List of STEM Masterworks in Physics, Mechanics, Electrodynamics...

  • Topic: Other 
  • Thread starter Thread starter Demystifier
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    List Stem
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
Sign up Log in
243 replies · 68K views
Flanders - Differential Forms with Applications to the Physical Sciences
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: apostolosdt and mathwonk
Physics news on Phys.org
I want to say:

Thorne & Blandford - Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691159025/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Anyone read this or is this really as new as it seems to be? Having read MTW, I'm dying to get my hands on this.

Edit: just saw that this was actually mentioned already, any thoughts from anyone who has read it? The suspense is killing me!
 
Last edited:
I read the first chapter and looked at it at Barnes Noble. It was behind the counter at the local BN.

It’s high quality printing at its best. It’s a tome and not something you’d carry around a lot. The illustrations are very good.

I was considering buying it but just couldn’t decide. I felt that maybe Arfken and Weber was more approachable. I couldn’t find that one topic in the book where the book spoke to me and would cause me to buy it.

You might be able to find the book preprints online as Thorne and Bland had them posted to get early feedback of what they wrote.
 
Auto-Didact said:
I want to say:

Thorne & Blandford - Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691159025/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Anyone read this or is this really as new as it seems to be? Having read MTW, I'm dying to get my hands on this.

Edit: just saw that this was actually mentioned already, any thoughts from anyone who has read it? The suspense is killing me!

I haven't read it, but I've read the relativity portions of http://www.pmaweb.caltech.edu/Courses/ph136/yr2012/, which I think turned into the book. The discussion of the equivalence principle is nice.
 
This list has been Physics heavy. How about some Electrical Engineering? These are some bibles if you're interested in microelectronics.

Sze -- Physics of Semiconductor Devices
Oppenheim and Shaefer -- Discrete-Time Signal Processing
Mead and Conway -- Introduction to VLSI Systems
Gray, Meyer, Hurst, and Lewis -- Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits
Rabaey -- Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Patterson and Hennessy -- Computer Organization and Design
Hennessy and Patterson -- Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: TeethWhitener, atyy, Demystifier and 1 other person
analogdesign said:
This list has been Physics heavy. How about some Electrical Engineering? These are some bibles if you're interested in microelectronics.

Sze -- Physics of Semiconductor Devices
Oppenheim and Shaefer -- Discrete-Time Signal Processing
Mead and Conway -- Introduction to VLSI Systems
Gray, Meyer, Hurst, and Lewis -- Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits
Rabaey -- Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Patterson and Hennessy -- Computer Organization and Design
Hennessy and Patterson -- Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach
Without mentioning Sedra and Smith?
 
MathematicalPhysicist said:
Without mentioning Sedra and Smith?

Sedra and Smith is good for a student, but it is way too basic to be considered a "bible" of circuit design. I haven't cracked my copy in probably 15 years.

The OP defined bible in this case as "more-or-less everything one need to know about the subject." Sedra and Smith does not reach that level.

The other books, however, do. If you read Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits, for instance, you could successfully design an analog integrated circuit.
 
What about Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming? I've never read it, but heard so much about it. Maybe the CS people can chime in.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Daverz and jedishrfu
jedishrfu said:
I read the first chapter and looked at it at Barnes Noble. It was behind the counter at the local BN.

It’s high quality printing at its best. It’s a tome and not something you’d carry around a lot. The illustrations are very good.

I was considering buying it but just couldn’t decide. I felt that maybe Arfken and Weber was more approachable. I couldn’t find that one topic in the book where the book spoke to me and would cause me to buy it.

Even though there is overlap, (Thorne and Blandford) and (Arfen and Weber) are quite different books; they are not meant to do the same thing. Thorne and Blandford treats advanced Classical Physics. At times, it uses standard Mathematical Methods to do this, but the emphasis is on the physics. At other times, Thorne and Blandford uses more geometrical mathematics that isn't so standard in Mathematical Methods texts. Arfken and Weber has some application to physics, but emphasizes the methods.

Likes and dislikes are very personal and subjective. I am only lukewarm with respect to Arfken and Weber, but many folks really like it (including my wife!).

Most people probably want/need the mathematical techniques in Arfken and Weber more than they want/need Thorne and Blandford's treatment of advanced classical physics. A couple of months ago, my wife came to my office, saw Blandford and Thorne, read the title and subtitle, and exclaimed "What is THIS doing on your shelf!" She never would have predicted that I would buy such a book.

