4 ms·

This is awesome! I watched multiple videos by Sabine. She stays on popular level there, pretty much like the journalists she mentions. I am interested in physi

This is awesome! I watched multiple videos by Sabine. She stays on popular level there, pretty much like the journalists she mentions. I am interested in physics. I am one of those middle aged men. Not that I aspire to suddenly come up with a theory of everything that people who dedicated their life to it could not think of. I am just curious. I have a solid applied mathematical background with all the usual basics like linear algebra, real and complex calculus, functional analysis, information theory, probability, statistics, ODEs and PDEs, but I quickly realized that I would need to fill multiple gaps in my math before understanding modern physics: quarternions, tensors, Lie groups and algebras, differential geometry etc. so I am slowly working through this. My problem is: it is pretty hard for me to find a good set of books/textbooks that fill the specific gaps in my math knowledge. I even started to work on DAG of areas and associated textbooks myself but any pointers would be appreciated.

mathgenius 5y ago
You already should be able to get the basics of quantum physics. Have you tried starting there? (Feynman Vol III is a good place to start.) Or are you more interested in general (or special) relativity? Definitely check out John Baez's TWF's [1]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04168 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04168
mrjangles 5y ago
I can tell immediately that you have never actually picked up a physics textbook. The main reason is that most physicists only have the most elementary understanding of the mathematics underlying what they are doing. This is for historical reasons because usually the physics came first, then the mathematicians came and cleaned everything up. The result is that every physics textbook teaches you exactly what you need to know and not a thing more. Most physicists wouldn't understand group theory or lie groups any better than an undergrad having done the first 3 weeks of an algebra course. I'm telling you this because by listening to too much popular physics rather than actually reading a physics textbook you are going well on your way to becoming one of these people from the article. Anyway, Gerard 't Hooft made a great little website to help people in your situation. https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html
- schoen 5y ago
  That's cool! The web site itself notes that it is officially moving to https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index.... and that the old address may become unavailable in the future (so it seems worth documenting the new address here).

mathgenius 5y ago

You already should be able to get the basics of quantum physics. Have you tried starting there? (Feynman Vol III is a good place to start.) Or are you more interested in general (or special) relativity? Definitely check out John Baez's TWF's [1]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04168 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.04168

mrjangles 5y ago

I can tell immediately that you have never actually picked up a physics textbook. The main reason is that most physicists only have the most elementary understanding of the mathematics underlying what they are doing. This is for historical reasons because usually the physics came first, then the mathematicians came and cleaned everything up. The result is that every physics textbook teaches you exactly what you need to know and not a thing more. Most physicists wouldn't understand group theory or lie groups any better than an undergrad having done the first 3 weeks of an algebra course. I'm telling you this because by listening to too much popular physics rather than actually reading a physics textbook you are going well on your way to becoming one of these people from the article. Anyway, Gerard 't Hooft made a great little website to help people in your situation. https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html

schoen 5y ago
That's cool! The web site itself notes that it is officially moving to https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index.... and that the old address may become unavailable in the future (so it seems worth documenting the new address here).