For reference, generally people learn all this over four years of undergrad and probably the first few years of grad school (I have a BS in physics, and a PhD in a different field, so not 100% sure on the grad school work). That's 6 years of more or less full-time work, surrounded by excellent peers and mentors, where every week you read 2-4 chapters and do 10 problems per chapter. If you're motivated and talented, you'll breeze through the first few years of problems, but anecdotally, everybody hits a wall where the problems start to get really hard. I have no doubt you can replicate the undergrad education through self-study, and maybe even save money and time, but after that point, why not just go to grad school? You won't save much time doing it on your own, and you get mentorship, exposure to the research aspect (not exactly trivial to learn), credibility, and funding.<p>I'm pretty sure the number of high-quality researchers in theoretical physics, or any major field, who are totally self-taught is really quite small. This website feels like it's in part to dissuade amateurs from sending their "awesome result" to professionals, which the author mentions in the intro.
It's a good comprehensive list, but considerably biased by the author's research interests. There are lots of good theoretical physicists that don't know much about the specifics of string theory and haven't seen general relativity since the relevant graduate course, it just depends on the field you decide to specialize in. On the math side, aside from a few things very specific to string theory, most of it is useful throughout modern theoretical physics, and it certainly helps to have at least a passing familiarity with all of the subjects listed for general erudition. The list could also be expanded with lots of things on the computational side that aren't immediately useful to string theorists but are used in many other fields.<p>Disclaimer: just a theoretical physics postdoc, YMMV.
<a href="http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/primarymathematics.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/primar...</a><p>I wonder, for someone like me that got a pretty terrible math education, how these free courses stack up against just using khan academy or similar.
I would love to see similiar sites set up in other disciplines of various knowledge bodies: Politcal science, economics, philosophy, computer science, etc
This is a good collection of resources, but even more valuable would be the syllabi and homework sets from graduate-level theoretical physics courses, which can guide the interested learner through the vast amount of material, and help them gauge what is a reasonable pace of progress and not get bogged down (this has happened to me whenever I've tried to self-study from textbooks).<p>Source: Just got my PhD in theoretical high energy physics.
Very nice to see this conversation ...
The list is nice and reasonably comprehensive ... it may seem long but it is not as daunting as it looks ... would like to think it is a guidance ... knowing the material does not mean one would become a good theoretical physicist, not knowing all of them does not mean one cannot become a good physicist. Since physics is an experimental science, it makes sense to know in a bit of detail how the observed facts are connected to gain one's own intuition ... this would help to make the list seem short and things become natural ... it also makes sense to know the landscape of the fields and the people in the community ... this will help one to avoid reinventing the wheel or wander into the wild with no return (to reality :-)) ... keeping these in mind, one should be able to enjoy physics or even do something meaningful at some point ...
IMHO, pick a theoretical field you like and you focus on it. Theoretical physics doesn't mean particle physics or relativity. Every field in physics can be both theoretical and experimental.<p>I got a graduate degree in theoretical physics, focusing on condensed matter physics. To be exact, I model the phenomenon called quantum solid, using Ginzburg-Landau theory.
Nice comprehensive list. Scares the heck out of me. The only stuff I recognize are the ones I learnt in college (math and some basic physics like EM and stuff). The rest is just plain scary. Makes me really respect Physicists. If this is just to get started then being a physicist is a lot of hard work.
Physicist here, I am sad to say that all the theoretical physicists I know are teaching physics/math to first year undergraduates. What a waste of smart people. All the jobs they could do are already taken by very old people(+65) that refuse to retire.
There's also the Chicago Undergraduate Physics Bibliography: <a href="https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm</a>
This is exactly like what I've been looking for -- a bit of a roadmap leading up to [hopefully] returning to school. I've started, but have meandered a little. And maybe less on the theoretical side, but who knows.<p>Thanks for this.
imho, I would start with general relativity. Most of the other stuff follows from it and you can pick up the other stuff as you go once you understand tensors and functional differential equations.
>Unfortunately, I still have to recommend to buy text books as well<p>Why?<p>EDIT: Why <i>buy</i> textbooks, rather than read online resources and online textbooks?