes for a Course on Continuum Mechanics by Brian Kennett
A Genetic Algorithm Tutorial by Darrell Whitley
 On the Determination of the Elastic and Anelastic Properties of Isotropic Spheres by Martin Smith
Geodesy and Gravity: Course Notes by John Wahr
Theoretical Geomechanics by Marian Ivan
Greek Seismology by Christopher L. Liner
Geophysical Inverse Theory by John Scales, Martin Smith and Sven Treitel
Inverse Problems in Geophysics by Roel Snieder and Jeannot Trampert
A Simplified Introduction to LaTeX by Harvey Greenberg
A Physics Formulary by J.C.A. Wevers
A Surfer’s Guide to Lisp-Stat by John Scales and Martin Smith
 Lecture Notes for a Course on Theoretical Seismology by Martin L. Smith
Theory of Seismic Imaging by John Scales
Seismic Wavefields in Layered Isotropic Media by Ilya Tsvankin
Uni-Processor Genetic Algorithm by Martin Smith
Solutions to Problems from Jackson’s Classical Electrodynamics by Kasper van Wijk

Other Free Books and Lecture Notes

Albert Tarantola, who passed away in 2009,  had made a number of his books freely available from his webpage, including Elements of Physics and his classic Inverse Problem Theory.

Petr Krysl has released under the GPL his SOFEA Matlab-oriented OO toolkit for finite element analysis. There is a nice book that goes with this too.

Jon Claerbout has all or parts of several of his geophysics books available electronically. Venture west to Stanford University.

This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics  by John Baez, is one of the very best things on the WWW.  Baez also has lots of other interesting works available from his website.  His tutorial on general relativity is superb.

Jim Berryman of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has written Lecture Notes on Nonlinear Inversion and Tomography, which you can download here.

The Free Software Foundation maintains lists of freely accessible books on various topics. Hundreds of non-technical books including many of the great works of literature online from Project Gutenberg.