More than a generation of German-speaking students around the world have worked their way to an understanding and appreciation of the power and beauty of modern theoretical physics—with mathematics, the most fundamental of sciences—using Walter Greiner’s textbooks as their guide. The idea of developing a coherent, complete presentation of an entire ?eld of science in a series of closely related textbooks is not a new one. Many older physicians remember with real pleasure their sense of adventure and discovery as they worked their ways through the classic series by Sommerfeld, by Planck, and by Landau and Lifshitz. From the students’ viewpoint, there are a great many obvious advantages to be gained through the use of consistent notation, logical ordering of topics, and coherence of presentation; beyond this, thecompletecoverageofthescienceprovidesauniqueopportunityfortheauthortoconvey his personal enthusiasm and love for his subject. These volumes on classical physics, ?nally availablein English, complement Greiner’s textsonquantumphysics,mostofwhichhavebeenavailabletoEnglish-speakingaudiences for some time. The complete set of books will thus provide a coherent view of physics that includes, in classical physics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, classical dyn- ics, electromagnetism, and general relativity; and in quantum physics, quantum mechanics, symmetries, relativistic quantum mechanics, quantum electro- and chromodynamics, and the gauge theory of weak interactions.
