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Education and outreach

The physicists’ library

11 Oct 2018 Tushna Commissariat
Taken from the October 2018 issue of Physics World, which celebrates 30 years of the world’s best physics magazine. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app.

To compile the ultimate science reading list, Tushna Commissariat talks to some of today’s top physicists, writers and broadcasters

Physics books

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.”

Astronomer, science communicator and author Carl Sagan always had a way with words, and it’s no surprise that he sums up so well the magic of books and writing. From the very first issue of Physics World, this magazine has featured a vibrant reviews section, in which we look at some of the most interesting physics literature being published.

That first edition saw a particle-physics “primer”, published by Los Alamos, and reviewed for us by the renowned theorist John Bell, just two years before he died. Indeed, the reviews section of Physics World has featured its fair share of physics celebrity – I was ecstatic to discover that in 1990 the Isaac Asimov penned a delightful review of Malcolm E Lines’ Think of a Number. Over the last three decades, the popular-science book market has exploded and, during that time, our reviews each month have focused mainly on such writing, as compared to the textbooks and primers we took to task in our early years. The section these days has also expanded to include reviews of films, plays and more.

Every so often, though, I am asked for recommendations – to pick my desert-island book; to name my suggested “must-read”; or to reveal the book that got me into physics. I am always torn. How do I choose between Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as the book that influenced me most when I was younger? Would I rather be washed up on an island with only a copy of Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality or Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe to keep me company? Is Longitude by Dava Sobel a more compelling historical read, or would I rather recommend The Radium Girls by Kate Moore? From Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed by Jim Al-Khalili to Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J Griffiths, from 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks to Goldilocks and the Water Bears by Louisa Preston – these are but a few of my favourite reads.

I decided to settle the matter once and for all by asking 15 of today’s top physicists and authors the following three questions, in the hope of putting together the definitive Physics World reading list:

  • What popular-science book, published in the last 30 years, have you most enjoyed reading and why?
  • What one book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in physics. This could be a textbook, a reference book or popular title.
  • What book are you reading now that you’re most enjoying?

While there are some usual suspects (Richard Feynman is still a firm favourite), there are plenty of unexpected, but very well-deserved, choices – not to mention a few books that I had never come across before. Take a look below at why these much-loved tomes on science were picked out. And why not start making your own list?


Martin Rees

Author, cosmologist, Astronomer Royal

Favourite pop-sci book

I had a disgracefully narrow education, so most of what little I know about biology – from molecular genetics to ecology – comes from popular writings. It’s hard to single out one author but if I had to it would probably be Tim Birkhead. We can surely be grateful that so many biologists have helped to fill the knowledge deficit that I suspect many physicists share.

Must read for physicists

This is maybe a hackneyed choice, but I’d pick The Feynman Lectures on Physics. These were famously unsuccessful as straight textbooks, even for bright Caltech students. But they are insightful, inspirational and repay browsing even by those who think they’re experts.

Current read

I’ve just discovered the brilliant essays of Jim Holt. He trained as a philosopher, and writes for the New Yorker and elsewhere. I’m reading his new book When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought, which offers lucid and entertaining accounts of deep problems in physics, maths and philosophy. And then I’ll read his earlier book Why Does the World Exist?, even though I doubt he has the answer.


Carlo Rovelli

Theoretical physicist, author

Favourite pop-sci book

Other Minds: the Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith, because I loved the idea of an alien form of consciousness so close to us. There is still so much to understand about the constellation of problems called “consciousness” and any hint is interesting.

Must read for physicists

This is easy: The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Still unbeaten in freshness, depth and insight.

Current read

A text by Nagarjuna, the ancient Indian philosopher – the Sanskrit title is Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, which loosely translates to Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. In spite of the great cultural distance, I feel there is something useful for us to learn in this book. It may perhaps even be useful to emerge from some of the current confusion in theoretical physics.


Jim Al-Khalili

Theoretical physicist, author, broadcaster

Favourite pop-sci book

Roger Penrose’s Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics was a book that inspired me. I was in the last year of my PhD and looking for anything to read that would distract me from writing my thesis. The central idea in the book was the non-computability of the brain and consciousness – Penrose therefore argued that computers could never replicate consciousness. While I didn’t, and still don’t, agree with him on this, the book itself was a treasure trove of insights into everything from cosmology and black holes, to quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and the Turing test.

