Volume of lecture notes is CQT Principal Investigator’s eleventh book

Berge Englert completes his series on undergraduate physics with book on statistical mechanics

Meet Berge Englert's latest book, out now from the publisher World Scientific. Background image: sergeymansurov / Shutterstock.

A full Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) since 2003, CQT’s Berge Englert has drawn on his long teaching career to publish a series of books for undergraduate students in physics. His most recent book, Lectures on Statistical Mechanics, was published by the Singapore-headquartered World Scientific Publishing Company in July 2020.

“After the three volumes on Quantum Mechanics (2006), one each on Classical Electrodynamics (2014) and Classical Mechanics (2015), this latest volume on Statistical Mechanics (2020) completes the coverage of the core material that physics majors learn during their undergraduate education,” says Berge.

All these titles grew out of courses taught in NUS. The course on statistical mechanics was for undergraduates in their fourth year of study. Berge notes in his book’s preface: “The presentation is rather detailed and does not skip intermediate steps that — as experience shows — are not so obvious for the learning student.”

Statistical mechanics concerns, as the book states, “physical systems that contain so many degrees of freedom that a detailed description is both impossible and useless”. Topics covered include statistical ensembles, ideal and real gases and perturbation theory.

In addition to these six volumes of lecture notes, Berge has also authored earlier lecture notes, compiled a book of Julian Schwinger’s notes on quantum mechanics and co-edited three books on advanced topics.

Lectures on Statistical Mechanics is available directly from the publisher and via online platforms in hardcover, softcover and as an ebook.