The improvement in quality of life has to do with advances in technology: prediction of monsoon patterns, high performance and error-free computer chips and computing systems, online air-travel reservation system that has to look at various options to provide the best deal, etc.  These are possible thanks to our ability to solve large mathematical problems that can be classifed as network problems.  An ability to efficiently solve these problems is indispensable if we want to stay competitive.

Prof. H. Narayanan, who has been working in the area of electrical networks for the past thirty five years, has developed tools to aid efficient solution of  the problems mentioned above.  These tools are supported by a body of knowledge known as submodular function theory. Using this theory, one can decompose large problems into smaller ones, which can then be efficiently solved.

Prof. Narayanan has detailed this in his book Submodular functions and electrical networks, published as volume 54 of Annals of Discrete Mathematics by North Holland. In this theory, the inter-relationship between the devices present in a network is more important than the devices themselves.  As a result, the applicability of the theory is not restricted by the type of components present in a system.

Partitioning methods based on this theory appear more versatile than those based on eigenvalues and eigenvectors of system matrices.A general purpose circuit simulator code named BITSIM, based on these ideas was built in the Electrical Engineering Department and VLSI design centre in 1990,and was shown to be faster than conventional simulators based on modified nodal analysis for networks of size larger than 2500 nodes.

From the early part of his career, Prof. Narayanan has been suspecting that electrical networks hide everywhere. As an undergraduate he wrote a `home paper' entitled `Theory of Graphs and Electrical Networks'; a few years later he wrote his PhD thesis on `Theory of Matroids and Electrical Networks'. The present book is of course `Submodular Functions and Electrical Networks'.

The present book is ofcourse Submodular Functions and Electrical Networks. He says that despite earnest requests to desist from colleagues, friends and even total strangers, he is determined to write a few more `.. and Electrical Networks' books.