Customer Reviews

General Theory of Relativity

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3 star:		(1)
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This is definitely not a book for the weak of heart. Dirac does a brilliant job presenting the material in a concise manner. Still, some concepts are often glossed over, or not explained to an appreciable extent. I found that the Schaum's Tensor Calculus Outline was a good suppliment to this text, since it fills in what Dirac assumes you already know. Overall, I would recommend this book only if you have a strong mathematical background, and an even stronger desire to learn the Theory of Relativity.

In his inimitable concise style, with not a word out of place, Dirac offers a 60 page sketch of the classical theory of gtr. Doesn't cover any of the modern theoretical developments and offers not a single figure, but if you have a strong math background and very little time to spare, this is probably the book for you. No problems included, so serious autodidacts should supplement this with another text such as d'Inverno which does have problems.

This is quite simply an amazing book. It uses the older component notation to give an rather complete treatment of the basics of GR in something like 69 pages. It is beautiful and elegant like all of P.A.M Dirac's papers and books. There is no global formalism and the book is not comprehensive but it is a great treatment. One work of caution. The reader who has already had some GR may find it more approachable. But I do not believe this is necessarily true.

This is a great little book for the well prepared reader. An introductory course (or two) would be very helpful before attempting this book. Once one has the basics, then this book will enhance one's understanding by emphasising through economy of word and subject matter what the theory is all about.

I took the course the book is based on in the Spring of 1973. We students took turns taking notes until the last few where for some reason we ran out of volunteers. The book is an excellent condensing of the lectures. Many of the steps are left out that were presented in the lectures or left for the students to fill in. While there are no explicit exercises in the book, going from one step to the next provides an excellent opportunity to test your understanding. I am in no way an expert in mathematics, but the equations are sufficient to follow point to point.
When I read this book, I can hear him speaking. He would have the day's lecture on a 3x5 card that he would look at at the start and perhaps one more time during the lecture. He had the ability to lecture on GR or quantum mechanics and you would sit there and say "Yes, that makes sense. Now I understand." They you would walk out and start thinking and come to the conclusion that you really didn't understand and that you needed to study it some more. This book lets you do that.

When I was first studying General Relativity, a graduate student friend of mine remarked that this little book has about all the information that "Gravitation" (http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Kip-S-Thorne/dp/0716703440 - THE textbook on General relativity) has in just a fraction of the pages. He was only partly wrong, and this slim volume continues to be the best summary of this mathematically challenging field. Whenever I need a quick (and not so quick) reference for one of the basic results in General Relativity, this is the first place where I look. Either as a secondary reference or the first textbook on the field, this book continues to be a valuable resource.

This is just about the most succinct presentation of GR that can be found anywhere. It is not a good first text on the subject of GR; It starts out assuming a grasp of SR and tensors, rapidly introduces Riemannian geometry and stays there for the rest of the book, ending with the various classical field equations of GR, and making only the occasional reference to anything Newtonian or otherwise observable along the way. It is an axiomatic treatment of the subject of GR from the point of view of Dirac, with geodesics, action principles, and the sparest set of observables.

While I read the book, it was interesting to imagine that Dirac came up with this treatment of the subject while trying to discern how to re-cast some of his own contributions within the formalism of GR.

This little book stands as a very nice explication of a beautiful and complete classical field theory. My first impression of it was that the book reads very much like a set of Dirac's personal notes might possibly have read, devoid of all non-essential elements or unnecessary inferences. It is a very nice and succinct overview of an axiomatic description of GR in terms of variational principles.

In only 69 pages, Dirac lucidly develops the major results of general relativity. Owing to its size, the book has no real "introduction", meaning that, although background material is given, it consists only of those equations which are required in the subsequent development. If the reader has had no previous exposure to tensor analysis, this background material will probably be insufficient.

The masterful organization of this book is such that the exposition proceeds in a nearly deductive fashion. Indeed, the text is reminiscent more of pure mathematics, with very little appeal to "physical intuition." Of course, as with Dirac's other works, the theory is developed in the most efficient manner possible. It is a model presentation; the reader may admire and absorb it but does not *participate* in its motivation or development.

To those who seek a more complete (and leisurely) presentation of general relativity along similar classical lines, Levi-Civita: The Absolute Differential Calculus; Eddington: The Mathematical Theory of Relativity and Weyl: Space Time Matter are among the finest works. Slightly more recent texts, also based on the kernel-index method, include Schouten: Tensor Analysis for Physicists and Schrodinger: Space-Time Structure. For the modern global approach to general relativity, Hawking and Ellis: The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time is well suited for a mathematically inclined reader.

This book is a marvel of presentation and concision.
However, you should not regard it as a first course on the subject, unless you merely want to learn its formal aspects.
As such, the subject would appear as a mere pot-pourri of formulas and mathematical concepts directly borrowed from a differential geometry course, with just a little grain of physics ideas.
Almost no mention is made of general relativity experimental tests or the ideas that led Einstein to formulate this theory ; nothing deep and elaborate on stars, the expanding universe ; there's not much on black holes beyond the section about the Schwarzshild coordinate singularity.
To really grasp the subject, you will have to be committed to much more hard and patient work from thicker books.
Reading this book, would be excellent for motivational purposes.
With such warnings in mind, go for it.

Dirac does a great job at explaining the differential-geometry.
The tensor calculus, parallel displacement, covariant derivative etc. are explained clearly and quickly.
However, 69 pages for this theory is just not enough. I found the later part of the book insufficient. It's more of a dictionary of general relativity.