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Partial screenshot of the book cover of General Relativity for the Gifted Amateur

Prof Tom Lancaster has co-authored a must-have book for all budding physicists. General relativity lies at the heart of modern physics and represents the pinnacle of Albert Einstein’s celebrated work. Despite being mentioned as a motivation in huge numbers of applications to university physics courses, many future physicists leave university without having engaged with perhaps the most famous of all modern theories of physics!

The theory’s reputation for difficulty is reinforced by a selection of weighty and inaccessible books on the subject aimed firmly at those who will make future advances in the subject.

The authors of a new book, General Relativity for the Gifted Amateur, believe the subject is too important to be restricted to the professionals and have designed their text to appeal to a wider audience of physicists. The book, by Tom Lancaster and Stephen Blundell, the authors of Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur, is packed with worked examples, witty diagrams and applications intended to introduce a new audience to this revolutionary theory.

The imagined reader is a gifted amateur possessing a curious and adaptable mind looking to be told an entertaining and intellectually stimulating story, but who will not feel patronised if a few mathematical niceties are spelled out in detail. Using numerous worked examples, diagrams and careful physically motivated explanations this book is aimed at smoothing the path towards understanding the radically different and revolutionary view of the physical world that general relativity provides and which the authors believe that all physicists should have the opportunity to experience.

 

Find out more

Tom Lancaster's website

Order a copy from the Oxford University Press