Books by Physics Forums Members

[Azure Ace]

Hi everyone! First of all I want to congratulate @Orodruin for his book publication! I myself thought that maybe someday, I would like to write a book. So I became a little bit curious about other titles that may have been written by Physicsforum members. I hear Benjamin Crowell is also a member physicsforums. What do you say?

 

[mfb]

@bcrowell - he hasn’t been active recently, but he was active here for many years.

@A. Neumaier wrote some books as well.

Probably some more. And many users don’t reveal their real name here.

 

[Azure Ace]

@bcrowell - he hasn’t been active recently, but he was active here for many years.

@A. Neumaier wrote some books as well.

Probably some more. And many users don’t reveal their real name here.

Wow! For some reason, I feel really happy to be connected to these people. I dream to write my own book someday, and to think that the author of the book you are reading belongs to the same community you are a member of. It makes me feel proud that I am a part of Physicsforums and that I am exposed to these brilliant people, and professors.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

@[URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/urs-schreiber/']Urs Schreiber[/URL] and @john baez have both co-written books

 

[Azure Ace]

@[URL='https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/urs-schreiber/']Urs Schreiber[/URL] and @john baez have both co-written books

Wowwww! I hope that someday, I'll be an author of a book too!

 

[mfb]

More: Introduction to relativistic quantum field theory and various other lecture notes from @vanhees71.

Edit: Updated link.

 

[Orodruin]

More: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080KL7E0/?tag=pfamazon01-20 from @vanhees71.

If I am not mistaken, it is also available on his homepage along with an impressive amount of lecture notes in German. @vanhees71 himself should be able to provide more information.

 

[vanhees71]

More: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080KL7E0/?tag=pfamazon01-20 from @vanhees71.

What? I'm not even aware about the fact that an old version of this manuscript is sold at amazon for 22$. This is really outrageous for two reasons: (a) it's sold just as "loose leaf", so that anybody interested could download it for free from my homepage and print it him/herself or let it print at a copy shop, which shouldn't be as much as 22$, (b) I've not authorized to sell it as a book; it's far from the quality I expect from a real textbook, (c) last but not least, why is somebody making money with something freely available on the web?

So for everybody who is interested in my manuscripts (many in German, some in English), see here

https://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hees/#manuscripts

Some more (all German) and also contributions from other authors can be found at the FAQ I once started for the German Physics Newsgroup (which nowadays is unusable, because it's ruled by the crackpots):

http://theory.gsi.de/~vanhees/faq/index.html

Last but not least I started to collect some writings for PF, but I've not the time to write as much as I liked to. At the moment I try to resume my work on an Insights Article (which I'll also put as a pdf on this page) with the title "(Not) against photons". The idea is to write about quantum optics from the point of view of QED as it is formulated in HEP, because I always wonder why the treatment in QO looks as if it is nearly another theory than that used by HEP physicists, which it is of course not. I'm pretty sure, one can describe all the quantum optics stuff with a quite simple effective type of in-medium QED, which is formally not much different from classical optics theory, but since I've to invent this more or less for myself, it'll take a lot of time.

https://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~hees/pf-faq/

 

[mfb]

Interesting, Google found the Amazon link so I used that. Replaced it now, I didn’t know that the item wasn't associated to you. Based on (b) you might be able to stop them.
Concerning (c), there are people selling collections of Wikipedia articles... (which is fully legal based on the Wikipedia licensing if the authors are listed properly - but you can download the articles for free as well). If something is freely available and good, someone will try to make money by pretending you would have to buy it.

 

[Orodruin]

What? I'm not even aware about the fact that an old version of this manuscript is sold at amazon for 22$. This is really outrageous for two reasons: (a) it's sold just as "loose leaf", so that anybody interested could download it for free from my homepage and print it him/herself or let it print at a copy shop, which shouldn't be as much as 22$, (b) I've not authorized to sell it as a book; it's far from the quality I expect from a real textbook, (c) last but not least, why is somebody making money with something freely available on the web?

I am very sorry to hear this. I would feel horrible if I found out that someone unauthorised was making money from something I released for free.

I agree with mfb that according to (b) you might be able to stop them because they clearly do not have the permission of the copyright holder (you) to do this. I also don't know if it would have helped, but in all lecture notes that I give to students for free, I include a copyright notice - usually with a BY-NC-SA creative commons license (in contrast, the Wikipedia license does not include the Non-Commercial part). At least it would make it clear that whoever is making a profit off it is breaking the licence. I use the ccicons LaTeX package to get access to the CC icons.

 

[vanhees71]

That's a good hint. I guess, I should include such copyright notices, and a creative commons license seems to be indeed what fits my intentions best: It should be for free (since it's not of the quality of a textbook I'd dare to take money for) and freely shareable by whoever who likes it.

 

[Orodruin]

a creative commons license seems to be indeed what fits my intentions best: It should be for free (since it's not of the quality of a textbook I'd dare to take money for) and freely shareable by whoever who likes it.

