QM Text Recommendation: R. Shankar's "QM" Text

[graphic7]

This is my first post, by the way. Hello everyone.

I just received R. Shankar's text on QM a few days ago. I am thorougly impressed with the general layout of the book. I've heard introducing Dirac notation first is an excellent idea. The first ~ 80 pages of the book are of a introductory mathematical nature (but nevertheless good, since I'm a self study type). The second chapter consists of classical mechanics with a tad bit of history splashed every once and awhile.

I've made the attempts of reading D. Bohm's (Dover) and Linus Pauling's (Dover, and very ancient) QM texts. Both of these were satisfactory but they lack the touch Shankar gives. I've also been loaned Griffiths and found it a good book as far as conceptual nature goes. But I found it lacking in mathematical formulation as many others have.

All in all, I just wanted to spread the word about Shankar's text to any eager QM student or self-studier.

 

[shchr]

Hello!
My favorite QM book is Messiah's book which is also sold from Dover. Although this book has a large volume and is an old book, you may get many important idea about QM.

 

[alexepascual]

I heard Messiah is quite dated in it's approach. As a reference it may be good to have. Shankar -- as graphic7 says -- is very good as a textbook.
To those looking for a book for self-study, you may find instructive to look at the reviews in Amazon.com
Other books:
Sakurai (good too)
Mersbacher (no opinion)
Feynman Lectures (kind of long but good detailed explanations w/ physical examples)
Griffiths (skips steps, and assigns the derivations to you as exercises. If you are a masochist, or very good at the math, this is the book for you)
A good approach may be to have several books and what you don't understand in one may be explained in more detail in another book.