The Theoretical Minimum Really Deserves A Try

Professor Susskind’s legendary Stanford lectures on serious introductory physics are being compiled and published into books one by one. Designed to deliver an essential introduction to classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, field theory & electromagnetism, and general relativity for an adult audience, I found the series extremely appealing to students like myself who want to dive into the bare minimum regarding the frontiers of physics research.

I current own two out of four volumes, quantum mechanics and general relativity. While the first volume is accompanied by an introduction to algebra and calculus, these fundamental skills need not be absolutely solid to process later topics. A shallow understanding of partial derivatives or eigenvectors will hold one back throughout the course; it feels more of digesting an unfamiliar world ranging from bra-ket algebra to tensor analysis.

When I purchased a copy of general relativity in the series nearly an year ago, I was previously bombarded by a barrage of theorems, identities and case analyses of other so-called introductory literature. Most of those began with a sugarcoated preface promising a comprehensive understanding of the Einstein field equations, no prior calculus required. But professor Susskind’s GR proposed instead a bare minimum to get started, and it devoted the first chapters to just a single oddity from which relativity arises. It was not difficult to catch decades of consideration regarding teaching a subject, let alone understanding it.

The series is an oddity of its own. It’s not merely between professional and popular science. This book is a superposition that makes some of the most profound areas of physics, quoting professor Susskind, as simple as possible, but no simpler.