David Tong Lectures on Theoretical Physics(damtp.cam.ac.uk)
damtp.cam.ac.uk
David Tong Lectures on Theoretical Physics
https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/books.html
16 comments
There are lots of recorded lectures by him online too, which are great. His quantum field their lectures are especially popular https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/qftvids.html.
This is from Perimeter Institute which (on their own website) has incredible collection of high quality content on topics like theoretical physical, mathematics, for those who are interested.
I wonder when the Perimeter Institute will begin to get more name recognition. Some of the top PhD graduates from US R5 universities (and now assistant professors) have gone through there and have done phenomenal in their career.
Being small and relatively unknown has advantages. Sean Carroll touched on this:
>But what I'm trying to get across is there are a bunch of structural reasons why physics departments tend to be conservative, and the conservative in the sense that they're gonna hire people who are working in the areas that are sort of the sure things rather than the gambles, and the same thing goes for funding agencies and prize committees and so forth, academia in general, not just physics departments, there's a lot of structural reasons why things are conservative, and I do think that's a problem, you even see it in institutions like the Perimeter Institute, which is one of the world's greatest physics institutes right now, but when it started out, it was much quirkier, Lee Smallin was there, and Fortiny Makapulu and a bunch of people, and they were doing loop quantum gravity and weird approaches to the foundations of quantum mechanics.
>4:10:24.8 SC: And as it grew and became more respectable, they turned into one of the world's great physics institutions, as I said. But they also became much more just mainstream and ordinary. It's a part of the life cycle of a Physics Department or Institute. You have a plucky band of rebels and they kind of equilibrate and they become more normal and traditional, and you can't blame them, can't plan that particular institute, 'cause they're just trying to be a good a Physics Institute, and their little part that they play turns out overall, to make it harder and harder for small idiosyncratic research programs to flourish, there are people who have tenure or senior people and they can work on their own quirky little ideas.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-...
>But what I'm trying to get across is there are a bunch of structural reasons why physics departments tend to be conservative, and the conservative in the sense that they're gonna hire people who are working in the areas that are sort of the sure things rather than the gambles, and the same thing goes for funding agencies and prize committees and so forth, academia in general, not just physics departments, there's a lot of structural reasons why things are conservative, and I do think that's a problem, you even see it in institutions like the Perimeter Institute, which is one of the world's greatest physics institutes right now, but when it started out, it was much quirkier, Lee Smallin was there, and Fortiny Makapulu and a bunch of people, and they were doing loop quantum gravity and weird approaches to the foundations of quantum mechanics.
>4:10:24.8 SC: And as it grew and became more respectable, they turned into one of the world's great physics institutions, as I said. But they also became much more just mainstream and ordinary. It's a part of the life cycle of a Physics Department or Institute. You have a plucky band of rebels and they kind of equilibrate and they become more normal and traditional, and you can't blame them, can't plan that particular institute, 'cause they're just trying to be a good a Physics Institute, and their little part that they play turns out overall, to make it harder and harder for small idiosyncratic research programs to flourish, there are people who have tenure or senior people and they can work on their own quirky little ideas.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-...
Reputation and the dynamics of social media is a tricky one. Within the scientific community, it is pretty well known as far as my experience goes.
When it comes to the general public, it requires some work that will get alot of attention. See for instance deepseek. Some of the my "normy" friends are even aware of the company despite not being into ML.
Maybe something regarding the foundational stuff regarding the formulation of Quantum Mechanics or Quantum Information Theory
When it comes to the general public, it requires some work that will get alot of attention. See for instance deepseek. Some of the my "normy" friends are even aware of the company despite not being into ML.
Maybe something regarding the foundational stuff regarding the formulation of Quantum Mechanics or Quantum Information Theory
His quantum mechanics lecture on YouTube at the Royal Society I think, is a masterpiece. Some very interesting facts, mostly about what we don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVQfWC_evg
I like that he sees that we haven't made progress (in 10 years or now 20) and likely won't. He doesn't delve into the silliness that a lot of pop-sci particle physicists have. It's all well beyond me, but I've always wondered why the inertial Higgs mass seems also to be gravitational in addition to all the binding energy mass, which is inherently relativistic. Whether that's (presumably not based on his comments) related to "dark matter" is the other sort of cosmological connection. Nice review.
The Royal Institution - based around the corner from the Royal Society and the scientific home to Michael Faraday but these days is mostly about science communication.
They're celebrating 200 years of the Christmas Lectures and Discourses this year, both started by Faraday.
They're celebrating 200 years of the Christmas Lectures and Discourses this year, both started by Faraday.
Cool. His lecture notes are worth checking out when studying any physics topic imo. I've seen his QFT notes especially recommended in many places, though I haven't yet got that far personally...
One of my mechanics courses used his lecture notes for analytical mechanics and I liked them, i.e. 'classical dynamics'.
The smell is indeed the important part. Sadly the smell goes away in a while even if unopened. Maybe I should purchase some case to retain the smell.
Great lecturer - when I took Part III he stepped in for a few sessions when the regular lecturer for QFT broke her arm.
His notes are always pretty clearly explained. Equally importantly, I've found he's always really responsive if you think you've found an error. (And very patient if the original is correct, and your "correction" is a mistake!)
His notes are always pretty clearly explained. Equally importantly, I've found he's always really responsive if you think you've found an error. (And very patient if the original is correct, and your "correction" is a mistake!)
WTF?
[Tang notes in-joke for potential downvoters]
[Tang notes in-joke for potential downvoters]
"Dave's lectures are basically the opposite of me."
- Pete Tong
Cool that his lecture notes are now books! The lack of thermodynamics/statistical mechanics is an unfortunate oversight, however, otherwise one could feasibly use his books exclusively for an undergraduate-level degree program in physics.
Tong actually has excellent Statistical Physics lecture notes available on his website (https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/statphys.html), they just haven't been published as books yet.