read The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

When I arrived home from the US a couple of days ago a parcel awaited me. One of the books inside was “The Road to Reality”. A look at its table of contents revealed what a treat lay in store for me in reading this tome, which extends to more than 1,000 pages:

Prologue
1. The roots of science
2. An ancient theorem and a modern question
3. Kinds of number in the physical world
4. Magical complex numbers
5. Geometry of numbers, powers and roots
6. Real number calculus
7. Complex number calculus
8. Riemann surfaces and complex mapping
9. Fourier decomposition and hyperfunctions
10. Surfaces
11. Hypercomplex numbers
12. Manifolds of n dimensions
13. Symmetry groups
14. Calculus on manifolds
15. Fibre bundles and gauge connections
16. The ladder of infinity
17. Spacetime
18. Minkowskian geometry
19. The classical fields of Maxwell and Einstein
20. Lagrangians and Hamiltonians
21. The quantum particle
22. Quantum algebra, geometry and spin
23. The entangled quantum world
24. Dirac’s electron and antiparticles
25. The standard model of particle physics
26. Quantum field theory
27. The big bang and its thermodynamic legacy
28. Speculative theories of the early universe
29. The measurement paradox
30. Gravity’s role in quantum state reduction
31. Supersymmetry, supra-dimensionality and strings
32. Einstein’s narrower path; loop variables
33. More radical perspectives; twister theory
34. Where lies the road to reality?
Epilogue

To some, such a list of mathematical topics would turn them away immediately. Not me. But then, I’ve always liked mathematics and been intrigued by what it has to offer in terms of understanding the world I inhabit. Sure, it doesn’t provide all the answers but is much more grounded in reality than things like religion and astrology!

When I heard Sir Roger Penrose being interviewed on radio when he was visiting Australia last year I was captivated. Unfortunately I was unable to attend his public lecture but I am thoroughly looking forward to starting the gradual exercise of reading “The Road to Reality”, which I ordered today. I am sure Sir Roger would approve of my intention to read it without rushing.