>>10931730If you want to do mathematical physics or physics in general, they'll appear constantly, yes. The thing is that we almost always reduce a PDE to several ODEs using separation of variables (under some circumstances, simply connected regions etc..) in this context. You can learn them if you have a good ODE background but you'll need a bunch of other math too, like some basic functional analysis, a bit of linear algebra and Multivariable Calculus, to name a few, as the other anons suggested. Since you are an enginear, i asume you'll have to deal with EM eventually, so you want to have these things in your toolbox for solving the Laplace equation which in cylindrical and spherical coordinates is highly non-trivial (includes Bessel functions and Spherical harmonics to mention a few). So that gets you farther away of just learning the wave or heat or diffusion equation. Because of that (and the fact that these things demand hours of problem solving and tedious calculations to be completely understood), i'll agree with
>>10932202 , focus on the class you are taking (which will probably give you a taste of Wave/Heat/Diff. equation, and eventually you'll learn PDEs, maybe in the next semester (?).
