Students are assumed to have had a year of quantum theory as
a prerequisite to the course. A real attempt has been made
throughout to keep the treatment as simple as possible and
understandable to students with a variety of backgrounds. In
particular, the group theory is developed on the assumption that
the student has no previous knowledge of it, and elegant formal
elaborations have been avoided in favor of presenting only a
useful core of ideas as simply as possible. The treatment
throughout is definitely intended to be useful to
experimentalists who desire a better understanding of the
current theoretical picture of the structure of atoms, molecules,
and solids.
