It has been 50 years since major physicists played any role in the
creation of intro-level physics textbooks, as opposed to
graduate-level texts. The then-exceptions were the Nobelists Richard
Feynman ("The Feynman Lectures on Physics") and Ed Purcell
("Electromagnetism" in the Berkeley Series).It is not a coincidence that the biggest influences on Ruth and me in writing our textbook were those two splendid texts. Bruce On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Douglas Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, maybe. > > But I'd be willing to bet that if a big-name physicist were to publish a > physics text, with the intent that it become the standard for teaching > his/her physics specialty, Wiley would find themselves sucking vacuum. > > Say, for example, that George Smoot wanted to self-publish > a grad-level textbook on cosmic anisotropies... > > I agree, though, that for the foreseeable future lesser-known/lesser-quality > scientists will need to rely on a big-name publisher to attract the cache > necessary to become an accepted textbook author. Fortunately, in the > relatively short period of time that ebooks have come into their own, the > same is no longer true for fiction authors. > > --Doug ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
