Other What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[gleem]

Just picked up LIFE 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. by Max Tegmark

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Physics Forums

 

[Demystifier]

Physics Forums

Books only!

 

[e-pie]

Ahlfors Complex Analysis first time
Rudin Mathematical Analysis again
Artin Algebra again

 

[vanhees71]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198539487/?tag=pfamazon01-20

The best biography of R. P. Feynman, I've seen so far.

 

[pinball1970]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198539487/?tag=pfamazon01-20

The best biography of R. P. Feynman, I've seen so far.

That is one for my list - thanks

 

[e-pie]

Read it! @vanhees71 Nice book. But I like Feynman's own words much better.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5544.Surely_You_re_Joking_Mr_Feynman_

And

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35167718-what-do-you-care-what-other-people-think

 

[vanhees71]

These are nice books about Feynman's private jokes, but much more interesting is Feynman's science and his thoughts on how to teach physics.

 

[e-pie]

@vanhees71

Right.

Mehra does bring some analysis of Feynman's work like path integral, Atomic bomb etc. I never expected it from the title. It sounded like a biographical sketch of his life that would follow the format of many popular science books : The less equations the better.

But if you are not to judge a book by its cover then you shouldn't judge it by its title.

Lesson learned.

 

[e-pie]

A similar book about Euclid and his geometry is by Leonard Mlodinow.
Forgot the title.

It mostly discusses development of Geometry from practically nothing to the most important branch of Mathematics.

Wouldn't be possible if Euclid wasn't there.

 

[diogenesNY]

Just finished _Fakes and Forgeries_ by Suzanne Bell.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/fakes-and-forgeries/oclc/920296556&referer=brief_results
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9746899-fakes-and-forgeries
https://forensics.wvu.edu/faculty-and-staff/faculty/suzanne-bell

This is one of seven volumes of the _Essentials of Forensic Science_ series, itself part of Infobase Publishing's Facts on File Science Library.

This is a slim but fact laden volume describing many of the particulars of the latest scientific methods (as well as a few classics) used to determine that such things as documents, signatures, artwork, and particularly currency have been forged, counterfitted or dishonestly manufactured. There is some discussion of terminology and investigative procedures as well as the history of the development of forensic science.

Especially interesting sections on ink chemistry, microspectrophotometry and advanced microscopy.

If you are interested in forensic science, fraud or even materials deception, this is a very enjoyable short book.

Suzanne Bell is the author of quite a few very interesting looking books. I suspect I will be hunting down more than a few of them in the near future.

diogenesNY

 

[George Jones]

I am reading "Mathematical Gauge Theory With Applications to the Standard Model of Particle" by Mark Hamilton,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3319684388/?tag=pfamazon01-20

I am finding it to be tremendously interesting and also very slow going. I am going to busy with work in September, so I will probably have to put it down.

Thanks, @vanhees71 .

I'ver recently found

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3319684388/?tag=pfamazon01-20

I've not read much in the book yet. So I can't say, whether it's good or not, but it seems to cover a lot of the mathematical foundations, usually not found in standard QFT textbooks for physicists, and it's written in the Mathematicians' dry style ;-)).

I just wish that you had told abut this book 25 years ago!

 

[Auto-Didact]

"What is time? What is space?" by Carlo Rovelli.

Magnificent short biography of Rovelli's time studying and working in the foundations of physics, from beginning to the late 2000s.

 

[Auto-Didact]

"Foundations of Quantum Theory: From Classical Concepts to Operator Algebras" by Klaas Landsman, 2017.

Available for free in pdf format from Springer Open Access here.

 

[Nguyen Son]

I'm reading these 4 books for my thesis

 

[Nguyen Son]

I've just received an email from PF, that someone replied my post and said "Huang is rubbish"? Well, i know a lot of people on Amazon said that, but at least this book is helping me about Ising Model, my thesis topic

 

[Demystifier]

I've just received an email from PF, that someone replied my post and said "Huang is rubbish"? Well, i know a lot of people on Amazon said that, but at least this book is helping me about Ising Model, my thesis topic

Huang is not an easy read for a first book on statistical mechanics, but it doesn't make it a rubbish. I found in it some great insights that I couldn't find elsewhere.

 

[member 587159]

I'm currently reading parts of Rudin's "Principles of mathematical analysis", Apostol's "Mathematical analysis" and Munkres' "Analysis on manifolds". In particular, I am reading the parts about multivariable calculus (Currently the parts about differentiation of functions $\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m$). I heard that the integration stuff in Apostol and Rudin isn't that great, but the other book is famous for it.

 

[Auto-Didact]

"Quantum Theory from a Nonlinear Perspective: Riccati Equations in Fundamental Physics" by Dieter Schuh, 2018.

Link here, but too bad there is no open access.

