Some rich and dense biographical books:
Helge S. Kragh, "Dirac: A Scientific Biography."*
Graham Farmelo, "The Strangest Man."
Abraham Pais, "Subtle Is the Lord." *
David C. Cassidy, "Beyond Uncertainty."
Walter J. Moore, "Schrodinger : Life and Thought."
Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, "The End of the Certain World."
Charles P. Enz, "No Time to Be Brief." *
Silvan S. Schweber, "QED and the Men Who Made It." *
Lawrence M. Krauss, "Quantum Man."
David Kaiser, "Drawing Theories Apart." *
Laurie M. Brown, Helmut Rechenberg, "The Origin of the Concept of Nuclear Forces." *
George Johnson, "Strange Beauty."
Lillian Hoddeson, et al. (Eds.) "The Rise of the Standard Model." *
Robert P. Crease and Charles C. Mann, "The Second Creation."
Gerard 't Hooft, "In Search of the Ultimate Building Blocks."
Lee Smolin, "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity."
Graham Farmelo (Ed.), "It Must Be Beautiful."
Simon Singh, "Fermat's Enigma."
Mark Ronan, "Symmetry and the Monster."
Marcus Du Sautoy, "The Music of the Primes."
George G. Szpiro, "Poincare's Prize."
In the above, those books with * marks contain technical contents, which do not prevent informed
reading for those who do not know them. The books below are technical ones. I wrote some notes
to overcome my own initial conceptual blocks. These notes as well as this page also serve as memos for me.
P. A. M. Dirac, "The Principles of Quantum Mechanics."
(my note on Section 21)
Paul A. M. Dirac, "Lectures on Quantum Mechanics."
P. A. M. Dirac, "General Theory of Relativity."
Erwin Schrodinger, "Space-Time Structure."
Erwin Schrodinger, "Statistical Thermodynamics."
Werner Heisenberg, "The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory."
Max Born, "Atomic Physics."
Hermann Weyl, "The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics."
Hermann Weyl, "Space, Time, Matter."
Wolfgang Pauli, "Statistical Mechanics."
Wolfgang Pauli, "Wave Mechanics."
Wolfgang Pauli, "Selected Topics in Field Quantization."
Enrico Fermi, "Thermodynamics."
Gibbs, "Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics."
Richard P. Feynman and Albert R. Hibbs, "Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals."
(my note on Chapter 4)
Laurie M. Brown (Ed.), "Feynman's Thesis."
Sin-itiro Tomonaga (Translated by Takeshi Oka), "The Story of Spin."
Ian Duck and E. C. G. Sudarshan (Ed.), "Pauli and the Spin-Statistics Theorem." (with original papers)
Julian Schwinger (Ed.) "Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics."
Lochlainn O'Raifeartaigh, "The Dawning of Gauge Theory." (with original papers)
Roger Penrose, "The Road to Reality."
Theodore Frankel, "The Geometry of Physics."
Dwight E. Neuenschwander, "Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem."
Some texts on quantum field theory. The simplicity and richness of the subject is quite impressive. Different
authors tell the story in very different ways. The first three are modern presentations, with emphasis on path
integral formalism.
Mark Srednicki, "Quantum Field Theory." (highly organized and elegant: spin 0, spin 1/2, spin 1, very easy to read)
A. Zee, "Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell." (reads like a novel, offers the simplest explanations to many issues)
Warren Siegel, "Fields." (modernist and bold: symmetry, quantization, higher spin)
Steven Weinberg, "The Quantum Theory of Fields."(I, II) (deductive and logical, explaining why quantum fields)
Martinus Veltman, "Diagrammatica: the Path to Feynman Rules." (a no-nonsense presentation of canonical formalism)
Michael E. Peskin and Daniel V. Schroeder, "An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory." (rich in calculational details)
(my note on Chapter 2)
Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker, and John H. Schwarz, "String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction."