Rating: 
Summary: A very readable classic
Review: When Quantum Mechanics was being developed, during the 1920s, Dirac wrote some early papers on the subject. But they were messy, abounding with all sorts of complicated integrals! Reading them, it was easy to miss the forest for the trees.
That made this book, when it came out in 1930, all the more powerful. As Dirac said in his introduction, he tried to keep physics to the forefront, and began with an entirely physical chapter. Later editions were a further improvement in that respect: this one is the fourth, and I like it very much. I think it's a good way to start learning the subject. For anyone who has made it through a college course on linear algebra, the first few chapters will be very easy. You'll enjoy superposing states, and calculating amplitudes and probabilities.
That said, in no way is the whole book elementary! Quite the contrary. It covers all the main topics: harmonic oscillators, the hydrogen atom, perturbation theory including the anomalous Zeeman effect, scattering problems, emission and absorption of photons, relativistic quantum mechanics, and quantum electrodynamics, including creation and annihilation operators. Still, he's always reminding us of the underlying physics, and explaining, for example, that even quantum electrodynamics is not a complete description of nature, but breaks down at high enough energies.
Even though this edition of the book is from the 1950s, it's aging very well.
|
