Statistical mechanics |
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A list of notable textbooks in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, arranged by category and date.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Vol. 5 of the Course of Theoretical Physics. 3e (1976) Translated by J.B. Sykes and M.J. Kearsley (1980) Oxford : Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-7506-3372-7 [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] {{cite book}}
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Translated by J. Kestin (1956) New York: Academic Press.Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows:
The Mechanical Universe...And Beyond is a 52-part telecourse, filmed at the California Institute of Technology, that introduces university level physics, covering topics from Copernicus to quantum mechanics. The 1985-86 series was produced by Caltech and INTELECOM, a nonprofit consortium of California community colleges now known as Intelecom Learning, with financial support from Annenberg/CPB. The series, which aired on PBS affiliate stations before being distributed on LaserDisc and eventually YouTube, is known for its use of computer animation.
Wolfgang Rindler was a physicist working in the field of general relativity where he is known for introducing the term "event horizon", Rindler coordinates, and for the use of spinors in general relativity. An honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and foreign member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, he was also a prolific textbook author.
The Boltzmann Medal is a prize awarded to physicists that obtain new results concerning statistical mechanics; it is named after the celebrated physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. The Boltzmann Medal is awarded once every three years by the Commission on Statistical Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, during the STATPHYS conference.
Francis Weston Sears was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at MIT for 35 years before moving to Dartmouth College in 1956. At Dartmouth, Sears was the Appleton Professor of Physics. He is best known for co-authoring University Physics, an introductory physics textbook, with Mark Zemansky. The book, first published in 1949, is often referred to as "Sears and Zemansky", although Hugh Young became a coauthor in 1973.
Nathaniel David Mermin is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term "boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ashcroft on solid-state physics, and for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information science.
Mark Waldo Zemansky was an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at the City College of New York for decades and is best known for co-authoring University Physics, an introductory physics textbook, with Francis Sears. The book, first published in 1949, is often referred to as "Sears and Zemansky", although Hugh Young became a coauthor in 1973.
The Quantum Vacuum: An Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics is a physics textbook authored by Peter W. Milonni in 1993. The book provides a careful and thorough treatment of zero-point energy, spontaneous emission, the Casimir, van der Waals forces, Lamb shift and anomalous magnetic moment of the electron at a level of detail not found in other introductory texts to quantum electrodynamics.
Classical Electrodynamics is a textbook written by theoretical particle and nuclear physicist John David Jackson. The book originated as lecture notes that Jackson prepared for teaching graduate-level electromagnetism first at McGill University and then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Intended for graduate students, and often known as Jackson for short, it has been a standard reference on its subject since its first publication in 1962.
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information is a textbook about quantum information science written by Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang, regarded as a standard text on the subject. It is informally known as "Mike and Ike", after the candies of that name. The book assumes minimal prior experience with quantum mechanics and with computer science, aiming instead to be a self-contained introduction to the relevant features of both. The focus of the text is on theory, rather than the experimental implementations of quantum computers, which are discussed more briefly.
Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics is a textbook written by Herbert Callen that explains the basics of classical thermodynamics and discusses advanced topics in both classical and quantum frameworks. It covers the subject in an abstract and rigorous manner and contains discussions of applications. The textbook contains three parts, each building upon the previous. The first edition was published in 1960 and a second followed in 1985.
Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods is a 1993 quantum physics textbook by Israeli physicist Asher Peres. Well-regarded among the physics community, it is known for unconventional choices of topics to include.
Statistical Physics of Particles and Statistical Physics of Fields are a two-volume series of textbooks by Mehran Kardar. Each book is based on a semester-long course taught by Kardar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They cover statistical physics and thermodynamics at the graduate level.
Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally written by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, the book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by an National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. In 1999, it was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr., that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Introduction to Solid State Physics, known colloquially as Kittel, is a classic condensed matter physics textbook written by American physicist Charles Kittel in 1953. The book has been highly influential and has seen widespread adoption; Marvin L. Cohen remarked in 2019 that Kittel's content choices in the original edition played a large role in defining the field of solid-state physics. It was also the first proper textbook covering this new field of physics. The book is published by John Wiley and Sons and, as of 2018, it is in its ninth edition and has been reprinted many times as well as translated into over a dozen languages, including Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. In some later editions, the eighteenth chapter, titled Nanostructures, was written by Paul McEuen. Along with its rival Ashcroft and Mermin, the book is considered a standard textbook in condensed matter physics.
Max Born was a widely influential German physicist and mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics. Born won the prize primarily for his contributions to the statistical interpretation of the wave function, though he is known for his work in several areas of quantum mechanics as well as solid-state physics, optics, and special relativity. Born's entry in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society included thirty books and 330 papers.
Lectures on Theoretical Physics is a six-volume series of physics textbooks translated from Arnold Sommerfeld's classic German texts Vorlesungen über Theoretische Physik. The series includes the volumes Mechanics, Mechanics of Deformable Bodies, Electrodynamics, Optics, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, and Partial Differential Equations in Physics. Focusing on one subject each semester, the lectures formed a three-year cycle of courses that Sommerfeld repeatedly taught at the University of Munich for over thirty years. Sommerfeld's lectures were famous and he was held to be one of the greatest physics lecturers of his time.
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, often called Griffiths, is an introductory textbook on quantum mechanics by David J. Griffiths. The book is considered a standard undergraduate textbook in the subject. Originally published by Pearson Education in 1995 with a second edition in 2005, Cambridge University Press (CUP) reprinted the second edition in 2017. In 2018, CUP released a third edition of the book with Darrell F. Schroeter as co-author; this edition is known as Griffiths and Schroeter.
Modern Quantum Mechanics, often called Sakurai or Sakurai and Napolitano, is a standard graduate-level quantum mechanics textbook written originally by J. J. Sakurai and edited by San Fu Tuan in 1985, with later editions coauthored by Jim Napolitano. Sakurai died in 1982 before he could finish the textbook and both the first edition of the book, published in 1985 by Benjamin Cummings, and the revised edition of 1994, published by Addison-Wesley, were edited and completed by Tuan posthumously. The book was updated by Napolitano and released two later editions. The second edition was initially published by Addison-Wesley in 2010 and rereleased as an eBook by Cambridge University Press, who released a third edition in 2020.