* Leonard Susskind - On String Theory and Black Holes (7 books)

LEONARD SUSSKIND (b. 1940) is an American physicist who is the Felix Bloch Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics.  His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology.

Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, having, with Yoichiro Nambu and Holger Bech Nielsen, independently introduced the idea that particles could in fact be states of excitation of a relativistic string.  He was the first to give a precise string-theoretic interpretation of the holographic principle in 1995, and the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003.

He is the author of several popular science books that have received significant critical reception.  The first, THE COSMIC LANDSCAPE: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (2005), brings his idea of the anthropic landscape of string theory to the general public.  He describes how the string theory landscape was an almost inevitable consequence of several factors, one of which was Steven Weinberg's prediction of the cosmological constant in 1987.  The book emphasizes the theory of a "landscape" with many universes out there.

THE BLACK HOLE WAR: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (2008) is perhaps his most famous work and covers the black hole information paradox, and the related scientific dispute between himself and Stephen Hawking.  The latter had argued that information inside a black hole is lost forever and not preserved in Hawking radiation.  The debate led to the holographic principle, proposed by Gerard 't Hooft and refined by Susskind, which suggested that the information is in fact preserved, stored on the boundary of a system.

Susskind has also co-authored a series of popular companion books to his continuing-education lecture series The Theoretical Minimum (see https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses).  The first of these, THE THEORETICAL MINIMUM: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics (2013), is a mathematical introduction to various theoretical physics concepts, such as principle of least action, Lagrangian mechanics, Hamiltonian mechanics, Poisson brackets, and electromagnetism.  It was followed by QUANTUM MECHANICS: The Theoretical Minimum (2014), and SPECIAL RELATIVITY AND CLASSICAL FIELD THEORY: The Theoretical Minimum (2017).  The fourth book in the series, on the General Theory of Relativity, will be published in January 2023.


In addition to 150 individual papers (PDF), the following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as noted:

* An Introduction to Black Holes, Information and String Theory Revolution (World Scientific, 2005) – PDF
* The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking... (Little Brown, 2008) – ePUB
* The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Little Brown, 2008) – ePUB
* Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum [with A. Friedman] (Basic Books, 2014) – ePUB + PDF
* Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory [with A. Friedman] (Basic Books, 2019) – ePUB
* The Theoretical Minimum ... to Start Doing Physics [with G. Hrabovsky] (Basic Books, 2013) – ePUB + PDF
* Three Lectures on Complexity and Black Holes (Springer, 2020) – PDF


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