Topic: Physics

I have historically never liked the word "Physics". It seems to function as a catch-all term for fields that people don't understand. Where in practice, a "physicist" is sometimes more of a chemist, mathematician, engineer, or biologist -- philosopher at times.

That being said, as a mathematician, I have been increasingly interested in Quantum Theory and related fields. Thankfully, a friend has pointed me towards some reading material. Namely, Amir Alexander's, "Infintesimal", and the work of Bohr, Cavendish and Heisenberg.

Infintesimal

I have recently finished Alexander's book, and found it immensely insightful. I was most struck by a Jesuit priest mentioned named, Fr. Bonaventura Cavaleri, who wrote a book called, "Geometrium Indivisibilius Continuuorum". This is a book written in Latin that roughly translates to "Geometry of the Continuum". Alexander cites this text as a first foray into the foundations of Calculus, and mentions that Newton would've known this book well. What strikes me is that I haven't been able to find any English translations of this Latin text, or other translations at that.

I have begun work on formatting Cavalieri's text for print, as well as to make the text more available for translation and for general appreciation of his contributions to the field of Mathematics. I personally have found his insights immensely helpful for gaining an intuition for the concept of quantitative continuity.

Bohr

I have recently begun to read through the three volumes of Bohr's, "Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge". After reading through the first volume, I'm --happy-- that I now have a list of about 20 more physicist's whose work I will need to read to further my understanding of the field.

What was perhaps most memorable, was the mention of "Brownian Motion". It's a term I've heard plenty of times in various papers and articles about Maths or Finance, but I was never quite sure what it was. Bohr seemed to speak of Brown's contributions as a method of counting particles by a statistical application of Partial Differential Equations -- a notion I tangentially understand. Most of the stuff about Electromagnetism or structure of particles went over my head.

Next Steps...

Once I get through with Cavendish and Heisenberg's work, I'd like to move onto Planck's, since his 1901, "Quantum of Action", is referenced quite heavily, and I haven't been able to get a satisfactory answer for just what his "quantum of action" is.

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