This post is a brief review of the book Don't Be Afraid of Physics by Ross Barett and Pier Paolo Delsanto. The subtitle is Quantum Mechanics, Relativity and Cosmology for Everyone . In the introduction, Nicola Maria Pugno suggests that the book is appropriate as a textbook for courses of science for college students majoring in a non-scientific field. I agree, with the perhaps obvious observation that the audience can be extended to people who have ever been to college. Ther

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, a thanks to the readers of this blog : Thanks to the readers of this blog For staying with me thus far (Some of you now probably are Enjoying turkey and eggnog) In a month this blog will complete Three years (a hundred and fifty Posts). As a milestone that's nifty I thank the readers for this feat The book reviews are read the most I enjoy writing them as well I think if I can help books sell Then it was worth writing the posts The Nobel Prize

This post is about Occam's razor, i.e. the statement, that when presented with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the one with the fewest assumptions is likely the correct one. It is often used prescriptively in its abbreviated form - "Choose the simplest explanation." Occam's razor is not a law, it is a rule of thumb. It is often useful and leads to the right answer. This post is about some major exceptions to the statement. I wrote it because I find people ofte

This is a review of the book This Amazingly Symmetrical World by L. Tarasov. Published in 1982, it is nonetheless an all-time Russian science popularization gem issued from Mir Publishers in the last century. It is very well-written and gorgeously illustrated, with arresting pictures on almost every page. The discussions are accessible, yet quite profound and revealing. Symmetry plays an incredibly fundamental role in physics. Nature seems to use symmetry as a way of imposin

A colleague from economics recently said he was interested in how physicists think, and more specifically, how they come up with research ideas. I thought it would be a good idea to try to set up a list, based on my reading and experiences, of the various techniques, voluntary or involuntary, that I have seen physicists use: Yielding to inspiration : These ideas come from the subconscious. First one has to fill the brain with a lot of information, then a lot of thinking has t

This post is a review of What is Inside a Black Hole? by Stephen Hawking. It is a 67-page reissue of two of his essays from his longer book Brief Answers to the Big Questions . Apart from the title essay, it includes the essay Is Time Travel Possible ? Inside a black hole : The essay recalls the early black hole thoughts of John Mitchell, the grand impetus provided by Einstein's general theory of relativity, the quantitative work of Karl Schwarzschild, the pioneering contri

This post is about C. N. Yang, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, who passed away last week at the age of 103. Yang received the Nobel prize in 1957 and made towering contributions to several areas in physics, as detailed below. Quick academic bio : Yang was born and educated in China until the masters level; he obtained his thesis in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago under Edward Teller (sometimes known as the father of the Hydrogen bomb).

This post is a review of The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics (859 pages) . The book came out a while ago, in 1991. Since science moves on, one might expect that the material is quite dated (the classic advice is to read the latest in science and the oldest in literature). But I think the volume, which is a collection of essays and popular writing (all reprints) on the topics mentioned above, has merits which keep it relevant and valuable even today. For

This post is about the award of the Nobel prize in physics 2025 to John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis. From the announcement ,...

In 2022, I became a minor celebrity among my friends for a week for correctly predicting that Alain Aspect would win the physics Nobel...

It has been said that the death and taxes are the two inevitable facts of life. To this list I am inclined to add reviews. It seems no...

This post is about the recently reported experimental confirmation of a theoretical prediction of Stephen Hawking about black holes....

The Nobel prize for physics will be announced on Tuesday October 7, 2025. As a warm up exercise in preparing for this event, I will...

This is a review of David Nasaw 's biography of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist. At 880...

Millionaires (this includes billionaires) who dropped out of high school or college are often invited to universities to speak to...

The last stop this summer was Lancaster, UK, for a conference (see if you can find me in the photo) on low temperature physics, which...

This post is a review of the book The Woman Who Ran AIIMS . AIIMS is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences located in Delhi. It is...

This post is about two recent visits I made to academic campuses in places somewhat exotic. Malta Malta is an archipelago of five...

This is a review of the The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo . It is the biography of Paul Dirac, one of the pioneers of quantum physics, the youngest ever theoretical physicist to win the Nobel prize (at 31 years of age), and according to Stephen Hawking, the greatest English physicist since Newton (I would place Maxwell and Faraday as close competitors for the accolade). The book is deeply researched and well written and has won several prizes, including the L.A. Times Book

An intellectual, said Aldous Huxley, is someone who has found something more interesting than sex. I would like to revise that opinion: I...