Note that there are several possibilities with the CC licences. Essentially from not reserving any rights to restricting the sharing of the material to be shared alike (of course, you could also prohibit sharing altogether but then there would be no point in a CC licence). Pick the right one: https://creativecommons.org/choose/ (I would think you are after the BY-NC-SA or BY-NC-ND licence, the difference being whether or not people are to be allowed to make their own adaptations of your work)

since it's not of the quality of a textbook I'd dare to take money for

Clearly this is a relative stance. Judging from some textbooks, many people dare taking money for less ...

 

[vanhees71]

Amazon is also an amazing place. I tried to make a statement by writing a review on the "book", explaining the issue. As I already expected Amazon denies to post it. I wonder, how I can make them taking this "offer" from their webpage without really making a big fuss about it.

 

[Orodruin]

I don’t think writing a review is the appropriate way of dealing with it. The proper way is to alert Amazon of the copyright infringement https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/cust...mcopyright?nodeId=201140760&tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[atyy]

John Baez: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Gravity-Lecture-Mathematics-Applications/dp/0198534906

Patrick Labelle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071636412/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Francesca Vidotto (with Carlo Rovelli): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1107069629/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465094252/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[john baez]

I've helped write a few books. Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity with the physics grad student Javier Muniain is the most popular, since it's an intro to lots of math and physics. Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory with my advisor Irving Segal and Zhengfang Zhou is the most hard-hitting. Knots and Quantum Gravity is a collection of papers I edited, based on a conference I ran. And Towards Higher Categories, edited with Peter May, is a really nice collection of papers introducing people to various aspects of n-category theory. Two of these are free.

I want to write more books when I retire, and I'm already planning them out. I think I'll write them as collections of essays, which I'll put on my blog and the arXiv, and then assemble them into books. It's much, much easier to write a collection of independent essays that an equal-length single-piece book, since getting everything to fit together neatly takes a lot of work.

 

[mfb]

The Nature of Time: Geometry, Physics and Perception with @RUTA as an editor (I guess).

@nrqed

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I've helped write a few books. Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity with the physics grad student Javier Muniain is the most popular, since it's an intro to lots of math and physics. Introduction to Algebraic and Constructive Quantum Field Theory with my advisor Irving Segal and Zhengfang Zhou is the most hard-hitting. Knots and Quantum Gravity is a collection of papers I edited, based on a conference I ran. And Towards Higher Categories, edited with Peter May, is a really nice collection of papers introducing people to various aspects of n-category theory. Two of these are free.

I want to write more books when I retire, and I'm already planning them out. I think I'll write them as collections of essays, which I'll put on my blog and the arXiv, and then assemble them into books. It's much, much easier to write a collection of independent essays that an equal-length single-piece book, since getting everything to fit together neatly takes a lot of work.

A few years ago I started reading your book ACQFT, got stuck on some derivation over there.

I guess I didn't know something on advanced functional analysis and Lie groups which it seemed to be based on.
Maybe one day I'll return to the book and post my question in my thread which no one seems to care about too much...

 

[ISamson]

It is my deepest dream to write a book about some hot topic in science...

 

[strangerep]

I still dare to hope that @samalkhaiat will FINISH his book before I die.

 

[samalkhaiat]

I still dare to hope that @samalkhaiat will FINISH his book before I die.

Hahaha, I hope it will be finished before I die.

 

[Demystifier]

Hahaha, I hope it will be finished before I die.

Well, some of the best books, such as Sakurai's QM, were finished after the author's death.

 

[vanhees71]

...and some of the best textbook weren't even written by their authors (the famous 10-volume theoretical-physics series by Landau are an example, being written by Lifshitz et al using of course Landau's ideas).

 

[Orodruin]

...and some of the best textbook weren't even written by their authors (the famous 10-volume theoretical-physics series by Landau are an example, being written by Lifshitz et al using of course Landau's ideas).

Or, as it is sometimes so eloquently expressed: ”Not a word by Landau, not a thought by Lifshitz.”

 

[Demystifier]

...and some of the best textbook weren't even written by their authors (the famous 10-volume theoretical-physics series by Landau are an example, being written by Lifshitz et al using of course Landau's ideas).

I think the same is true for Feynman Lectures on Gravity.

 

[samalkhaiat]

Well, some of the best books, such as Sakurai's QM, were finished after the author's death.

The poor man passed away before his 50th birthday. I hope I will not have similar destiny . And, I am not sure if he would approve "all of" the current version of "his book" on QM.

 

[vanhees71]

Well, the additions by Napolitano, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. I can't imaging that Sakurai would approve a chapter about old-fashioned 1st-quantization relativistic QM, which only adds to the confusion! I'm glad to have the "revised edition" edited by Tuan.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

The poor man passed away before his 50th birthday. I hope I will not have similar destiny . And, I am not sure if he would approve "all of" the current version of "his book" on QM.

Is there anyone who doesn't want to live forever?

So many books, papers to read and write. :-)

Edit: and of course correcting others mistakes... that's heaven!