Customer Reviews

Relativity, Gravitation, and Cosmology: A Basic Introduction (Oxford Master Series in Physics)

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I'm a second year astrophysics student from Ireland.
Recently I've tried to learn the Mathematics of General Relativity in detail, outside of my course and have bought numerous books in the process.

In my opinion this book and "A First Course in General Relativity by Bernard F. Schutz" are perfect complementary texts to learn the main basis of General Relativity on your own.

The author has provided an unbelievable amount of questions and not a single one of them is pointless exercise.

The book is Divided into three sections:

Part 1: Metric description of Space-Time
Very well written intro to General Relativity which delves into Black Holes and Mercury's Orbit, without the full on Field Equation and Tensors.

Part 2: Cosmology
Still keeping to the metric description of space-time, cosmology is introduced. The mathematics of concepts like the closed and open universes are explained really well.

Part 3: Full Tensor Formulism
I was able to learn Tensors from this, using Chapter 3 from Schutz's book as a companion.

The questions at the end of each chapter really test your knowledge and after reading this you will be able to manipulate the field equation for simple cases and move onto more advanced books if you wish.

Intermediate level, with clear presentation, lots of graphics and exercises, ideal for self-study. In one word, excellent.

Learning general relativity has always been a dream of mine. This book made it possible for me to learn GR on my own. A dream come true!

Excellent overview text. Enough detail for people with a physics background; an alternative to an exhaustive course on general relativity.

The best introduction to General and Special Relativity I have ever read! I got frustrated trying to self study from Schutz, Hartle and Carroll simply because there was no way to check if I was doing the exercises correctly. They are all well written books, but if you want to learn GR on your own this is the book to start with (Although, it doesn't hurt to have them as a supplement). Most answers are included to the exercises and there are plenty of worked examples.

The layout of the book is very close to that of Hartle. There are boxes that stray a bit from the main text to go into more detail or to work out an example.

He also walks you through the process of showing that Maxwell's equations are invariant under the Lorentz transformation, which I found particularly interesting because all of the other introductory books that I have read (If I remember correctly) neglect this, or take it as a given that you have seen this before.

At half the price of other books on GR in the same category, there really is no reason why you shouldn't add this one to your collection. Especially if you are learning the subject on your own.