 

[SchroedingersLion]

"Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics" by W. Greiner.

It is an undergraduate book I started to work through in order to repeat the topics and refresh my knowledge. The first sections were pretty good even though they raised one or two questions when trying to understand them rigorously (see my latest thread). I hope it gets better as I keep reading.

 

[lomidrevo]

I just recently finished "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics (2nd Edition)" by Carroll&Ostlie, and I found the last two chapters just wonderful.. what a huge amount of information can be deduced about the early universe "just by" exploring the observable universe, analyzing CMB and putting everything together using the verified physical theories. Maybe I am too much enthusiastic, but I consider it breathtaking, so I want to immerse myself in study of cosmology in more details.

I realize that without proper understanding of general relativity I couldn't get too far, so my next step is to go through "Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell" by Zee. I read lot of positive reviews on this textbook everywhere, including here on PF. So it is on the way already

 

[haushofer]

I just recently finished "An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics (2nd Edition)" by Carroll&Ostlie, and I found the last two chapters just wonderful.. what a huge amount of information can be deduced about the early universe "just by" exploring the observable universe, analyzing CMB and putting everything together using the verified physical theories. Maybe I am too much enthusiastic, but I consider it breathtaking, so I want to immerse myself in study of cosmology in more details.

I realize that without proper understanding of general relativity I couldn't get too far, so my next step is to go through "Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell" by Zee. I read lot of positive reviews on this textbook everywhere, including here on PF. So it is on the way already

I highly recommend Zee's book. Some may say it's not thorough, but I think it is solid enough, a lot of fun, and loaded with insights and modern topics which are not found elsewhere.

My read is "Effective Computation in Physics" and "A gentle introduction to numerical simulations in Python" because I'd like to improve my programming skills and because Python is applied in a lot of different fields nowadays, from actuary sciences to data sciences and engineering. The first book is quite formal and lacks useful exercises and sometimes examples, so I supplement it with the second book.

 

[Borg]

I've been studying machine language for the last few months. I'm in the middle of each of these.

Neural Networks and Deep Learning
Think Complexity
Deep Learning

This YouTube video series has been very helpful in understanding how neural networks function - Neural Networks.

 

[vanhees71]

I just started

David Kaiser, Drawing theories apart

It's about the spread of Feynman diagrams as a methodological tool from their creation at the end of the 1940ies on.

 

[CJ2116]

I have been making slow progress on Andrew Zangwill's Modern Electrodynamics these past few weeks. This is such a well written book. Of the 9 EM texts that I own this is by far the clearest and most enjoyable to work through. His proof of the Helmholtz Theorem is the best I have come across.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I've started "Fractional Calculus: An Introduction for Physicists (3rd Edition) by Hermann:

https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/11107

Seems interesting... I've only gotten through the introductory chapters so far.

 

[BillTre]

I recently finished reading The Cambrian Explosion, The Construction of Animal Biodiversity, by Douglas Erwin and James Valentine.

Its basically a textbook for an upper level class on the subject.
While titled as the Cambrian Explosion, it really is more about the construction of animal diversity.
It covers the early geology leading up to the Cambrian, the relevant fossil record, the evolving ecosystem, the cladistics of the groups and their traits, the underlying developmental processes and genetics underlying that.
It also points out where the uncertainty is and out of date ideas.
I found it quite interesting.

Not recommended for those not already familiar with evolutionary concepts.

 

[pinball1970]

I've had it a while but now I have finally got round to reading, "The Greatest Story Ever told ..so far" Lawrence Krauss

 

[gleem]

I just finished "The Artist and the Mathematician - The Story of Nicholas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed" By Amir D. Aczel.

The book is about a revolution in the fundamental approach to mathematics by a group of extraordinary young French mathematicians (Weil, Dieudonne, H. Cartan, Delsarte, Chevalley, de Possel) in the mid to late 1930's who thought that approaches to math development was not rigorous enough. They sought to axiomatize math in the manner of Euclid's approach to geometry by writing a series of books on the various branches of math using Set Theory as the foundation. This was done anonymously under the nom de plume of Nicholas Bourbaki and in a style which could not be used to identify any contributor. The working agreement among the authors was that only that which was unanimously agreed upon would be published. The book provide a biographical sketch or those who influenced the project over time. It discusses the influence of this work on math and its teaching as well as on other branches of human endeavor such as anthropology, psychology, economics,philosophy and even literature by formalizing the concept of Structuralism. Originally intended for readers of average intelligence and as a replacement for outdated french math texts it diverted it goals into a tome of excessive generalizations and abstractions even resulting in it's authors stating it is not a text. Its demise as a seminal work in math was brought about by Alexandre Grothendieck who as a member of the Bourbaki group in the 1960's insisted that they change the foundation of the Bourbaki works from set theory to the more appropriate category theory.