Must read for physicists

This is a tough one – there are many books that are vital for a physicist, but of course it depends on what level you are at. If I had to pick one I would cheat and pick a three-volume set. In fact, any physicist reading this will already probably have guessed I am referring to the classic The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Current read

What is Real: the Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker. I’m a sucker for books on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and this one is particularly good. The book is very clear and thought-provoking, and contains some well-researched stories about the struggle of the early pioneers to understand quantum mechanics, such as the famous Bohr–Einstein debates of the late 1920s.


Jennifer Ouellette

Science blogger, author, senior reporter at Ars Technica

Favourite pop-sci book

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin. Part novel and part history of science, the book intertwines the stories of two seemingly very different men – Kurt Gödel, with his “incompleteness theorems”, and Alan Turing, with his work on code-breaking and AI. The book explores the sometimes tragic nature of genius, and how their ideas defined their era.

Must read for physicists

Alice in Quantumland: an Allegory of Quantum Physics and Scrooge’s Cryptic Carol: Visions of Energy, Time, and Quantum Nature, both by Robert Gilmore. These were among the first popular-physics books I ever read, and as someone who started out in the humanities, I loved the charming reworking of two classics of children’s literature. The first introduces the general reader to the basic principles of quantum mechanics via Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The second riffs on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, wherein Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of science past, present and future.

Current read

How Behaviour Spreads: the Science of Complex Contagions by Damon Centola. Forget The Tipping Point – this is the book you should read to understand how sweeping social changes occur. Centola applies the lessons learned in epidemiology, on how viral epidemics spread, to understanding how social networks can broadly alter human behaviour, and includes some pointers for how we might harness these insights to produce positive change.


Peter Woit

Theoretical physicist and mathematician, blogger, author

Favourite pop-sci book

The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics by Charles C Mann and Robert P Crease. This is the best history of modern particle physics ever written.

Must read for physicists

Any good quantum mechanics textbook. I first learned a lot from Quantum Mechanics by Albert Messiah, and Lectures on Quantum Mechanics by Gordon Baym. More modern ones are Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Ramamurti Shankar and the Quantum Mechanics volumes by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu and Frank Laloe. For the more mathematically inclined readers, I also wrote a text myself – Quantum Theory, Groups and Representations: an Introduction.

Current read

I just finished the very amusing thriller La Septième Fonction du Langage by Laurent Binet. I have also just ordered two promising-looking books about physics: Philip Ball’s Beyond Weird, and Enjoy Our Universe: You Have No Other Choice by Alvaro De Rújula.


Philip Ball

Science writer, editor, author

Favourite pop-sci book

Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. I read this first as a judge for the Royal Society Aventis Science Book Prize (which it won), and found it not only fascinating and beautifully written but also positively exciting. Holmes is not a science writer, but primarily a biographer with a deep knowledge of the Romantic poets. Perhaps that’s why his descriptions of the interactions between poets, writers and scientists in the Romantic era of the early 19th century, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Humphry Davy, feels so fresh and spirited. But the book is more than a history: it argues a passionate and important case for seeing science as a central strand of human culture, interwoven with others, and not some kind of isolated fortress of dry rationalism.

Must read for physicists

Carlo Rovelli has emerged as physics’ current poet laureate, and for good reason: he has a light, humble touch, an elegant style, and a genuine regard for and understanding of art and philosophy. His Seven Brief Lessons on Physics can be enjoyed by anyone; but I’d wholeheartedly recommend also his more recent The Order of Time.

Current read

In science, The Immortalists by David Friedman is a great account of the crazy collaboration between tissue-culture pioneer Alexis Carrel and aviator (and Nazi sympathizer) Charles Lindbergh. I’ve also finally got around to reading David Mitchell’s early novel number9dream, which is as fun and wildly inventive as all Mitchell’s books. It’s not an essential criterion in a writer, but knowing that he is a lovely chap adds to the pleasure.


Chad Orzel

Physicist, blogger, author

Favourite pop-sci book

One of the most enjoyable pop-sci reads, for me, was Amanda Gefter’s Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn, which is nominally about understanding the physics of everything, but mostly about the decades-long fascination the author and her father had with the work of John Archibald Wheeler. I wouldn’t say it’s the best book on physics – Wheeler was a complicated figure, and to my mind a lot of his ideas don’t really hold up – but there’s an infectious enthusiasm to the writing that made this a really fun book to read.

Must read for physicists

The defining characteristic of physicists, to me, is less about the factual content of our areas of study than about a mindset, a sort of reductionist approach that tries to break the world down into the smallest possible number of fundamental principles, and use them to explain as much as possible. In terms of capturing that mindset, there’s not much better than Richard Muller’s Physics for Future Presidents, which takes a very physicist-y approach to a lot of policy questions. He caught some flak for his political views a few years back, so this is not without controversy, but the book is a great demonstration of the physics mindset in action.

