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Steven Weinberg has died.


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Steven Weinberg, who I considered the greatest living physicist, has died.

His non-mathematical "The First Three Minutes" is a wonderful account of the evolution of the universe during the first three minutes after the Big Bang, Weinberg also wrote a series of wonderful very advanced advanced books.

Some personal thoughts.

I twice saw Weinberg give technical talks.

Even though I love Weinberg's advanced books, I say the following. I am glad that: 1) they are on my shelf; 2) I am not taking a course that uses any of them as the text; 3) I am not teaching a course that uses any of them as the text. Weinberg explains (at a technical level) some things better than anyone. Sometimes I read a passage in Weinberg, and I think to myself "Wow, I finally understand what is really going on." There are, however, passages in Weinberg's books that I find difficult to understand. Also, sometimes it is difficult to see past the clutter of Weinberg's notation.

The lecture notes for a course  that Weinberg taught in 2017 (at the age of 84!) were turned into his second to last  book, Lectures on Astrophysics. The section on white dwarfs and neutron stars helped me when I had to scramble to prepare an upper-level COVID-related and unexpected teaching overload last fall.

I like the personal aspect of the final paragraph of the Preface,
 

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Thanks for the post George. I have a copy of The First Three Minutes but never got around to properly reading through it; it's on my reading list now and more than happy for it take a non mathematical review :) 

Jim     

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On 24/07/2021 at 18:11, George Jones said:

Even though I love Weinberg's advanced books, I say the following. I am glad that: 1) they are on my shelf; 2) I am not taking a course that uses any of them as the text; 3) I am not teaching a course that uses any of them as the text. Weinberg explains (at a technical level) some things better than anyone. Sometimes I read a passage in Weinberg, and I think to myself "Wow, I finally understand what is really going on." There are, however, passages in Weinberg's books that I find difficult to understand. Also, sometimes it is difficult to see past the clutter of Weinberg's notation

I agree.  I tried to learn general relativity from "Gravitation & Cosmology" and it was very hard work.  On the other hand that book was a lot lighter than Gravitation by Misner, Thorne & Wheeler.

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