The Beautiful Invisible

• Refreshing, entertaining view of the conceptual structure of theoretical physics
• Focuses on the concept of the 'abstract' - the invisible and universal patterns by which we attempt to grasp the reality
• Challenges the image of theoretical physics as a dry subject, instead presenting it as a form of art

Readership: general readers curious about fundamental theoretical physics as well as physics students and academics.

Giovanni Vignale, Curator's Professor of Physics, University of Missouri-Columbia

Giovanni Vignale is Curator's Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is the co-author of an academic text, Quantum Theory of the Electron Liquid (CUP, 2005).

"this book is the best Christmas reading for physicists this year" - CERN Courier

"For anyone thinking of starting a physics degree, or wishing they had done one, this is an excellent book...by someone who is eveidently a first-rate teacher." - Andrew Crumey, The Scotsman

Prologue
1: The way of the abstract
2: Limits
3: Laws are made to be broken
4: Of first and last things
5: Representations
6: The invisible light
7: The double helix
8: Quantum mechanics: the triumph of the abstract
9: Tales of quantum reality
10: The spinning electron and other metaphors
11: Margarita