Schwinger's Quantum Mechanics: Symbolism of Atomic Measurements

[fluidistic]

I had never heard of Schwinger's Quantum Mechanics: Symbolism of Atomic Measurements until very recently. I wonder what you people think about that QM textbook. Is it a good introduction to QM? A reference? Or, possibly an outdated and bad book?

At first glance, it seems a masterpiece to me, but I am no QM guru. Hence my interest in hearing from you!

 

[otennert]

This book is the outcome of lecture notes from Schwinger's QM lectures back in the 1950s, and Schwinger had indeed planned to write a textbook on QM. But this is not it. In fact, in the end he never did, and this book compiled by others from these lecture notes is probably the closest thing to it.

But I would not count it as a textbook in the proper sense (like e.g. Merzbacher, Messiah). The way it is organized into "terms" and the scope of it surely bears witness of its sources (namely, lecture notes).

I would not count it as bad either, neither as outdated -- it is just not a textbook in the proper sense, and if you know about Schwinger a little, you know some of his approaches to physical problems were ingenious on the one hand, but may not be appreciated by a newcomer nowadays. Understanding Schwinger often prerequires a lot of prior understanding.

 

[mpresic3]

I bought the book after thumbing through it probably about 30 years ago, so I must have liked it. I am afraid with all the other QM books on my shelf, I have not read much of this one. The QM books that I read the most out of are Shankar, Sakurai, Messiah, Merzbacher, and Landau / Lif Vol 3. Browsing it again seems to suggest it is perhaps idiosyncratic in it's treatment as the earlier post suggests.

 

[vanhees71]

I think it's among the best books on quantum mechanics ever written. I'd put it at the same level as Pauli's Encyclopedia review on wave mechanics (and his lecture notes on quantum mechanics) and Dirac's book on quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, it's not a book I'd recommend to study it as the first textbook on the subject, because it's pretty unusual in its methodology. Schwinger is usually not easy to read and not very didactical but you always gain some deep insight. This holds even more for his textbook on classical electrodynamics.

 

[Daverz]

It's a fascinating book, but I often find it difficult to follow his thinking at critical places. The book by Max Wilcox, Quantum Principles and Particles, uses some of the same approach, but at a more elementary level. Wilcox was a student of Schwinger.