Review: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Working with subatomic particle theory requires a crazy imagination because things that happen there… well, they are totally unlike anything we see in everyday life. And strangely, they cause everything we see in everyday life. So it’s like fairy tale land, except that it involves a lot of mathematics. But as Richard Feynman brilliantly demonstrates here, math skills are an important aspect, but an even more important one is that you need a totally creative mind that’s able to imagine the unimaginable, and maybe you also need to have a few loose nuts in your head.
I read these lectures, and I still don’t understand quantum electrodynamics fully. Nobody does; Dr Feynman warns us of that right in the beginning. But his ambitious goal to explain this fascinating field of physics to a layman is very much achieved. I get the general picture of quantum electrodynamics and it’s nothing short of amazing. This is one of the books that you read and you think “wow, I really wish I were able to have a nice talk with this guy over a beer”.
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