I found it absorbing and hard to put down.

 

[Auto-Didact]

Just started "Physics and Philosophy" by Heisenberg but the book @gleem posted sounds far more interesting! I'm going to go hunt it down in the bookstores.

Its demise as a seminal work in math was brought about by Alexandre Grothendieck who as a member of the Bourbaki group in the 1960's insisted that they change the foundation of the Bourbaki works from set theory to the more appropriate category theory.

Hurray for Grothendieck, death to Bourbakianism!

 

[Demystifier]

Hurray for Grothendieck, death to Bourbakianism!

Hurray for sets, death to abstract nonsense.

 

[Dragon27]

Hurray for sets, death to abstract nonsense.

The revolution has already won. Your vain hopes will never come to fruition.:)

 

[martinbn]

Hurray for Grothendieck, death to Bourbakianism!

This doesn't make sense. What Grothendieck was insisting on was to make the approach even more Bourbaki in style than it already was. It is not death to Bourbakianism, it is more long live, prosper and expand to Bourbakianism.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Just started "Physics and Philosophy" by Heisenberg but the book @gleem posted sounds far more interesting! I'm going to go hunt it down in the bookstores.
Hurray for Grothendieck, death to Bourbakianism!

In a few years the trend will be to replace Category Theory with another theory.(if it hasn't already begun).

 

[Auto-Didact]

This doesn't make sense. What Grothendieck was insisting on was to make the approach even more Bourbaki in style than it already was. It is not death to Bourbakianism, it is more long live, prosper and expand to Bourbakianism.

Hey, I'll take mixing up co and contravariant functors over closet logicism any day!

 

[Demystifier]

In a few years the trend will be to replace Category Theory with another theory.(if it hasn't already begun).

Why do you think so?

Anyway, if category theory is abstract nonsense, then this new theory will be hyper-abstract utter nonsense.

 

[gleem]

This doesn't make sense. What Grothendieck was insisting on was to make the approach even more Bourbaki in style than it already was. It is not death to Bourbakianism, it is more long live, prosper and expand to Bourbakianism.

Yes. Grothendieck was the generalist's generalist and according to Aczel championed a trend toward increasing generality and abstraction in math. In fact he could not relate to examples for which most of us need for understanding.. In a seminar he mentioned something about prime numbers and a participant asked for an example. He said take 57 for example. which of course is not a prime number. 57 has become known as Grothendieck's prime.

 

[George Jones]

Anyway, if category theory is abstract nonsense, then this new theory will be hyper-abstract utter nonsense.

The book "Mathematical Physics" by Robert Geroch, which is in the orthogonal complement to most books with similar titles, starts with a brief introduction to category theory. This is a very nice broad introduction to some abstract maths, and a book on which I spent a fair bit of time 25 or 30 years ago.

A pure maths prof who taught me undergrad and grad courses in abstract algebra, representation theory, Lie algebras, etc. once said to me "Category theory should be functored out of existence."

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Why do you think so?

Anyway, if category theory is abstract nonsense, then this new theory will be hyper-abstract utter nonsense.

History tells me there's always a new foundations to maths.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Why do you think so?

Anyway, if category theory is abstract nonsense, then this new theory will be hyper-abstract utter nonsense.

Not hyper, but super...

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

In a seminar he mentioned something about prime numbers and a participant asked for an example. He said take 57 for example. which of course is not a prime number. 57 has become known as Grothendieck's prime.

makes you wonder what other mistakes there are in his general publications.
Also I am not sure I can construct a Grothendieck universe which is not trivial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grothendieck_universe

 

[gleem]

makes you wonder what other mistakes there are in his general publications.

That should not be a problems since he avoids specifics. I understand Feynman made a mistake too so maybe we should check his publications.

A pure maths prof who taught me undergrad and grad courses in abstract algebra, representation theory, Lie algebras, etc. once said to me "Category theory should be functored out of existence."

WRT the issues of too much generality for which many mathematicians find distasteful Topos, a category, is finding use in quantum field theory? . I bring this up because there seems to be a sense that Category Theory is too general to be useful.Disclaimer: I am only a lowly experimental physicist and cannot discuss these issues beyond very general observations.

 

[Auto-Didact]

In a few years the trend will be to replace Category Theory with another theory.(if it hasn't already begun).

As Poincaré said, 'fundamental principles are only conventions - adopted due to some convenience - and it is quite unreasonable to ask whether they are true or false as it is to ask whether the metric system is true or false.'

Yes. Grothendieck was the generalist's generalist and according to Aczel championed a trend toward increasing generality and abstraction in math. In fact he could not relate to examples for which most of us need for understanding.

As Weyl said, 'it cannot be denied that in advancing to higher and more general theories the inapplicability of the simple laws of classical logic eventually results in an almost unbearable awkwardness. And the mathematician watches with pain the greater part of his towering edifice which he believed to be built of concrete blocks dissolve into mist before his eyes.'

