The Geometry of Physics: An Introduction, Second Edition
Product Description: Theodore Frankel explains those parts of exterior differential forms, differential geometry, algebraic and differential topology, Lie groups, vector bundles and Chern forms essential to a better understanding of classical and modern physics and engineering. Key highlights of his new edition are the inclusion of three new appendices that cover symmetries, quarks, and meson masses; representations and hyperelastic bodies; and orbits and Morse-Bott Theory in compact Lie groups. Geometric intuition is developed through a rather extensive introduction to the study of surfaces in ordinary space. First Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-38334-X First Edition Pb (1999): 0-521-38753-1
Book Description: This book is intended to provide a working knowledge of those parts of exterior differential forms, differential geometry, algebraic and differential topology, Lie groups, vector bundles and Chern forms that are essential for a deeper understanding of both classical and modern physics and engineering. Geometric intuition is developed through a rather extensive introduction to the study of surfaces in ordinary space; consequently, the book should be of interest also to mathematics students. This book will be useful to graduate and advanced undergraduate students of physics, engineering and mathematics. It can be used as a course text or for self study.
Subjects: Differential & Riemannian geometry, Topology, Mathematics, Science, Science/Mathematics, Geometry - Differential, Topology - General, Geometry, Mathematics / Topology, PHYSICS, Geometry, Differential, Mathematical Physics,
Fantastic - for the scientist
A very good book: buy it. But only if you are a scientist or student of physics/mathematics. This is not popular-science-common-public level.
a book worth keeping
This book can be quite confusing if you start without any background on the idea of manifold or knows nothing about general relativity. However, it does have strong points:
1. The notation is very up-to-date, and is entirely coordinate-independant approach.
2. The author explains in great details of formulation of modern differential geometry, and the details are comparatively lacking in other reference books.
3. The author never hesitate to use graphs and diagrams to illustrate points, and stroke nice balance in between mathematics rigor and physical insight.
Although it appears quite verbose at some point, it is mainly because differential geometry is such a heavy subject. Another book nice to have as companion reading is Goldburg's "Tensor analysis on Manifold", a terse, well-written text book.
Phenomenal
I just finished reading this book and I found it phenomenal. The physical ideas are made very clear in a natural mathematical framework.
You should buy this, despite its flaws
The other reviews on this page give this book anywhere from 1 to 5 stars, and they are all correct in their own way. The book is inspired, deep and full of physics applications and insights. On the other hand, it skims over mathematical rigor to a large degree and focuses more on defining things, getting a feel for them and moving on to application.
My advice: buy the book for its strengths, and read other books in parallel if you need more rigor. But still, buy it.
Also, things can be confusing on the first two or three reads, but keep at it and you will be glad you did.
The perfect first book in differential geometry
Differential geometry can be a very intimidating subject due to its heavy formalism. There are complete books (such as Kobayashi& Nomizu) very good as reference books, and there very few books that show the reader the picture behind the formulas.
This is one such book. It tells you the intuition behind each construction and from this point of view it has many things in common with Arnold's famous book on Math. Methods in Classical Mechanics. But where as Arnold does not pay too much attention to formalism, this book achieves this task as well. It shows the reader how to do those impossible computations as well.
This is definitely the first place to look at if you want to really learn differential geometry. If it seems difficult it is only because the subject is so.