Current read

I’ve recently finished writing my own next book, so most of my recent reading has been relatively light fiction, to give myself a bit of a break. I did start reading Totally Random by Tanya and Jeffrey Bub, though, which is a non-fiction comic about quantum physics. I haven’t got very far, yet, but the different medium makes this a refreshing approach to the subject.


Sabine Hossenfelder

Theoretical physicist, blogger, author

Favourite pop-sci book

I greatly enjoyed reading Jim Baggott’s Origins. It’s not only well written, it really covers a lot of material from different disciplines.

Must read for physicists

Steven Weinberg’s Dreams of a Final Theory. The book is essential to understand what has and still drives research in the foundations of physics.

Current read

I just finished reading Cornelia Dean’s Making Sense of Science and I have found it to be both engagingly written and informative.


Dan Falk

Journalist, author, broadcaster, co-host of the BookLab podcast

Favourite pop-sci book

The last 30 years have brought a flood of popular-science books, many of them very good. In the case of physics, the floodgates were opened with the publication of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time in 1988. But the popular-science book that I found most engrossing wasn’t on physics at all; rather, it was Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, about the long-term decline of violence across human cultures. Pinker is a brilliant, clear, and persuasive writer, and every page of this book is simply crammed with fascinating information that forces the reader to rethink deeply-entrenched assumptions. But allow me to nominate a runner-up: Timothy Ferris’s Coming of Age in the Milky Way is a masterpiece. It’s the story of how we’ve come to know what we know about the structure of the cosmos, and even 30 years after publication, it’s a rewarding read.

Must read for physicists

People often ask me if there’s one popular-physics book that they ought to read, and for years, I had no one answer. I love the books that Brian Greene and Roger Penrose have written, but they’re too technical for me to recommend them to a beginner. Even Hawking can be a tough slog for the uninitiated. But thanks to Carlo Rovelli, I think I know where to point them. His book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is a wonderful introduction not just to physics but to the question of why we do physics – and it almost fits in your pocket.

Current read

I recently read Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math. For more than a decade now, we’ve been inundated with books touting the merits of string theory and the multiverse. Hossenfelder is asking for a reality check. Her book, with its mix of science and humour, comes as a breath of fresh air. It’s a frank assessment of where modern physics – and especially some of its bolder claims – stands today.


Amanda Gefter

Author, co-host of the BookLab podcast

Favourite pop-sci book

All the pillars of modern physics – relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics – meet in paradox at the edge of a black hole. The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind takes you right to the horizon. Susskind’s book recounts his decades-long battle with Stephen Hawking over the fate of information that falls into a black hole. It’s both a primer on black-hole physics and a gateway into the battles defining fundamental physics today – like the firewall paradox and the intriguing links between space–time and computational complexity – where Susskind is still leading the charge.

Must read for physicists

“The relationship between scientists and their ideas is intense, emotional, obsessive, demanding,” writes physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain in Only the Longest Threads. “Ideas are not commodities, they are living things.” Her book brings those ideas to life through a fictional reconstruction of the great discoveries of physics. It’s fantastically inventive and gorgeously written. It serves as an important reminder that physics is a very human ordeal, and that science books can be works of literature, too.

Current read

I’m currently reading Through Two Doors at Once by Anil Ananthaswamy, a history and exploration of the infamous double-slit experiment. By focusing on this one maddening experiment, Ananthaswamy is able to delve deep into the meaning of quantum mechanics, and even to touch on some exciting new ideas – QBism, for example – that haven’t gotten their due in many popular science books yet.


Anil Ananthaswamy

Journalist, author of The Edge of Physics, which was Physics World Book of the Year in 2010

Favourite pop-sci book

There are a few, but the one that comes to mind immediately is Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer. At 550+ pages, it’s a formidable book. It’s hard to imagine a book on cancer being a page-turner, but Mukherjee manages to make it into one, combining medicine, science and human-interest stories into a compelling narrative.

Must read for physicists

It’d have to be Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes: a Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. It’s a masterclass in how to write about physics for the intelligent lay reader. The Guardian’s Tim Radford said in his manifesto for the simple scribe: “The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader’s intelligence.” Weinberg walks this fine line beautifully. Plus, I think it has one of the best lines I have ever read in a popular-science book: “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

Current read

I’m currently really enjoying Gerald Edelman’s Wider Than the Sky: the Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness.

