A groundbreaking theoretical physicist traces his career, reflecting on the successes and failures, triumphs and insecurities of a life cut short by cancer. The groundbreaking theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski explained the genesis of his memoir this way: “Having only two bodies of knowledge, myself and physics, I decided to write an autobiography about my development as a theoretical physicist.” In this posthumously published account of his life and work, Polchinski (1954–2018) describes successes and failures, triumphs and insecurities, and the sheer persistence that led to his greatest discoveries. Writing engagingly and accessibly, with the wry humor for which he was known, Polchinski gives theoretical physics a very human face. Polchinski, famous for his contributions to string theory, may have changed the course of modern theoretical physics, but he was a late bloomer—doing most of his important work after the age of forty. His death from brain cancer at sixty-three cut short a career at its peak. Working on the memoir after his diagnosis, using a text-to-speech algorithm because he could no longer read words on a page, he was able to recapitulate his entire career, down to the details of problems he had worked on. For Polchinski, physics went deeper than words. This edition includes photographs from Polchinski’s professional and family life, as well as physics explainer boxes, other technical edits, and bibliographic notes by his former student Ahmad Almheiri, a foreword by Andrew Strominger, and an afterword by his wife Dorothy Chun and sons Steven and Daniel.

The name of Lev Davidovich Landau is widely known as that of one of the greatest twentieth-century physicists. A brilliant teacher to those pupils he carefully chose, notoriously controversial in his outlook and opinions, the combination of his outstanding intellect and striking personality brought him almost legendary fame. This volume contains letters, papers and recollections by friends and pupils, describing Landau's views of science, culture and life, and provides the reader with a vivid portrait of a remarkable man.

One of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that "buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist" (Science Digest). Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that “can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist” (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets—and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman’s life shines through in all its eccentric glory—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah. Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.

One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

The first few months of the universe, the MIT bag model, and grand unified theories are among the chief concerns of these essays and articles honoring MIT theoretical physicist Francis Low. The book opens with a cluster of dedicatory pieces by Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin L. Goldberger, Jeremy Bernstein, and Val L. Fitch. The remainder of the book consists of twenty technical essays by a small galaxy of distinguished scientists: Steven Weinberg; Kenneth A. Johnson; Sidney Drell; Geoffrey F. Chew; Mitchell J. Feigenbaum; Victor F. Weisskopf; Herman Feshbach; Carleton DeTar; John F. Donoghue; D. Danckaert, P. DeCausmaecker, R. Gastmans, W. Troost, and Tai Tsun Wu, writing jointly; Roman Jackiw; William I. Weisberger; Adrian Patrascioiu; Gino Segre; So-Young Î Asim Yildiz; Jogesh C. Pati, Abdus Salam, and J. Strathdee, in another collaborative contribution; and the three editors. Among the other topics are &"Why the Renormalization Group Is a Good Thing&" - the physics of asymptotic freedom - the topological bootstrap &"The Fixed Point of Classical Dynamical Evolution and Chaos&" - compound bags and hadron-hadron interactions - &"Gauge Invariance and Mass&" - Gribov ambiguities - &"The Simple Facts about the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe&" - preons and supersymmetry - some speculations on the origin of the matter, energy, and entropy of the universe - the Chew-Low theory and the quark model - &"From Gell-Mann-Low to Unification.&" The editors are all affiliated with the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT.

This invaluable collection of memoirs and reviews on scientific activities of the most prominent theoretical physicists belonging to the Landau School OCo Landau, Anselm, Gribov, Zeldovich, Kirzhnits, Migdal, Ter-Martirosyan and Larkin OCo are being published in English for the first time.The main goal is to acquaint readers with the life and work of outstanding Soviet physicists who, to a large extent, shaped theoretical physics in the 1950sOCo70s. Many intriguing details have remained unknown beyond the OC Iron CurtainOCO which was dismantled only with the fall of the USSR.