I am a physics professor with a passion for teaching. When I was a graduate student, I took required courses in classical mechanics, classical electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics. Some of the textbooks assigned by my professors were good; some were not so good. In every case, it was extremely helpful to read what other authors had to say about these foundational subjects. Four of the five books I recommend below are my personal favorites among these serious physics books. My fifth book choice is less serious and does not teach physics, but it will improve your graduate student experience nonetheless.
This book helped me pass my PhD qualifying exam. The writing style is crisp and qualitative arguments abound. Baym treats perturbation theory and scattering theory particularly nicely and your interest will never flag because he illustrates the formal theory with wonderfully chosen examples like K-meson interference effects, the Van der Waals interaction, Cooper pairing, spin resonance, multipole radiation, Klein’s paradox, and the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss experiment. A special treat not found in other textbooks is a discussion of Julian Schwinger’s unique take on the quantum theory of angular momentum.
These lecture notes comprise a three-semester graduate course in quantum mechanics at the University of Illinois. There are a number of texts which present the basic topics very well; but since a fair quantity of the material discussed in my course was not available to the students in elementary quantum mechanics books, I was asked to prepare written notes. In retrospect these lecture notes seemed sufficiently interesting to warrant their publication in this format. The notes, presented here in slightly revised form, consitutute a self-contained course in quantum mechanics from first principles to elementary and relativistic one-particle mechanics. Prerequisite to…
I love this book! Of course, it teaches the mathematics of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian approaches to classical mechanics. But its real uniqueness lies in how the author explains the basic concepts of the subject with a constant emphasis on intuitive physics. It was only after reading Lanczos that I finally understood what variational calculations were really about. Ditto for virtual work, non-holonomic constraints, Liouville’s theorem and Hamilton-Jacobi theory. I barely noticed that I was learning about the history and philosophy of classical mechanics at the same time.
Analytical mechanics is, of course, a topic of perennial interest and usefulness in physics and engineering, a discipline that boasts not only many practical applications, but much inherent mathematical beauty. Unlike many standard textbooks on advanced mechanics, however, this present text eschews a primarily technical and formalistic treatment in favor of a fundamental, historical, philosophical approach. As the author remarks, there is a tremendous treasure of philosophical meaning" behind the great theories of Euler and Lagrange, Hamilton, Jacobi, and other mathematical thinkers. Well-written, authoritative, and scholarly, this classic treatise begins with an introduction to the variational principles of mechanics including…
I learned the basics of statistical mechanics from the first edition of the textbook by R.K. Pathria. But only after studying Kubo did I learn how to apply those ideas to solve problems. Each of his six chapters begins with a concise overview of the theory. Next comes a set of worked examples, followed by an extensive collection of problems and their solutions. Overall, the book offers a remarkable 46 worked examples and 162 problems and solutions. These include all the standard problems and quite a few you will not see elsewhere. Particularly charming are 14 "divertissements” where Kubo discusses Maxwell’s demon, the ergodic theorem, the Gibbs paradox, the H-theorem, Onsager’s reciprocity relations, and other delights.
This book provides a series of concise lectures on the fundamental theories of statistical mechanics, carefully chosen examples and a number of problems with complete solutions.
Modern physics has opened the way for a thorough examination of infra-structure of nature and understanding of the properties of matter from an atomistic point of view. Statistical mechanics is an essential bridge between the laws of nature on a microscopic scale and the macroscopic behaviour of matter. A good training in statistical mechanics thus provides a basis for modern physics and is indispensable to any student in physics, chemistry, biophysics and engineering sciences…
The yellow Dover paperback edition of this book was the source for more than a few of the quantitative deductions and qualitative arguments which appear in my own textbook on the subject. I admire the pedagogy of Eyges’ book and he is exceptionally lucid in his explanations of physics. The main text assumes you are familiar with delta functions, vector calculus, and the orthogonal functions of mathematical physics, but if you are not, there are well-written appendices devoted to each one. Eyges knows that there is more to electrostatics and magnetostatics than potential theory and his discussions of multipole expansions, time-harmonic radiation and wave propagation inside and outside of matter are very insightful. This little gem belongs by your side when you study classical electrodynamics.
The Classical Electromagnetic Field emphasizes physics first, then mathematics. This and the fact that lucid exposition of theory receives priority over subsequent manipulation marks the book unusual, not to say unique, among field physics texts for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Long experience of and dissatisfaction with existing texts used in teaching electromagnetic theory at MIT prompted the author to clarify his own approach, resulting in this book. Dr. Eyges is now a Senior Research Physicist at the Rome Air Development Center, Hanscom Air Force Base. Electromagnetic theory is basic to classical and relativistic physics at every level. This text…
This book by the late Italian novelist Italo Calvino is for your mental health. Despite the title, it is not about comics and it is not science fiction. Rather, it is a collection of fanciful and beautifully written short stories which personalize the Universe. In one story, Calvino’s narrator, Qfwfq, explains the crankiness of his family members at the moment the Universe was created. Their short tempers were inevitable because, the creation event being a singularity, they were all crowded together at a single point in space. In another story, Qfwfq remarks that his younger brother was "not of the metallic type, if anything a bit colloidal; in fact, when he was very young, he married an alga, one of the first, and we never heard from him again.” Read these stories to relax and relieve stress.
Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.
Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.
Twelve enchanting and fantastical stories about the evolution of the universe from the giant of Italian literature,…
Modern Electrodynamics is a graduate-level textbook of classical electrodynamics. I wrote it to give professors and students an alternative to a book by J.D. Jackson that has shaped the pedagogical approach to this subject since 1962. Jackson has virtues, but it focuses too much on the mathematics needed to solve his difficult homework problems and not enough on the qualitative arguments one needs to gain a deep understanding of the subject. My book gives mathematics its full due, but through the use of clear prose and over 200 worked examples and applications, it aims to develop in the reader the physical intuition required to appreciate electromagnetic phenomena qualitatively as well as quantitatively.
A fast-paced literary thriller with a strong sci-fi element and loaded with existential questions. Beyond the entertainment value, this book takes a hard look at the perilous world of publishing, which is on a crash course to meet the nascent, no-holds-barred world of AI. Could these worlds co-exist, or will they destroy each other? And more importantly, how will humans tolerate their own creations, the robots, on this planet?
In this, his latest speculative fiction novel, Shane Joseph, returns to the “what if” questions facing humanity that he raised in After the Flood, a book that won him the…
With Chatbots and Large Language Models changing the world of writing and publishing dramatically, what happens when we introduce a sentient robot capable of feelings into the mix?
Phil Kruger, inventor, and serial womanizer, believes he has the answer in his creation, Victoria, the first sentient robot in the world, imbued with beauty, knowledge, and strength and on a crash course to acquire human feelings through massive infusions of data. Arrayed against him are independent trade publisher Artemius (Art) Jones and his rebellious and sexually starved daughter, Paula, an editor herself, who is determined to take her father's failing press,…
