Tired of reading books about physics? Want the real McCoy”? Well written and informal? Contains stuff whose names you know but don’t understand — Jones Polynomial, Loop Quantum Gravity, Quantum field theory, Gauge groups and transformations — etc. etc.
Up to date? Well no, it’s 25 years old but still very much worth a read, so very unlike molecular biology, chemistry, computer science etc. etc.
Probably you should know as much physics and math as a beginning chemistry grad student. If you studied electromagnetism through Maxwell’s equations it would be a plus. I stopped at Coulomb’s Law, and picked up enough to understand NMR.
This will give you a sample of the way it is written
“Much odder is that we are saying the vector field v is the linear combination of . . partial derivatives. What we are doing might be regarded as rather sloppy, since we are identifying two different although related things: the vector field and the operator v^i * d-/dx^i which takes a directional derivative in the direction of v.”
“Now let us define vector fields on a manifold M. .. . these will be entities whose sole ambition in life is to differentiate functions”
The book is “Gauge FIelds, Knots and Gravity” by John Baez and Javier P. Muniain.
The writing, although clear has a certain humility. “Unfortunately understanding these new ideas depends on a through mastery of quantum field theory, general relativity, geometry, topology and algebra. Indeed, it is almost certain that nobody is sufficiently prepared to understand these ideas fully.”
I’m going to take it with me to the amateur chamber music festival. As usual, at least 2 math full professors will be there to help me out. Buy it and enjoy
Chemiotics II 