Quick viewing(Text Mode)

Bookshelf

Bookshelf

monitor

Bookshelf

depth and clarity. The excellent , annotated by Abner Feynman Lectures on Gravitation, foreword by J. Preskill and K. Thorne Shimony) and Volume IV, (Part I - R.P. Feynman etal, Edited by places the book in the context of Physical Chemistry, annotated by B. Hatfield, Addison Wesley, gravity research in the 60s, and gives Nandor Balazs, and Part II Solid ISBN 0 201 62734 5,1995, 232pp. more details about Feynman's State Physics, annotated by Walter positions on many issues. There is Kohn). also a brief update of subsequent In preparation for Part B are This edited version of the first half of work by B. Hatfield. Volume VII on Historical and Feynman lectures on gravitation at Biographical Reflections and Caltech in the early sixties, Luis Alvarez-Gaume Syntheses, and Volume VIII on previously only available as Socio-Political Reflections and Civil photocopies at the Caltech Defense. bookstore, is a welcome addition to The Collected Works of Eugene Paul the existing book on Einstein's Wigner General Relativity. The point of view taken is that of a theorist who Books received tries to derive Einstein's theory by When Eugene Paul Wigner died on studying the properties and 1 January 1995, he left a fund of interactions of spin-two particles. papers and correspondence. But it Quantum Fields on a Lattice, by It also presents the geometrical had already become clear that the Istvan Montvay and Gemot Munster, approach to the theory. There are astounding breadth and impact of his Cambridge Monographs on beautiful discussions of many topics 's work merited a serious compila­ , paperback including the Equivalence Principle, tion. This was undertaken by a team version, ISBN 0 521 599172, the post-newtonian predictions, the of dedicated specialists and the £35/$44.95 Schwarzschild singularity, outcome published by Springer. wormholes, superstars, cosmology The master plan divided the material and the generation of gravitational into Part A, five volumes of scientific This useful book ('a must for every radiation. Although more than thirty papers edited by , student taking up the subject') was years have elapsed since these and Part B, three volumes of histori­ reviewed by U. Wolff in the CERN lectures were first delivered, and cal, philosophical, and socio-political Courier (September 1994, page 36) some of the topics are outdated, or papers, edited by . when it originally appeared in we have now better formulations, it is Already published in Part A are hardback. refreshing to read how Feynman's Volume I (Part I - Eugene Paul deep physical intuition goes from an Wigner,,A Biographical Sketch; elementary discussion of the Part II, Applied 1926- conceptual foundations of the theory 35; and Part III, The Mathematical to topical subjects of the time, and Papers); Volume II on Nuclear occasionally he is far ahead of his Physics and Volume V on Nuclear time, as in a preferred critical density Energy (Part I - Eugene Wigner and in cosmology (omega equal one) Nuclear Energy, Part II - Memoir of which would almost twenty years the Project; Part III - Arti­ later become one of the basic cles, Reports and Memoranda on predictions of inflationary theory Nuclear Energy; and Part IV - The (although this prediction is currently Wigner Patents). Already published being revised). in Part B is Volume VI - Philosophical All those who have grown up in Reflections and Syntheses. physics learning a good fraction of Now published in Part A are Vol­ the subject in Feynman's books will ume III (Part I - Particles and Fields, be delighted to read another where annotated by Arthur Wightman, and again he is a master of exposition Part II - Foundations of Quantum

22 CERN Courier, May 1997