Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #369612 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1152 pages

Synopsis
This edition is a reprint in one volume of the English translation of MTcanique Quantique , published in two volumes in the US by Wiley in 1958. The books resulted from courses given at the Center of Nuclear Studies at Saclay during the 1950s, and they are esteemed for the clarity and coherence of their presentation. Volume I (which was translated

Customer Reviews

Good reference
This 1200-page book consists of an introduction to quantum mechanics and field quantization. I will discuss its pros and cons shortly. First of all, this is a lousy place to start learning QM from scratch, simply because Messiah chooses to spend the first 250 pages of his book on elementary wave mechanics before introducing the more general and abstract Dirac formalism. The reader is forced to read through this tedious introduction, when, at least in my opinion, all of this should have been omitted. Having to learn two formalisms instead of one simply makes it harder for the reader. In addition, Messiah's style is terribly dry, which turns this book into a mass of uninspiring text. As a reference, however, this book has its good parts and bad parts. All-in-all its level (and level of rigor) are good but not outstanding. A good things about it is that it treats many topics not found in other textbooks, and illustrates every new technique with a wealth of (real-life) physical problems: For example, when discussing perturbation of a non-degenerate level, he also discusses the ground state of the helium atom, the coulomb energy of atomic nuclei and the stark effect for a rigid rotator. He has a full section on the Hartee and Fock-Dirac approximation methods for atoms. He has two (!) chapters on collision theory, including treatment of distorted waves and topics such as scattering of a particle by two scattering centers. Messiah is also one of the few books in which the annoying sentence "and the rest is left as an exercise at the end of the chapter" does not appear. Everything is explained and justified as best it can. I give him 5 stars for his efforts! Another bonus is the appendices, which contain detailed, highly condensed information about Clebsch-Gordan coefficients, group theory, special functions, and the Dirac delta function. In short, the low price and amount of information make this book worth buying, although I wouldn't expect too much from it.

Masterful, comprehensive presentation of quantum mechanics
I can't understand the complaint that the book doesn't begin with Dirac notation. Many texts don't follow this procedure, and Dirac notation wasn't even introduced until 1930 (at which point quantum mechanics had been in the air for more than two decades). I personally agree with Messiah's approach: first introduce the foundational concepts, and consolidate them later on with the full-blown formalism.

This isn't a book for undergraduates. I think it will mainly appeal to those such as myself, who already know quite a bit about quantum mechanics and are trying to gain a mastery of the subject. Not all in one go, of course: this book looks like it requires a good few years of off-and-on reading to adequately digest. It also functions as a superb reference text. I'd imagine almost everything you'll ever want to know about quantum mechanics is contained in these pages.

The level of detail here is very high. (For instance, angular momentum isn't given a substantial discussion until the beginning of the second volume.) Many of the problems are intriguing, but don't expect the book to provide any solutions or hints -- because it doesn't. Of special interest is the last part of the second volume, which discusses the Dirac equation in considerable depth, and provides what seems almost equivalent to an introductory course in field theory.