What fraction of physics bestsellers are Feynman?

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
2 replies · 3K views
Science Advisor
Homework Helper
Gold Member
Dearly Missed
Messages
24,752
Reaction score
795
Amazon has a list of 100 bestseller books in physics category. this includes popularizations, biographies, textbooks, Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, intelligent design, iffy-physics-of-the-supernatural, physics cartoons and comedy, ANYTHING if it has a connection with physics*. So the competition is quite stiff.

What fraction of the top 100 bestsellers turn out to be books by or about Feynman? What would you guess? you can check here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/14545/ref=pd_ts_b_ldr/102-1454980-4598542&tag=pfamazon01-20

just by scanning down the list. Maybe you won't be surprised. It might be just what you expect. But it surprised me.*they even include a novel by Virginia Woolf called "The Waves" because it has waves in the title.
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
That certainly was a surprise to me!

Edit: On second thought, that didn't surprise me as I had checked only the first page. It seems that all his famous books are included in that(The book 'Classic Feynman' puts together the more famous ones). Of course, they certainly shouldn't be that far down, especially below books on crackpottery.
 
Last edited:
This is pretty interesting. Although I'm not surprised that there were that many of the 'classic' popular science books such as The Elegant Universe and the ones authored by Stephen Hawking. But then again, since when as search engines only provided relevant results?