 

Physics books

Angela Saini

Journalist, engineer, author of Inferior, which was Physics World Book of the Year in 2017

Favourite pop-sci book

Mother Nature by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is a brilliant, rigorous, tender exploration of motherhood and its role in human evolution. I firmly believe that the mother–child relationship will turn out to be crucial in understanding the development of human intellectual and emotional capacity, and Hrdy’s work explains why.

Must read for physicists

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs by Lisa Randall. I had the pleasure of meeting her earlier this year, and seeing her speak, and she was incredible. Witty, accessible and at the cutting edge of physics, her books put complex concepts within reach for those of us who can find theoretical physics impenetrable.

Current read

I recently read Built: the Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures by engineer Roma Agrawal, and have recommended it to so many people. I studied engineering and I feel there should be more books like this one, explaining how the built environment around us works and what a feat it is.


Philip Moriarty

Physicist, science communicator, author

Favourite pop-sci book

The agony of choice! There are so many pop-sci books I’ve enjoyed that I’m going to have to cheat just a little and choose an author instead. Philip Ball has consistently written engaging and entertaining science books that combine deep analysis with punchy prose. He manages to pull off the difficult trick of clearly explaining complex science concepts while never dumbing down or patronizing the reader. If I were forced to choose just one book of Ball’s to bring with me to a desert island, it’d be The Music Instinct, a comprehensive overview of “how music works and why we can’t do without it” (although if I could smuggle another one along I’d take Curiosity: How Science Became Interested In Everything.)

Must read for physicists

I’ve just finished reading Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost In Math. This is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in physics and should be on the shelves of every physicist. Hossenfelder highlights some of the key issues with the state of the art in 21st-century theoretical physics and dissects the pathological reliance of some on mathematical beauty as the foremost guiding principle in science. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool experimentalist so this book resonated strongly with me. Beauty is, after all, always in the eye of the beholder.

Current read

Cordelia Fine’s Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of our Gendered Minds. I’m a big fan of Angela Saini’s Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story (the thoroughly deserved winner of Physics World’s Book of the Year 2017) and Fine’s book explores similar themes in a page-turning blend of well-honed snark and science. She lays bare the type of teeth-grindingly over-simplistic “scientific” thinking that plagues so much of the discussion of gender differences.


George Musser

Contributing editor for Scientific American magazine, author

Favourite pop-sci book

What an unfair question! The greatest books are, by their very nature, incomparable; I can’t say I enjoyed one the most. Forced to choose, I’ll go with Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. Even now, it strikes me as the most plausible physicalist account of the mind. Dennett’s argument is rich with insights that provoke you to think regardless of whether you share his conclusion.

Must read for physicists

Anyone with any interest in quantum mechanics and its chequered history has got to read Louisa Gilder’s The Age of Entanglement. She reconstructs the dialogue of its founders, based on their actual words from letters and papers, spoken in imagined but entirely plausible contexts. No other book shows them so vividly as human beings.

Current read

I’m wrapping up Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control and don’t know what to be more amazed by: the author’s mastery of the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapons accidents, or the fact that we humans got out of Cold War alive. I knew we came close a few times, but not that many times.


Frank Close

Particle physicist, author

Favourite pop-sci book

This is not easy. My reply would be James Watson’s The Double Helix, but that I fear was published over 30 years ago. I cite it because (unlike most books) it shows the reality of scientific research, including the personal conflicts and emotional challenges. Within the last 30 years, it would be Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. When I read its first few pages, I thought there is no point in my writing a popular book on physics ever again, as he has said it all perfectly. Reading his opening description, of atoms existing for billions of years and coming together for about a century in a form that thinks it is you, was one of those singular moments when one is hit by a thought that is so obvious, and yet has never been said so sharply before.

Must read for physicists

Preferably some of mine! A more serious answer to this would be Richard Feynman’s QED: the Strange Story of Light and Matter. The book is beautifully written, with Feynman at his pedagogic best. You’re left with a feeling of understanding, and also of the author’s profound knowledge of the universe and recognition of the beauty in the working of the natural world.

Current read

The manuscript of my next book Trinity (about Klaus Fuchs, Rudi Peierls and MI5). It is taking so much time to check everything and chase all the files at Kew, FBI, KGB and Stasi, that I only have time for pulp fiction – though Robert Harris’ An Officer and a Spy is the one I should cite. My most recent “serious” reading is Freeman Dyson’s Maker of Patterns: an Autobiography Through Letters.

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