A pure maths prof who taught me undergrad and grad courses in abstract algebra, representation theory, Lie algebras, etc. once said to me "Category theory should be functored out of existence."

As Feynman said, 'his mother probably never hugged him as a child... or perhaps she was overindulgent!'

 

[vanhees71]

Well I think that nearly anything is more illuminating than reading this particular book by Heisenberg... SCNR.

 

[vanhees71]

Why do you think so?

Anyway, if category theory is abstract nonsense, then this new theory will be hyper-abstract utter nonsense.

Well, I'd not say that Bourbakism is "abstract nonsense"; it's most probably not "nonsense" in any sense but an important step in the development of mathematics in terms of research!

The misunderstanding, however, is to take it as a textbook, which for sure it is not. It's a review on a level for researches, stripped of all sensical didactics. In my opinion the Bourbaki style of textbooks is even a disservice in the sense of textbook writing since it doesn't provide a real "working knowledge" of math, i.e., it doesn't tell the student about the heuristics of the subject, which is very important for a university-level textbook since the future researcher rather needs intuition to find new knowledge than an overformalized knowledge of the present or past status of his subject. An example are Dieudonne's analysis textbook, which is very Bourbakian in style. I've never understood, how you should be able to learn the subject from this dry exhibition ;-)).

 

[Auto-Didact]

Well, I'd not say that Bourbakism is "abstract nonsense"; it's most probably not "nonsense" in any sense but an important step in the development of mathematics in terms of research!

The misunderstanding, however, is to take it as a textbook, which for sure it is not. It's a review on a level for researches, stripped of all sensical didactics. In my opinion the Bourbaki style of textbooks is even a disservice in the sense of textbook writing since it doesn't provide a real "working knowledge" of math, i.e., it doesn't tell the student about the heuristics of the subject, which is very important for a university-level textbook since the future researcher rather needs intuition to find new knowledge than an overformalized knowledge of the present or past status of his subject. An example are Dieudonne's analysis textbook, which is very Bourbakian in style. I've never understood, how you should be able to learn the subject from this dry exhibition ;-)).

Couldn't have said it better.

 

[gleem]

An example are Dieudonne's analysis textbook, which is very Bourbakian in style. I've never understood, how you should be able to learn the subject from this dry exhibition

This should have been very predictable since Dieudonne was a founding member of the Bourbaki working group and the designated scribe for the Bourbaki works for some 25 years. The various works avoided any illustrations of figures or tables contributing to their "dryness". Apparently only the books on Lie groups and commutative algebra have figures due to the influence of Armand Borel. Initially Borel having read Bourbaki assumed the real authors where closed minded and cared only for abstraction and generality.but changed his mind when he began working with them. Paraphrasing comment he made in Notices of the American: Mathematical Society (1989): They knew so much and knew it so well,. even on a topic more familiar to me than to them their sharp questions gave me the impression that I had not really thought it through.

 

[Auto-Didact]

This should have been very predictable since Dieudonne was a founding member of the Bourbaki working group and the designated scribe for the Bourbaki works for some 25 years. The various works avoided any illustrations of figures or tables contributing to their "dryness". Apparently only the books on Lie groups and commutative algebra have figures due to the influence of Armand Borel. Initially Borel having read Bourbaki assumed the real authors where closed minded and cared only for abstraction and generality.but changed his mind when he began working with them. Paraphrasing comment he made in Notices of the American: Mathematical Society (1989): They knew so much and knew it so well,. even on a topic more familiar to me than to them their sharp questions gave me the impression that I had not really thought it through.

I don't doubt that at all either, I only doubt whether such extensions would be inherently conceptually interesting in terms of application (i.e. physics) as well or only in terms of mathematics.

 

[gleem]

I don't doubt that at all either, I only doubt whether such extensions would be inherently conceptually interesting in terms of application (i.e. physics) as well or only in terms of mathematics.

If you mean would the inclusions of examples and visual aids etc. be only interesting in terms of applications it would seem the answer is no. Borel needed figures for his understanding that is why he included them in his contributions. He deprecated his ability in deference to the founder of Bourbaki by stating that he is only a Swiss peasant and the Swiss character needs pictures. Bourbaki's works seemed to be typically criticized by mathematicians for their lack of examples.

 

[vanhees71]

That's precisely what I meant before. The Bourbaki books an some of the textbooks of the members of Bourbaki are closer to scientific research work, and without doubt excellent research work, but they are lousy as textbooks. I'm sure that all these brillant mathematicians didn't come to the results presented in the waybof these books but in creative acts of thinking. Of course at the end the finding must be formalized in this way to be true pure math. In a sense Bourbaki defined this level of abstract quality (at least for the math of the late 20th century).