Customer Reviews

Quantum Mechanics

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is one of the few best introductory texts of quantum mechanics. It's good for undergraduates as the first book to study on their own. Both math and phys are well-formulated and explained. It paves the road for the author's second book about QM, or Dirac.

I got the book from a used book store with lots of highlightings and comments, but still I love it very much. It's the first book I would pull out from my bookshelf when I got a problem. Maybe I would get the hardback in the near future because mine is wearing so fast.

In general, the presentation is good for self-study. Explanation is usually gentle and thorough.
If you want to read his second book, Dirac's Lectures on Quantum Mechanics would be a good supplement. Maybe you would like to read that first.

I recommend this book for both math and phys students.

Prof. Wu has been a great teacher in the US and then became the head of Academia Sinica of Taiwan. He is one of the few Taiwanese professors who would write advanced physics textbooks word-by-word gently for young students.

This book and another one -- Relativistic QM -- are what he wrote after writting two original books about QM for Taiwan's young students. And again, he did it gently step-by-step.

He taught physics in the US for several decades. Two of his students in the US became the Nobel Laureates -- TD Lee and CN Yang. His work can be characterized by excellent teaching and broad range of knowledge and research results.

He has been called a "perfect man" in Taiwan. He worked so hard, and never cared about where to live or what to wear, but concentrated on teaching and research.

I would like to quote what Lee and Yang said about the book:

"... the proper teaching of quantum mechanics should not consist merely of its mathematical techniques and physical fact; because the subject is so well-developed there is a number of topics that must be covered. An ideal solution would be to have all of that, plus the historical perspective. Although there are many textbooks on quantum mechanics, none precisely fulfills such a need. That is why this new book by Professor Ta-You Wu is so welcome."

T D Lee (Foreword)

"... it has a unique emphasis on the physics of quantum mechanics, embracing both fundamental principles and complex phenomena. In which other textbook could one find discussions of the Raman effect, autoionization and configuration interaction together with a presentation of Heisenberg's initial ideas?"

C N Yang (Foreword)