Faculty Books
Faculty in quantum who had written books published recently were contacted and asked to say something about why they wrote their book or what they hoped to accomplish with the book. In this section, see these author statements and information about their books along with quotes from reviews.
From Douglas Stone:
“Despite the enormous amount of popular writing about Einstein’s science and life I was surprised, even astonished, to realize that there had never been a single such work focusing on his research on modern atomic theory (“the quantum”). The great historian of science, TS Kuhn, had deemed Einstein the true founder of quantum theory, for reasons I explain in this book. Yet Einstein was famously opposed to the final form of quantum mechanics, which seemed to him to renounce to some degree the claim of physics to objectivity and absolute truth. For this reason, both within and outside of physics, the breadth and depth of his contributions are underappreciated. As a full-time physics researcher who had studied history and philosophy of science, I had searched for years for a topic which would deeply engage the public and other scientists and also provide me the fun of creating a pedagogical and humorous narrative. This was it.” (Stone, AD, 2021).
From Book Reviews:
“Lucidly written, and thoroughly engaging. This groundbreaking work is one of the most important works on the history of science to emerge in quite some time” … (Anonymous, 2015).
“I rarely single out a book for praise. But when you find yourself poring through a book’s end notes and re-reading pages after finishing it like I did with this particular book, you want to let others know about it. “ … “If you’re searching for a different take on physics, this one’s for you. Stone doesn’t just inject fresh ideas and perspective – he has the data to back them up: private letters, writings, and unpublished research unfamiliar to most of us. They’re no complex equations in this book. Just really good storytelling, which I’m hoping reads even better on my second pass.” (Flatow, 2013).
“I discovered that there was this big misunderstanding among both the general public and physicists about Einstein's role. It turns out when you strip away all of the sort of distraction of his brilliant work in relativity … then you see, wow, he’s actually the father of quantum, too!”
- A. Douglas Stone, Carl A. Morse Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics (Stone and Shankar, n.d.)
Steven Girvin and Kun Yang. 2019. Modern Condensed Matter Physics. Cambridge University Press.
From Steven Girvin:
“The field of condensed matter physics studies the quantum and classical behavior of large collections of atoms and electrons in, for example, superconductors and magnets. It is a large and vibrant field of physics with many new experimental and theoretical discoveries (that have now made the field closely connected with AMO (atomic, molecular and optical) physics and with the new field of quantum information science. This rapid pace of development has caused existing textbooks to be badly out of date and we wrote Modern Condensed Matter Physics as a way for both beginning graduate students and experienced researchers to learn both the basics and these new developments at the frontiers of the field.” (Girvin, 2021).
Ramamurti Shankar. 2017. Quantum Field Theory and Condensed Matter: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
From Ramamurti Shankar:
“This book contains an idiosyncratic selection of topics I have personally worked on. I dedicated the book to my four heroes: Michael Fisher, Leo Kadanoff, Ben Widom and Ken Wilson whose monumental work I have greatly enjoyed learning, using and teaching. It is meant to be an introduction to many of the tools that involve QFT in some way. It does not cover everything, but what it does cover I hope is self-contained.” (Shankar, 2021).
From Book Reviews:
“Shankar, a professor of physics at Yale University, is the author of the highly regarded textbook Principles of Quantum Mechanics(2nd edition, 1994) and his gift for clear exposition is once again on display in his latest work.” When compared to other books on the market, Shankar’s book is less ambitious in its aim and more selective in its content. That makes it both a more introductory text and a friendlier read.” (Stone, Michael, 2018).
From Yongshan Ding:
"We want to bring more computer scientists into studying this emerging technology (that is, harnessing quantum mechanics for information processing). It is truly a renaissance of the computation theory as we know it. This technology is exciting because we get to think about how to build a new kind of computer from the ground up, this time with a rich set of knowledge on how conventional digital computers work —from the model of computation, to novel algorithms, programming models, architectural abstractions, and finally to the backend hardware. We use this book to highlight some of the grand challenges in designing a scalable and robust quantum computer systems stack." (Ding, 2021).
From Interview with Yongshan Ding:
"In our book, we discuss several of the recent advances in NISQ algorithm implementations, software/hardware interface, and qubit technologies, and highlight what roles computer scientists and engineers can play to enable practical-scale quantum computing." (Zicari, 2020).
Acknowledgments | Sources