The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are based on notes prepared during a course on gravitational physics that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech during the 1962-63 academic year.
For several years prior to these lectures, Feynman thought long and hard about the fundamental problems in gravitational physics, yet he published very little.
These lectures represent a useful record of his viewpoints and some of his insights into gravity and its application to cosmology, superstars, wormholes, and gravitational waves at that particular time.
The lectures also contain a number of fascinating digressions and asides on the foundations of physics and other issues.
Characteristically, Feynman took an untraditional non-geometric approach to gravitation and general relativity based on the underlying quantum aspects of gravity.
Hence, these lectures contain a unique pedagogical account of the development of Einstein's general theory of relativity as the inevitable result of the demand for a self-consistent theory of a massless spin-2 field (the graviton) coupled to the energy-momentum tensor of matter.
This approach also demonstrates the intimate and fundamental connection between gauge invariance and the principle of equivalence.
About the Author: d matter and nuclear physics, and to theoretical astrophysics.
Editor of Perseus' Frontiers in Physics series and former editor of American Physical Society's Reviews of Modern Physics, Dr.
Pines is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pines has received a number of awards, including the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal for Contributions to Many-Body Theory; the P.
Dirac Silver Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics; and the Friemann Prize in Condensed Matter Physics.
| Author | D matter and nuclear physics and to theoretical astrophysics |
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Crc Press Feynman lectures on gravitation, paperback/richard feynman
