The Six Core Theories of Modern Physics

I have enjoyed reading this book, and it has helped refresh my memory and fill in some gaps in my physics knowledge. This book can be useful for beginning physics graduate students studying for qualifying exams, or for older physicists (like myself) who want to brush up on some topics. I haven't yet read the whole book, but the parts I've read are clearly written and have concise summaries of these fundamental theories, with derivations that are detailed enough for someone with a physics training to follow easily. This isn't a perfect book, but I admire the goal of trying to write a concise derivation of key results in modern physics, and it does well in several places. I have found several typos and minor errors, which are recorded for the benefit of others at http://w3.pppl.gov/~hammett/talks/2001/coretheories-errata.pdf

I am self-studying QFT and have bought several of the standard textbooks -- they are all tough going.Stevens's book helped me greatly in understanding the path-integral approach: the section on functional calculus was very well presented, then applied in the two chapters on quantum mechanics (QM) and quantum field theory (QFT). I especially liked the connection made with classical probability theory, something I haven't seen in my QFT books.You will not learn QM from this book. In fact, with a QM-101 background, you may find the QM chapter hard to follow. However, if you have started to learn QFT, it should add value.The other chapters were of less interest to me personally, but I thought they nicely reviewed their topics from a fresh viewpoint, in particular special relativity and thermodynamics.

This is a concise and elegant summary of the fundamentals of the six core theories of physics. It even includes a convenient math review. Although the author might have the "beginning graduate student" in mind, now at the end of my Ph.D. training in applied physics at Harvard, I still had a great time reading it!.