• Question: * Star Question * What are your favourite books that expose the scientific world and you would recommend reading to someone who is deciding on proceeding with physics in life? - Inessa R, Live Chat

    Asked by on 17 Jun 2020. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Anne Green

      Anne Green answered on 17 Jun 2020: last edited 18 Jun 2020 6:11 pm

      If you’re interested in Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity I’d highly recommend ‘The Elegant Universe’ by Brian Greene. It’s a good introduction to both those areas, and also describes what it’s like to be a theoretical physicist on a day-to-day basis.
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      Similarly, Katie Freese’s book ‘The cosmic cocktail: three parts dark matter’ describes the search for dark matter from her personal perspective. (She was involved in some of the ground-breaking work on ideas for detecting dark matter particles.)

    • Photo: Yueng Lenn

      Yueng Lenn answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      Thats a great question. My favorite reading genres are generally in fiction, both mysteries and science fiction. Interestingly, I like the crime novels for their problem solving and the uncovering of mysteries which is what we do in life as scientists, and the science fiction for the interesting philosophical questions it can raise about future technologies, religions and humanity. But if as far as physics-specific non fiction goes, I really enjoyed the biography of Richard Feynman titled ‘Genius’. That gives an interesting look at a flawed, multi-talented human being and very clever scientist who was involved in some serious world changing events (e.g. development of the atomic bombs). So that’s a really interesting book because it both describes the scientific fascination and achievement in the development of these weapons and the deeply-felt horror for the scientists involved of the how devastating these weapons turned out to be.

    • Photo: Adam Baskerville

      Adam Baskerville answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      Excellent question! It would depend on the age of the person, but there are a few “popular” science books I have read that come to mind. 1) “Beautiful Invisible” – Giovanni Vignale 2) “Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman” – Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman 3) “Plastic Fantastic” – Eugenie Reich 4) “Cosmos” – Carl Sagan 5) “The Black Hole War” – Leonard Susskind. I will not write a description of each book as you can find reviews of them all online, but these all stuck with me as having an influence on my own scientific career when I was younger.

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      This might be an odd answer but I’ve really enjoyed the Bill Bryson books – he’s done a few science ones and they are super accessible and really funny!

    • Photo: Jordan McElwee

      Jordan McElwee answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      Great question! There are lots of physics books out there that I would recommend reading – but it depends on what you’re interested in. I’d recommend ‘Cosmos’ by Carl Sagan, it’s a great interplay between the development of science and civilisation. Also ‘A Brief History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking is worth a read.

      If you’re interested in dark matter, Katie Freese wrote a book called ‘The Cosmic Cocktail’ which is rather interesting. For neutrinos, ‘The Neutrino Hunters’ by Ray Jayawardhana or ‘Neutrino’ by Frank Close. For the Higgs Boson, ‘The Particle and the End of the Universe’ by Sean Carroll is really good!

      There are lots really, I’ve pointed out particle physics ones (I’m biased haha), but you should just grab what catches your attention 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Laughton

      Mark Laughton answered on 17 Jun 2020:

      One of my favourite physics books is ‘How to Teach Quantum Physics to your Dog’ by Chad Orzel. It gives a more simplified version of quantum physics to help explain its theories better. Both funny and intelligent, well worth a read.
      If you go on to study physics, the book I found most useful for maths, especially for vector calculus, is ‘Div, Grad, Curl and all that’, by H. M. Schey. I found it easier to read and understand than my lecturer explained it.

    • Photo: Sarah Appleby

      Sarah Appleby answered on 17 Jun 2020: last edited 17 Jun 2020 4:33 pm

      Loads of great reading suggestions here 🙂 As a teenager I enjoyed John Gribbin’s books, especially The Universe: A Biography. PhysicsWorld also put together a great list of reading recommendations:

      The physicists’ library

    • Photo: Susan Cartwright

      Susan Cartwright answered on 18 Jun 2020:

      That’s quite a difficult question for me, because I read voracioualy and in all kinds of subjects, so my favourites tend to change from month to month. For physics, I would recommend the books of Frank Close and Brian Greene, also “Warped passages” by Lisa Randall (on extra dimensions). Not many of these really “expose the scientific world”, though. I also really like “The Alchemy of the Heavens” by Ken Croswell, which tells the story of how we developed our understanding of stars and the Galaxy. It’s getting rather old now, but as most of it is historical that doesn’t matter.

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