Physics
Last update: 03 Oct 1994 12:02First version:
It was, after all, the profession I trained for...
- See also:
- Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Atomism
- Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control Theory
- Climate Change, and General Climatology
- Complexity
- Dissipative Structures
- Dynamical Systems and Chaos
- Emergent Properties
- Field Theory
- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
- Liquid Crystals
- Math I Ought to Learn
- Maximum Entropy Methods
- the "New Physics"
- Particle Physics
- Pattern Formation
- Physical Principles in Biology
- Physics of Computation and Information
- Statistical Mechanics
- Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics
- Turbulence
- Recommended:
- Fay Ajezenbverg-Selove, A Matter of Choices [Autobiography of a nuclear physicist, who happens to be the first woman to have gotten a Ph. D. in physics from my alma mater of Wisconsin.]
- K. C. Cole, Sympathetic Vibrations = First You Build a Cloud
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics [I'm not sure it's possible to actually learn physics from them, but for elegance they can't be beat. There is no need to recommend his memoirs, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think, as discerning readers such as yourself read them long ago. The Character of Physical Law is also very fine.]
- David Griffiths [The best physics textbooks I have ever seen.]
- Introduction to Electrodynamics
- Introduction to Elementary Particles
- Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
- Ian D. Lawrie, A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics [Review: Bon Voyage!]
- Philip Morrison, Nothing Is Too Wonderful To Be True
- Philip and Phylis Morrison
- The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know
- and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero [The film is not to be missed, either.]
- Gino C. Segrè and John D. Stack, Unearthing Fermi's Geophysics
- Tony Rothman
- Science à la Mode [The original title was supposed to be ...And the Bandwagon Rolled On --- it's a collection of essays, very sharp but mathematically undemanding, against some recent follies and fads in physics. The essay on entropy, in particular, repays attention.]
- A Physicist on Madison Avenue [The title essay, about trying to bring elementary statistical hygenie to the marketing policy of Scientific American, is priceless.]
- Stephen Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science [Really about physics. Rather incredibly for a philosopher, Toulmin succeeds very well in understanding and explaining how physicists think, by focusing in great detail on geometrical optics --- a shrewd choice, since it's mathematically about the most accessible part of physics.]
- Trefil, From Atoms to Quarks
- Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory
- Wilczek and Devine, Longing for the Harmonies [There's a certain style of thinking about physical problems that theoretical physicists acquire --- a fondness for symmetries and invariants --- and this book does a marvelous job of conveying the feel of this style without any explicit math. (I imagine it would help to be familiar with algebra.)]
- To read, history/memoir and philosophy:
- David Edgar Cartwright, Tides: A Scientific History
- Hendrik B. G. Casimir, Haphazard Reality: Half a Century of Science
- Alan Cook, Observational Foundations of Physics
- David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality
- Mathias Frisch, Causal Reasoning in Physics [Review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews]
- Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace
- Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America
- Yvete Kosmann-Schwarzbach, The Noether Theorems: Invariance and Conservation Laws in the 20th Century
- Thomas Grissom, The physicist's world: the story of motion and the limits to knowledge
- R. I. G. Hughes, The Theoretical Practices of Physics: Philosophical Essays [Review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews]
- Martin H. Krieger, Doing Physics: How Physicists Take Hold of the World [I partially read this book in graduate school and found it both full of interesting ideas and intensely irritating; I should revisit]
Paul Langacker, Can the Laws of Physics Be Unifed? - Jill North, Physics, Structure, and Reality [Review by the great David Albert]
- Mary Jo Nye, Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800--1940
- Emilio Serge, Mind Always in Motion
- Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner, A Life in Physics [Review by Danny Yee]
- To read, mathematical methods and aspects:
- Walter Appel, Mathematics for Physics and Physicists
- Xavier Grácia, Miguel C. Munoz-Lecanda, Narciso Roman-Roy, "On some aspects of the geometry of differential equations in physics", math-ph/0402030
- Lanczos, The Varitional Principles of Mechanics
- Emmy Noether, "Invariant Variation Problems", physics/0503066 [Original (1918) paper where she proved Noether's Theorems, translated by M. A. Tavel, put online by Frank Y. Wang.]
- To read, not otherwise categorized:
- Frank G. Borg, "What is osmosis? Explanation and understanding of a physical phenomenon", arxiv:physics/0305011
- Sidney Coleman, Aspects of Symmetry
- Lisa M. Dolling, Arthur F. Gianelli and Glenn N. Statile, The Tests of Time: Readings in the Development of Physical Theory
- Rudolf Peierls, Surprises in Theoretical Physics
- Vaclav Smil, Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses
- R. F. Streater, Lost Causes in and beyond Physics
- Frank Wilczek, "Fermi and the Elucidation of Matter," physics/0112077
