16 Comments
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Kevin Okun's avatar

What an awesome list! I haven't seen some of these textbooks in a long time and this list brought back so many memories. Thank you for compiling this.

Rupesh N. Bhambwani's avatar

Fantastic list and resources. Thank you for sharing this.

Rocks for Jocks's avatar

A great list! Though I’ll be honest not sure I see anyone picking up a physics textbook for casual reading

Alastair Williams's avatar

Haha, this is not for casual readers, that's for sure!

Evalyn Shirley's avatar

I'm horrible at math, but it's my dream to become an astronomer. I'm taking a gap year in order to get better at math before going to college. Currently, I'm working through West Texas A&M's Beginning Algebra. What would you recommend learning after Intermediate Algebra? Do you have any resources for learning Pre-Calculus?

Thank you!

Alastair Williams's avatar

Math can be learned, even if you don't find it naturally easy. So don't worry, sometimes you just need to practice and get more familiar with how it works.

I would suggest going on to trigonometry - e.g. with this resource: https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/trig/

After that you could try moving into calculus already - this is a good introduction: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

Jolie Gan's avatar

This is incredible - I'm a biologist and neuroscientist by training and the world of physics has always been daunting (seen these resources floating around, but very helpful to have them sorted like this!)

JJD's avatar

Thanks for this very helpful resource. For those looking for a taste of recent fresh thinking on time, thermodynamics, and cosmology, Julian Barbour has done some very interesting work. Most recent book is The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time ISBN 978-0465095469. Also, some physics buffs might enjoy Professor Elvis Zap's rendition of the Quantum Gravity — Topological Quantum Field Theory Blues (https://youtu.be/VuZWvu2JFKk?si=uUEYqPsnwGS6WBWg).

Verified RowBoat 🤖's avatar

This looks really good. I’m sorry to be asking this but is there a surreal numbers section?

Will Lancer's avatar

Is there a reason you didn’t list the standard textbooks and some of the standard lecture notes in each discipline?

Alastair Williams's avatar

I have listed a few standard texts, but generally I want to keep the list to include resources freely available. If you have suggestions I will be happy to add them.

Will Lancer's avatar

Ok I see. I’d add all of Tong’s lecture notes for each subject lol, and then the books listed in the lecture note prefaces and advice files on this website: https://knzhou.github.io/

Sofia S's avatar

Thank you so much :)

Eric B's avatar

Thanks for a great list of resources! Sadly, the links to Dave's Short Courses don't seem to work for me (from multiple browsers). Incorrect redirect issues.

Alastair Williams's avatar

Thanks! I am getting a similar problem. It looks like an error on his site. If it isn't fixed soon I'll try to find a replacement and update the page. Let me know if you find any other problems.

Scratch that - I have found links that do work and updated. It should work for you now.