World s best physicist

Physics best universities

Universities / July 10, 2025

When you're solving problems, working through textbooks, getting into the nitty-gritty details of each topic, it's so easy to lose the forest for the trees and forget why you even became inspired to study physics in the first place. This is where really, really good (and non-speculative) books on physics come in handy: they inspire, they encourage, and they help you understand the big picture.

One big problem is that a lot of the popular books written about physics (especially those by famous physicists) are incredibly speculative and tend to present an unrealistic view of what the study of physics is all about. When you're learning physics, it's good to avoid these types of speculative books, and stick to the good ones that talk about the real physics we know exists.

Here are some of my favorite popular physics books:

Mathematical Preliminaries

Before you begin studying physics and working through the topics in the sections below, you have to be familiar with some basic mathematics. A high school education usually provides you with enough mathematical background to begin, and there's no need to be familiar with calculus before starting (though you'll need to learn when you begin).

How to Study

Everyone learns very differently, and knowing your learning style is important: do you learn by reading, by taking notes, by talking, by watching, by doing, or by a combination of some or all of these? Think about this before you begin so that you'll know how to structure your studies.

For example, I learn by reading and by note-taking, so I read through textbooks very carefully, take copious notes, and summarize each concept in my own words before moving on to something new. (For what it's worth, I've found that Miquelrius ruled notebooks and Miquelrius graph notebooks are perfect for taking notes and these Pilot GTec pens are the best pens in the whole world).

Regardless of your learning style, you'll still need to solve the physics problems in each textbook. Solving problems is the only way to really understand how the laws of physics work. There's no way around it. Even though it can feel tedious at times, there's nothing more rewarding than figuring out a really difficult physics problem and realizing that you figured it all out yourself!

Overview

Source: www.susanjfowler.com