May 17, 2004
Publications
Physics faculty on a roll with book publishers
Two new textbooks have just been published by faculty in the Department
of Physics, and three other books by UCSC physicists are in various
stages of production.
Abraham
Seiden, professor of physics and director of the Santa Cruz Institute
for Particle Physics, has written a textbook on particle physics for
second-year graduate students. Particle Physics: A Comprehensive
Introduction, from Addison-Wesley, is currently available through
Amazon.com and will also be featured by the Scientific American Book
Club as the editor's main selection in October.
George Gaspari, professor emeritus of physics, and Joseph Rudnick,
a former UCSC faculty member now at UCLA, are the coauthors of Elements
of the Random Walk: An Introduction for Advanced Students and Researchers,
from Cambridge University Press. Random walks have proven to be a useful
model in understanding processes across a wide spectrum of scientific
disciplines. This book is an introduction to some of the most powerful
and general techniques used in the application of these ideas.
Physics professor Bruce Schumm, meanwhile, has a book due out
in December. Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle
Physics, from Johns Hopkins University Press, provides an exposition
of the Standard Model of particle physics written on a purely conceptual
level. The book is intended for an audience with a deep interest, but
not necessarily a formal background, in the underlying principles of
modern science.
Two other book projects by physics faculty have received major advances
from publishers. Professor Emeritus Bruce Rosenblum and lecturer
Fred Kuttner are working on a book about the "quantum enigma,"
while professor Joel Primack is writing a book about cosmology
and culture with his wife, Nancy Abrams. Both books grew out
of UCSC courses. Rosenblum and Kuttner teach a course for nonmajors
in which they explore the bizarre nature of physical reality and the
spooky connectedness revealed by quantum mechanics. Their book, The
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, will be published
by Oxford University Press. Primack and Abrams have taught a course
on cosmology and culture for many years. Their book has the working
title "The Meaningful Universe" and will be published in the
United States by Penguin (foreign editions are also in the works).
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