Theoretical Physics, In Your Own Time

Indeed, I should elaborate on the differences between the books. I'm quite keen to expand the post based on the comments relayed here. It's all very useful critique!

I also agree that those two lists are excellent - thank you for bringing them to my attention.

One important aspect I have neglected is Statistical Mechanics. I'm not familiar with that area, being more of an applied maths guy.

John Baez rocks. In general. All of his stuff is great and his writing style will cheer you up when you feel like you need to go back to freshman calculus.

I read some of his pieces on Lie algebras and A-D-E classifications. Very helpful.

I personally found that after a solid grounding in tensor analysis, GR become far more accessible. The problem that many GR authors face is that they have to teach tensors simultaneously with spacetime principles. Quite tricky for a student to grasp on the first go.

Carroll's book looks interesting. I'll add it to the Amazon wishlist!

Thanks for the kind words - although many people have commented that I've missed out some discussion on Statistical Physics. That is the first thing to correct.

As it happens, Physics is not my main discipline. I did Maths, then Aero (CFD). I did get by with enough Cosmology/Quantum Mechanics at undergrad to be able to pick up some advanced undergrad/grad level texts however.

I can certainly agree that some of the more obscure aspects of compressible flow solvers would have been very difficult to grasp, if I hadn't been able to question my supervisor on the topic.

I visited the MadEvent/MadGraph wiki. I can see it is related to particle physics and symmetry models, but what does it do, out of interest?

There was a gigantic list on Geocities compiled by Alexandre Stefanov of free math books. Maybe you can find it.

Otherwise a lot of this stuff is torrentable. Also check international editions.

I agree - some of the textbooks on there are extortionately priced.

I did put some free resources at the bottom of the article, although admittedly I could have added more. If you look at the link in the first comment there are some great lectures in there.

Leonard Susskind's Stanford Modern Physics lectures are fantastic. If you search on YouTube for Stanford/Susskind/General Relativity etc, you should be able to dig them out.

Two things.

One is that these books are not computing hardware. If you buy them used and take care of them they won't depreciate quickly. Just sell them a couple years later. If you find you need them again several years after that, Abe Books/Amazon will find them for you again.

The other is: Theoretical physics is hard, evil hard for most people. Don't handicap yourself with crappy tools. The difference between a lousy book [1] and a great book may be hundreds of hours, it may be frustration with the material that makes you want to cry, or it may be the difference between learning the material and hitting an impenetrable wall.

I should also warn you that I and my colleagues in physics routinely found that we had to sample a dozen highly-rated books in a given subfield before we found the one that gave us the insight into our particular problems. I picked up that many books on semiconductor optics - and my better-read colleagues tried many, many more papers than that - before finding Coldren and Corzine, which is a revelatory text. (And, for all I know, out of print now. The hell of becoming a world expert in something is that you wind up being part of a global audience that would fit in one or two buses.)

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[1] For you, at a particular time in your career, for a particular set of things you are trying to learn. Every book is is lousy to someone. The fact that there is no one-size-fits-all standard for books is just another reason why your physics education is going to require a bit of trial and error, fueled by a bit of cash.

I've been meaning to post my reading list for, maybe, 2 years now? I've never gotten it to a state where I'd consider it too helpful. Along with the list should come some comments on the books recommended: when to read them, how to use them, strengths/weaknesses i.e. rationale. It is silly to expect that someone will just go buy all the books you say and read them.

Basically I haven't posted mine so that the top-voted comment on my submission to HN doesn't read like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889946 ;-) (which I upvoted and entirely agree with, by the way).

It's an amazing goal and you should definitely give it a try. My advice is start at the beginning and see how you get on. After a while you'll probably be further along than you realise.

Also, it depends on how much you really want to understand. If you want to be at the level of taking exam papers in all the material, then you would need to study a lot. If you just want a broad (but mathematical) introduction to the topics, you can go much faster.

To make things ultra-exciting, you can try and generate computer experiments around the material you're reading. Build a differential equation solver, use some Python libraries to visualise a pendulum swing, etc. It really makes it come alive and gives you a far better understanding of what is really happening.

I strongly advise against trying to learn physics from this book. Trust me, while the idea looks magnificent in theory, it's a horrible book to try and learn from for someone who doesn't have the mathematical and physical background. It just isn't possible, and yes, even if you're very, very smart and talented. Despite the fact that theoretically it's self-contained, you really need an equivalent of a PhD in math or mathematical physics to approach this book; but if you do have that background, there are better specialized textbooks.

The whole thing is basically a massive exercise in vanity. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually were the most unread book published recently, in relative terms (that is, the most percent of people who bought it didn't end up reading any substantial part of it).

Nope, no voting ring - I'm pretty surprised it hit the front page to be honest. In fact, I was debating whether to post it at all as it is obviously not startup/tech related. Then again, I'd seen a few other physics related posts pop up so I thought it might have some appeal.

Given that you're a physics PhD, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how the post could be improved. I'm keen to expand it and "fill in the gaps" that others have suggested.

please explain your sentiment (speaking as a cs undergrad who failed physics once but is still interested learning)