Notes on Quantum Mechanics

by Enrico Fermi

The lecture notes presented here in facsimile were prepared by Enrico Fermi for students taking his course at the University of Chicago in 1954. They are vivid examples of his unique ability to lecture simply and clearly on the most essential aspects of quantum mechanics.

At the close of each lecture, Fermi created a single problem for his students. These challenging exercises were not included in Fermi's notes but were preserved in the notes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226243818
• ISBN13: 9780226243818
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The Genius of Fermi Shows

This is perhaps one of the best supplemental materials to follow up with either during, or shortly after one's quantum courses. This is the closest most of us will ever come to taking a course by the genius Fermi himself, and this book is generally inexpensive. If you've read the description, you'll see that this is nothing close to a self-contained text book though, so some familiarity with QM is needed if you are to make the most of these lecture notes.

The previous reviewer got it wrong !

I don't know which book the previous reviewer was referring to. This is a physics book, by one of the leading physicists of this century.

A genius' version of quantum mechanics

This is a delightful booklet. It contains the handwritten notes prepared by Fermi for his lectures at Chicago. They are marvellously organized, with all derivations clearly given, together with the motivations and examples. Sometimes you find a note like that: "Comment on the relative cosmological abundance of elements", and you can only imagine what the master would produce. The table of contents of the book is quite usual, and corresponds more or less to a book like Schiff, Merzbacher, etc, with more emphasis on applications. It is one of the best examples of the Fermi mastery of teaching techniques, using simple models, approximations, clever analogies. The book, as one should expect, contains the best derivation of the "Fermi Golden Rule", which is a formula for the rate of transitions in first-order, time-dependent perturbation theory. Fermi used to make miracles with this formula. The essential difference between this book and the usual intro! ductory ones is, of course, Fermi. This means that the problems are treated as they really appear in nature, with no idealizations to make things easier. Fermi could do that as no other physicist, as he was the last universalist: there was a time in which it was not unreasonable to say that he was the best theoretician and the best esperimentalist in activity.A similar set of notes about thermodynamics and statistical physics was offered also by the University of Chicago Press.I wonder if they are still available.