Math and science books for a well-educated person

[john16O]

Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone could recommend some must read books that any well-educated person should read. I like to read(a lot) but sometimes I do not always read the right books. I prefer books on math/science in general considering that I am a physics major. But any books that you have found to boost your knowledge and make you an all around more educated person would also be helpful. Feel free to list and discuss some of the top books that you have read!I am looking forward to reading you posts!

 

[ice109]

i haven't read these but Godel escher bach looks good and road to reality by penrose looks good.

 

[waht]

I just finished reading "Poincare Conjecture" by Donal O'Shea so I can recommend it. I picked it up to learn more about Poincare Conjecture in detail, but it turned out this book is more of a historical exposition of events leading to its discovery. Surprisingly, that was incredibly fascinating read.

 

[kuahji]

I've listed some over in the science review section, so not going to list those books again, but an one really interesting book I read lately was "The Hole in the Universe" by K.C. Cole. Its essentially a book about nothing... & how this nothing effects the universe.

The book "The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy" by Fulvio Melia was also a pretty interesting read. After reading so many books about string theory & parallel worlds, it was good to come back to "reality" & read about theories pertaining to actual observed phenomena.

 

[olgranpappy]

Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone could recommend some must read books that any well-educated person should read. I like to read(a lot) but sometimes I do not always read the right books. I prefer books on math/science in general considering that I am a physics major. But any books that you have found to boost your knowledge and make you an all around more educated person would also be helpful. Feel free to list and discuss some of the top books that you have read!I am looking forward to reading you posts!

The ten volumes of Landau and Lif****z "Course of Theoretical Physics". Then you will be an honorary Soviet physicist.

 

[unit_circle]

The ten volumes of Landau and Lif****z "Course of Theoretical Physics". Then you will be an honorary Soviet physicist.

You will also be a damn good physicist.

 

[Some Guy]

Unknown Quantity by Derbyshire is a pretty good book about the historical development of algebra.

 

[Yousof]

a must-read and must-concern SUBJECT is "" self-development "" .
One i am reading now is " Power up your mind : learn faster, work smarter " by Bill Lucas .


a quotation from the book :

" Most of us don’t understand the central role our minds have
in helping us to perform more effectively: we are simply not taught
how to learn or how to apply our learning. While we have discovered
more about the brain and how it works in the last decade than
we have ever known before, we apply very little of this in our daily
working or personal lives.

It is possible for everyone to learn faster, work smarter, and
be more fulfilled.

Power Up Your Mind translates what we know about how the
brain works into useful insights for the workplace. It has been written
from the conviction that intelligence is multifaceted and not
fixed at birth. It draws ideas from the broadest possible range of
subject areas, from neuroscience to psychology, motivation theory
to accelerated learning, memory to diet. "​

.

 

[nicksauce]

Fabric of the cosmos and elegant universe by Brian Greene
Anything by Carl Sagan
Anything by Richard Dawkins

 

[malawi_glenn]

It is a difference reading physics books and study them.

 

[leon1127]

Theory of Complex Functions by Reinhold Remmert is a beauty to read as it mix theory, problem solving, and historical development in one book.

 

[ffleming7]

It is a difference reading physics books and study them.

What exactly do you mean? Do you suggest studying physics books that are not textbooks?

 

[Andy Resnick]

I second "Goedel, Esher, Bach" and "Cosmos". Also, at a more elementary level, "One, Two, Three, Infinity" By Gamow.

Another favorite of mine is "An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science" by Clifford Truesdell.

Edit: sorry, I forgot "Flying Circus of Physics", by Jearl Walker.

 

[malawi_glenn]

What exactly do you mean? Do you suggest studying physics books that are not textbooks?

No i mean going through the exersices, proove formulas, etc.

It is difference reading a QM book for example Sarkurai, only using your eyes. And trying to solve the exersices with a paper and pencil.

 

[PhysiSmo]

Very true! Unfortunately, lots of books don't have exersices at all :( Prooving the formulas in the theory is also great, but the real digging into the subject comes along with the unsolved problems!

 

[malawi_glenn]

Very true! Unfortunately, lots of books don't have exersices at all :( Prooving the formulas in the theory is also great, but the real digging into the subject comes along with the unsolved problems!

if they don't contain exercises, then yes you can follow the forumulas and trying to get all the steps etc. Or find another textbook or excerixes somewhere else.

Physics is not a science that you gain knowledge by reading, nor math either. One has to practice and encounter difficulties and try to overcome them :)

 

[BryanP]

'Warped Passages' by Lisa Randall

I found this book quite easy to read, especially for not having too much of a particle physics background.

I like how she tries to explain the non-intuitive concepts in QM processes such as the
Higgs Mechanism and supersymmetry breaking. She ties it well with the whole description
behind brane theory and the search for hidden dimensions.

For anyone interested in this kind of stuff, this is a great read.

