Online books, texts, and lecture notes

There are a number of textbooks and lecture notes online. Generally speaking, a great place to start for lecture notes is the arXiv preprint server. Other more general resources are:

• MIT - Open Course Ware Physics
• Gerard 't Hooft - "How to become a GOOD Theoretical Physicist"
• textbookrevolution.org -List of all Physics pages
  
• freescience.info (ebooklist has strong international flavor)
• DC Physics - Online Physics Textbooks
  

Specific notable books include:

• The Basics of MRI (web-book)
  by: Joseph P. Hornak
  very well done and the prototype for what web-books should be
  
• The BaBar Physics Book [SLAC-R-504] (pdf, ps)
  by: The BaBar Collaboration
  a great intro to CP Violation, every HEP exp needs to have a "Physics Book" like this
  
• Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (pdf)
  by: Sean Mauch
  aka "Sean's Notes," simply legendary at Caltech for students taking AMa 95
  
• Hyperphysics (web-book)
  by: C. Rod Nave
  another fantastic web-book example
  
• Handbook of Mathematical Functions (web-book w/ scanned jpeg images)
  by: Milton Abramowitz & Irene A. Stegun
  a great reference now with electronic indexing!
  
• Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing, 3rd Ed. (pdf) google
  by: W.H. Press, S.A. Teukolsky, W.T. Vetterling, & B.P. Flannery
  sample chapters available for free, full text free for developing countries
  
• Engineering Statistics Handbook (web-book)
  by: NIST/SEMATECH
  a fantastic and pratical web reference for statistical methods
  
• Mathematical Tools for Physics (pdf)
  by: James Nearing
  site includes animations
  
• Quantum Field Theory (pdf) amazon google
  by: Mark Srednicki
  "prepublication draft...contains a number of errors (mostly minor)"
• Lectures on Atomic Physics (pdf) amazon google
  by: Walter R. Johnson
  prepublication draft?
  
• Lectures on Advanced Quantum Mechanics, 2nd Ed. (pdf, ps) amazon google
  by: Freeman Dyson (LaTeX-ed by David Derbes)
  legendary and classic notes that were the de-facto text on QED for several years
  
• Fields (pdf, ps)
  by: W. Siegel
  "first free comprehensive textbook on quantum (and classical) field theory"
• Order of Magnitude Physics (pdf)
  by: Peter Goldreich, Sanjoy Mahajan, & Sterl Phinney
  unofficial book for the popular OOM class at Caltech, partly the PhD thesis of SM
  
• A Radically Modern Approach to Introductory Physics, Vols. 1 & 2 (pdf)
  by: David J. Raymond
  a brilliant idea for freshman physics course: "attempt to develop all of physics in a modern context"
• Motion Mountain (pdf)
  by: Christoph Schiller
  an incredible 1500 page(!) introduction to physics
  
• Essential Physics I (pdf)
  Introduction to Groups, Invariants & Particles (pdf)
  Age of Einstein (pdf)
  by: Frank W.K. Firk
  except AoE, written in the formal style of mathematical texts
  
• Electromagnetic Field Theory (pdf, ps, dvi)
  by: Bo Thidé
  website also includes problem book, "a textbook on the theory of electrodynamics, at roughly the same level as the well-known textbooks by Jackson and Panofsky & Phillips"
• Lecture Notes on General Relativity (pdf) amazon google
  by: Sean M. Carroll
  notes that eventually became the book "Spacetime and Geometry"

I have not included those websites that have illegal scanned copies of books. Writing a textbook takes alot of time & patience and it is just plain wrong to steal an author's hard work.

Errata to physics books

One of the many wonders of the internets is that authors can post their Errata directly online for anyone to consult. DC Physics has a nice list of Errata reported to him directly and a list of links to particular books themselves. The In addition to those, here are ones that I have found useful in the past:

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics (google: Vol. I , Vol. II , Vol, III)
  by R.P. Feynman, R.B. Leighton, & M. Sands
• Introduction to Electrodynamics (google)
  Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (google)
  Introduction to Elementary Particles (google)
  by David J. Griffiths
  
• Classical Mechanics (google)
  by H. Goldstein, C.P. Poole, & J.L. Safko
• Lasers (google)
  by A.E. Seigman
• Atomic Physics (google) (verified as of 01/28/09)
  by D. Budker, D. Kimball, & D. DeMille
• An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (google)
  by M.E. Peskin & D.V. Schroeder
• Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell (google)
  by A. Zee
  

UPDATE (Jan. 21 & 28, 2009)

An essential source for "published errata pages for mathematical and scientific text books" is at The Errata Page. (although it does not appear to be updated anymore as of 01/28/09)

Errata pages for books that I've found online can be found at my library (by Google Book Search) or on this blog.

A selection of classics from Dover Publications

Dover Publications have been reprinting out-of-print classics for almost 70 years now. Some of my favorite (that were very hard to find before Dover) are:

• Classical Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd (google)
  by: Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky & Melba Phillips
• Quantum Field Theory (google)
  by: Claude Itzykson & Jean-Bernard Zuber
• Quantum Mechanics (google)
  (two volumes as one!)
  by: Albert Messiah
• Quantum Mechanics of One- and Two-Electron Atoms (google)
  by: Hans A. Bethe & Edwin E. Salpeter

Methods of Theoretical Physics

Methods of Theoretical Physics, Volume I: Chapters 1 to 8 & Volume II: Chapters 9 to 13 by Morse and Feshbach had been out of print for a long time. I had to get my copy on ebay. However, since 2004, Herman Feshbach's son Mark has started reprinting his father's classic book. I don't know of many theoretical physicists who don't own this book or atleast consult it on a regular basis. Kudos to Feshbach Publishing for bringing it back to life!

A blog about physics books

This is a blog about all things related to physics books/textbooks. For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, this has become a real passion of mine. My goal is to provide a resource for people searching for just the right physics book, be it a lay person's introduction to quantum mechanics to an advanced text on quantum field theory. Questions and comments are welcome.