Has anybody ever finished reading Morse&Feshbach and Courant&Hilbert mathemathetical/theoretical physics books?

mathemathetical/theoretical physics books?

I started CH but quite earlier stopped, unfortunately from reading it.

Hopefully one day I'll come back.

Reading is one thing, understanding another.

Gavinn said:

mathemathetical/theoretical physics books?

I started CH but quite earlier stopped, unfortunately from reading it.

Hopefully one day I'll come back.

My version is from 1924. Isn't that a bit old-fashioned?

Dr Transport said:

Reading is one thing, understanding another.

Yes.
Well, understanding everything in them can be quite formidable task.

Someone once told me that it's not that we understand per se but get used to things.

I"ve never "finished" any textbook. I don't even know what that means....... I suppose I "finished" the sections from which I taught courses

hutchphd said:

I"ve never "finished" any textbook. I don't even know what that means....... I suppose I "finished" the sections from which I taught courses

did'nt you read for your own sake? not for courses.

Morse and Feshbach, as with the Russian's Gradshteyn & Rydzhik, is what we call "encyclopedic work", which means that one normally goes to it only for a particular subject (formula, integral), not for the whole work. As for C&H, I guess you can use it at a greater scale, being the first textbook on mathematical techniques in general physics.

Never cover to cover. (Well maybe Feynman lectures....but I'm certainly haven't finished them) Usually I want to know certain stuff.

hutchphd said:

Never cover to cover. (Well maybe Feynman lectures....but I'm certainly haven't finished them) Usually I want to know certain stuff.

I have read van der Waerden's algebra book (volume 1) and Artin's book on Galois theory cover to cover, and I started Kurosh's book on group theory but soon lost interest after a couple of pages.

But it is priceless to have books available for looking up specific subjects.

fresh_42 said:

I have read van der Waerden's algebra book (volume 1) and Artin's book on Galois theory cover to cover, and I started Kurosh's book on group theory but soon lost interest after a couple of pages.

But it is priceless to have books available for looking up specific subjects.

I just don't like reading like a grasshopper instead of an ant, i.e from going from forward backward and vice versa.

hutchphd said:

Never cover to cover. (Well maybe Feynman lectures....but I'm certainly haven't finished them) Usually I want to know certain stuff.

I did cover to cover for srdnicki and peskin and schroeader with their solution manuals.
A few months of reading, quite painstaking.



The song starts with the words:

"
Where do you go when you've given it all
And your mind declares a collapse
You've turned every page in an infected book"

I wonder how much quantum chaos is hard.

Gavinn said:

I wonder how much quantum chaos is hard.

Sorry, that doesn't parse very well. Can you try again with a lot more details, and maybe a link or two? Thanks.

berkeman said:

Sorry, that doesn't parse very well. Can you try again with a lot more details, and maybe a link or two? Thanks.

I read the preface of the chaosbook of Predrag Civatovonivic which can be found in a google search.

He seems to argue that this subject is quite hard compared to QFT. At least that's what I understood.

berkeman said:

Sorry, that doesn't parse very well. Can you try again with a lot more details, and maybe a link or two? Thanks.

Chaos is hard, quantum is hard, ergo quantum chaos is hardly hard.

Has anybody ever finished reading Morse&Feshbach and Courant&Hilbert mathematical/theoretical physics books?​

I'm not even sure that the authors did it. For instance, perhaps Courant didn't read all the parts that Hilbert wrote.

Demystifier said:

Chaos is hard, quantum is hard, ergo quantum chaos is hardly hard.

Sounds valid.

fresh_42 said:

My version is from 1924. Isn't that a bit old-fashioned?

Courant&Hilbert will never be old-fashioned! It's a masterpiece of scientific prose too.

Also I must admit, I've never read any theoretical-physics or math book from the beginning to the end. I rather use them to read and understand the things I need for some problem I like to solve. As a student I also used the textbooks to read about something I didn't understand in the lectures or to better understand a topic being treated in the lectures in more detail etc.

What's much more important than to "read" a textbook from the 1st to the last page entirely is to really "work" with it, i.e., starting with following the arguments in detail with pencil an paper deriving the key results yourself and then as the next step to solve problems using the material learnt in this active way from the book.

Demystifier said:

Has anybody ever finished reading Morse&Feshbach and Courant&Hilbert mathematical/theoretical physics books?​

I'm not even sure that the authors did it. For instance, perhaps Courant didn't read all the parts that Hilbert wrote.

Did Hilber write something in these books himself? I thought Courant wrote the books, using notes from Hilbert's lectures ;-)).

vanhees71 said:

Did Hilber write something in these books himself? I thought Courant wrote the books, using notes from Hilbert's lectures ;-)).

Agreed; as far as I can recall, Courant relied on Hilbert’s lectures but also wanted to honour Hilbert. I think first read about this info in Parke III’s Guide to the Literature in Mathematics and Physics.

Morse and Feshbach is less encyclopaedic than the above and a bit more textbook-like. (One might like the stereoscopic figures of the 11 solvable coordinate systems in Vol. 1.) I always wondered if Feynman, who took an original class that later turned into M&F’s book, did ever revisit it.

Both works are must for a physicist’s library, even today.

apostolosdt said:

Agreed; as far as I can recall, Courant relied on Hilbert’s lectures but also wanted to honour Hilbert. I think first read about this info in Parke III’s Guide to the Literature in Mathematics and Physics.

Courant writes as much in the preface of the English version in 1953:

"The responsibility for the present book rests with me. Yet the name of my teacher, colleague, and friend , D. Hilbert, on the title page seems justified by the fact that much material from Hilbert's papers and lectures has been used, as well as by the hope that the book expresses some of Hilbert's spirit, which had such a decisive influence on mathematical research and education"

Hilbert became very ill in 1925 and retired in 1930 so I don't think he contributed directly to the book after the first German edition. Courant mentions much help from Friedrichs, Lax and many others.

I agree that they are 'must haves', used as background material for studying/solving specific problems. There might be modern alternatives, but it will be a couple of decades before we recognize them as classics I guess.

I think M & H is meant to be read topic by topic as needed. In my early days, I used it in the library to clinch a topic. It was too heavy to take out and too expensive to buy. Then, since most of us just read it in the library, the school library sold it for $.50 because it hadn't been 'used'. I am not surprised librarians know less about libraries than users do.