Maybe in a decade or so the Mathematical Methods book by @Orodruin will be a Bible!
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Demystifier and jedishrfu
George Jones said:
Even though there is overlap, (Thorne and Blandford) and (Arfen and Weber) are quite different books; they are not meant to do the same thing. Thorne and Blandford treats advanced Classical Physics. At times, it uses standard Mathematical Methods to do this, but the emphasis is on the physics. At other times, Thorne and Blandford uses more geometrical mathematics that isn't so standard in Mathematical Methods texts. Arfken and Weber has some application to physics, but emphasizes the methods.

Likes and dislikes are very personal and subjective. I am only lukewarm with respect to Arfken and Weber, but many folks really like it (including my wife!).

Most people probably want/need the mathematical techniques in Arfken and Weber more than they want/need Thorne and Blandford's treatment of advanced classical physics. A couple of months ago, my wife came to my office, saw Blandford and Thorne, read the title and subtitle, and exclaimed "What is THIS doing on your shelf!" She never would have predicted that I would buy such a book.

You nailed it pretty well, I'm more interested in the math right now as that's needed to understand the physics I want to relearn. Arfken chapters are more discrete in that you can skip around and I felt that Thorne's book was more sequential building up a base one chapter topic at a time. Perhaps, when I retire I'll get a copy with my final paycheck.
 
DrClaude said:
What about Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming? I've never read it, but heard so much about it. Maybe the CS people can chime in.
I've already mentioned it in #25. :smile:
 
I.S. Gradshteyn and I.M. Ryzhik, Table of Integrals, Series and Products

W. Richard Stevens, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
 
Last edited:
Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, Flannery - Numerical Recipes, 3rd ed
More on the applied side, but I'd say a bible, nonetheless. There are tons of versions out there depending on what language was in vogue, but I'd say the current 3rd ed is pretty bible-y.

Horowitz, Hill - The Art of Electronics
Second and third editions are definitely bibles. Haven't encountered a first edition.

I'd also add Courant & Hilbert - Methods of Mathematical Physics (2 vols) as bibles and second Dr. Transport's suggestion in #30 to include Morse & Feshbach.

As for computer science, I'd add CLRS - Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd ed.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Daverz and Demystifier
Joseph Goodman - Introduction to Fourier Optics.
 
Scrumhalf said:
Joseph Goodman - Introduction to Fourier Optics.

In conjunction with Linear Systems and Fourier Optics written by Jack Gaskill, then you have a bible. Consider Gaskill as the old and Goodman the new...
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Demystifier and Scrumhalf
Scrumhalf said:
Haha, I was about to post that!

The story I heard from one of my professors who loved Gaskill's book was this. Jack Gaskill was Joe Goodman's student at Stanford (I think), anyway, Jack flunked Joes' course at least once if not twice and swore that when he was a professor, he'd write a text with everything necessary to know so a student could read Joes' book and be able to work thru it.
 
Why not make this thread "sticky"? I spent a fare amount of searching and googling before I discovered Jackson and Sakurai, which are already listed on the first page here. Other students may not need to.
 
Dr Transport said:
Consider Gaskill as the old and Goodman the new...
Dr Transport said:
Jack Gaskill was Joe Goodman's student .
Are you saying that the new testament is written before the old testament?
 
Demystifier said:
Are you saying that the new testament is written before the old testament?

In this case yes...I know bass ackwards, but stranger things have happened in STEM...
 
analogdesign said:
This list has been Physics heavy. How about some Electrical Engineering? These are some bibles if you're interested in microelectronics.

Sze -- Physics of Semiconductor Devices
Oppenheim and Shaefer -- Discrete-Time Signal Processing
Mead and Conway -- Introduction to VLSI Systems
Gray, Meyer, Hurst, and Lewis -- Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits
Rabaey -- Digital Integrated Circuit Design
Patterson and Hennessy -- Computer Organization and Design
Hennessy and Patterson -- Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach
Also necessary (from the hands-on side):

Building Scientific Apparatus by Moore, Davis, and Coplan

I lug this one around everywhere.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Andy Resnick, Demystifier and analogdesign
Dr Transport said:
In this case yes...I know bass ackwards, but stranger things have happened in STEM...
Here are the old and the New testament on my bookshelf at work, with a couple of other beauties in the middle!

IMG_20180507_171225.jpeg
 
Attachments
  • IMG_20180507_171225.jpeg
    IMG_20180507_171225.jpeg
    33.7 KB · Views: 1,866
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: vanhees71, Demystifier and analogdesign

Similar threads

Other List of STEM Masterworks: THE SUMMARY
  • Juanda
  • · Replies 2 ·
  • Science and Math Textbooks
Replies
2