Book excerpt: This brief monograph on the gamma function was designed by the author to fill what he perceived as a gap in the literature of mathematics, which often treated the gamma function in a manner he described as both sketchy and overly complicated. Author Emil Artin, one of the twentieth century's leading mathematicians, wrote in his Preface to this book, "I feel that this monograph will help to show that the gamma function can be thought of as one of the elementary functions, and that all of its basic properties can be established using elementary methods of the calculus." Generations of teachers and students have benefitted from Artin's masterly arguments and precise results. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of mathematics, his treatment examines functions, the Euler integrals and the Gauss formula, large values of x and the multiplication formula, the connection with sin x, applications to definite integrals, and other subjects.