 

[Oberst Villa]

The ten volumes of Landau and Lif****z "Course of Theoretical Physics". Then you will be an honorary Soviet physicist.

hopefully not - just as reading Arnold Sommerfelds "Lectures on Theoretical Physics" would not turn him into a Nazi

back to topic, I second the proposal of ice109, "Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose

 

[TVP45]

A few that you might consider are:
The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill
Street Without Joy, Bernard Fall
Design of Welded Structures, Omer Blodgett
Development of Concepts of Physics, Arnold Arons
The Lady in the Lake, Walter Scott
Matter and Motion, James Clerk Maxwell
Henry V, William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portugese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

[mgiddy911]

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
it sold me on physics as a sophomore in high school

 

[torquerotates]

Brian Greene; the Elegant Universe.

 

[cristo]

Misner, Thorne, Wheeler.

 

[torquerotates]

Actually another one of the best books that I have read is Crime and Punishment. The story is more or less conveyed in dialogue. Which makes it hard to follow at times. However the book is a great examination of a criminals justifications and the emotional impact ensued from existential beliefs. Which would make it a great philosophy/literiture book. Anyways more reviews are at amazon.com

 

[Barfolumu]

"Flatland" by Edwin A. Abbot. Good for both the mathematician and the liberal arts major :).

 

[TVP45]

Some more random thoughts, tending towards authors:
Rumi
Tolstoy
Euclid's Elements
Camus
Josephus
John Locke
Thomas Aquinas
Maimonides
Pushkin
James Baldwin
Roger Penrose
Henry Petroski
Sun Tzu

 

[turbo]

"Chaos" and "Genius" by James Gleick are both entertaining, as is "The Emperor's New Mind" by Penrose.

 

[starfoxsixty4]

The Fabric Of Reality by David Deutsch is absolutely amazing. Engaging, mind-warping, life-changing science and philosophy. A great summary from Wikipedia:

...what he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one strand of a four-strand theory of everything. The four strands are:

1. Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, "the first and most important of the four strands".
2. Karl Popper's epistemology, especially its anti-inductivism and its requiring a realist (non-instrumental) interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on taking seriously those bold conjectures that resist falsification.
3. Alan Turing's theory of computation especially as developed in Deutsch's "Turing principle", Turing's universal Turing machine being replaced by Deutsch's universal quantum computer. ("The theory of computation is now the quantum theory of computation.")
4. Richard Dawkins's refinement of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the modern evolutionary synthesis, especially the ideas of replicator and meme as they integrate with Popperian problem-solving (the epistemological strand).


Michael Lockwood's book The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe is also great.

Anything by Ray Kurzweil is always a paradigm-shifting read. The Singularity Is Near is brilliant, but a tough one to read from cover to cover - more of a skip around type book.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's a few non-textbooks I've read and found to be thought-provoking:

Goedel, Escher, Bach (Hofstatter?)
Origins of Order (Kauffman)
An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science (Truesdell)
Advice for A Young Investigator (Cajal)

 

[kenewbie]

This list is stolen from a book-club. The idea was this: 100 professors of different fields were told to list the 100 most influential books in the world. The results were compared, and a list of 100 books was compiled. This is that list.

This list is in norwegian. I don't have time to translate all the titles, but I've added the English title where I know what it is or can guess the approximate one. Also, I have removed 2-3 books which are specific to Norway and not of general interest. The list is alphabetical, I've added a few translations in parentheses.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) Minima moralia (Eng: Minima moralia)
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Innføring i kristendommen
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Eichmann i Jerusalem. (Eichmann in Jerusalem)
Aristoteles (384-322 f.kr.) Den nikomakiske etikk og Om diktekunsten ("Nicomachean Ethics" and "Poetics")
Augustin (354-430) Bekjennelser (Confessions)
Michaíl Bakhtín (1895-1975) Rabelais og latterens historie
Roland Barthes (1915-1975) Mytologier (Mythologies)
Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) Ånd og natur - en nødvendig enhet (Mind and nature)
Zygmunt Bauman (f. 1925) Moderniteten og Holocaust (Modernity and the Holocaust)
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) Det annet kjønn (The second sex)
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Essays (Essays)
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) De to kilder for moral og religion (The two sources of moral and religion?)
Niels Bohr (1885-1962) Atomteori og naturbeskrivelse (I think this might be Atomic Physics and human knowledge)
Pierre Bourdieu (f. 1930) Distinksjonen (The distinction)
Martin Buber (1878-1965) Jeg og du (Me and You)
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Refleksjoner over den franske revolusjon (Reflections on the French revolution)
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Myten om Sisyfos (The myth of Sisyfos)
Elias Canetti (1905-1994) Masse og makt
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) Kulturvitenskapenes logikk
Cicero (106-43 f.Kr) Om pliktene (On duties)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Om artenes opprinnelse gjennom det naturlige utvalg (The origin of the species)
René Descartes (1596-1650) Meditasjoner over filosofiens grunnlag (Meditations of first philosophy)
Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) Selvmordet (The suicide)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Relativitetsteorien (The theory of relativity)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Det hellige og det profane (the sacred and the profane?)
Erasmus Roterodamus (ca 1466-1536) Dårskapens lovtale
Frantz Fanon (1924-1961) Jordens fordømte
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Galskapens historie
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) De undertryktes pedagogikk
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Innføring i psykoanalyse og Drømmetydning ("Introduction to psykoanalysis" and "The interperation of dreams" )
Betty Friedan (f. 1921) Myten om kvinnen
Egon Friedell (1878-1938) Vår tids kulturhistorie
Hans-G. Gadamer (f. 1900) Sannhet og metode (Truth and Method)
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Dialog om de to verdenssystemene (Dialog concerning the two chief world systems)
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Vi er alle søsken
Stephen Jay Gould (f. 1941) Misvisende målinger av mennesket
Jürgen Habermas (f. 1929) Borgerlig offentlighet
Stephen Hawking (f. 1942) Univers uten grenser (I think this is A brief history of time, but the translated title means something else entirely)
G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) Åndens fenomenologi (The phenomenology of spirit)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Væren og tid
Herodot (ca 484-ca 424 f.kr) Historie (History)
Hippokrates (460-377 f.kr) Om legekunsten
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Leviathan (Leviathan)
Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) Essays (Essays)
Max Horkheimer og Theodor W. Adorno (1895-1973) og (1903-1969) Opplysningens dialektikk
David Hume (1711-1776) En avhandling om den menneskelige natur (A discourse on human nature)
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) Muqaddimah - en innføring i den arabiske historie
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Kritikk av den rene fornuft (Critique of the pure reason)
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) Allmenn teori om sysselsetting, rente og penger
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Begrepet angst og Øyeblikket ("The concept of dread" and "")
Aleksandra Kollontaj (1872-1952) Revolusjon og kjærlighet ("Revolution" and "Love"?)
Konfutse (ca 551-479 f.Kr) Samtaler (Conversations)
Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) Vitenskapelige revolusjoners struktur (The structure of scientific revolusion)
Christopher Lasch (1932-1994) Den narsissistiske kultur (The narcissistic culture)
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) Den annens humanisme
Claude Lévi-Strauss (f. 1908) Tropisk elegi
Carl von Linné (1707-1778) Den svenske flora (The swedish flora!)
Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) Den såkalte ondskap
Martin Luther (1483-1546) Lille og store katekisme
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Fyrsten (The prince)
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) Det endimensjonale menneske (The one-dimensional human?)
Karl Marx (1818-1883) Kapitalen og Det kommunistiske manifest ("The capital" and "The communistic manifesto")
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) Kroppens fenomenologi
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) Om friheten og Kvinnenes undertrykkelse
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) Essays
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Slik talte Zarathustra og Hinsides godt og ondt ("Thus spoke Zarathusta" and "beyond good and evil")
Arne Næss (f. 1912) Økologi, samfunn og livsstil (Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Tanker (Thoughts)
Platon (427-347 f.Kr) Symposion og Faidros (Symposium and Faidros)
Karl Popper (1902-1994) Det åpne samfunn og dets fiender
Neil Postman () Vi morer oss til døde (Amusing ourselves to Death)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Samfunnspakten (The social contract)
Edward W. Said (f. 1935) Orientalismen (Orientalism)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) Væren og intet
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) Om menneskets estetiske oppdragelse (On the aesthetic education of man)
Carl W. Schnitler (1879-1926) Slegten fra 1814
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) Verden som vilje og forestilling
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Ærefrykt for livet (Something about awe and life..)
Adam Smith (1723-1790) Nasjonenes velstand (The wealth of nations)
C. P. Snow (1905-1980) De to kulturer (The two cultures?)
Susan Sontag (f. 1933) essays: Sykdom som metafor, aids og dens metaforer (Disease as a metaphor?)
Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) Etikk (Ethics)
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) Om demokratiet i Amerika (On democracy in America)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) Den tragiske livsfølelse
Max Weber (1864-1920) Den protestantiske etikk og kapitalismens ånd (The protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Filosofiske undersøkelser (Philosophical investigations)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Forsvar for kvinnenes rettigheter
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Et eget rom (A room of ones own?)
Georg Henrik von Wright (f. 1916) Vitenskapen og fornuften ( Science and reason?)
Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990) Om det tragiske (On the tragic?)

There you go. If you read and comprehend that list, I guess you can consider yourself well educated :)

I own 20 or so, have read 9-ish and fully comprehended 2!

k

 

[mal4mac]

... recommend some must read books that any well-educated person should read. I like to read(a lot) but sometimes I do not always read the right books. I prefer books on math/science in general considering that I am a physics major. But any books that you have found to boost your knowledge and make you an all around more educated person would also be helpful. Feel free to list and discuss some of the top books that you have read!I am looking forward to reading you posts!

One book that boosted my knowledge no end was:

Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee

It's the best general book on philosophy I've ever read, gave me great insight into the worlds of music, novel writing, media & politics. And it's an exciting intellectual autobiography. Only a couple of references to physics here and there. There is more to life than physics alone

For pure pleasure & entertainment while still being able to pretend you are reading a serious master ('cause you are) then try anything by Charles Dickens. David Copperfield to start?

Wot? You want some physics... I really enjoyed reading Wheeler's autobiography "Geons..." recently.