A First Course in General Relativity | Date: 24 April 2011, 01:30
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Clarity, readability and rigor combine in the second edition of this widely-used textbook to provide the first step into general relativity for undergraduate students with a minimal background in mathematics. Topics within relativity that fascinate astrophysical researchers and students alike are covered with Schutz’s characteristic ease and authority – from black holes to gravitational lenses, from pulsars to the study of the Universe as a whole. This edition now contains discoveries by astronomers that requiregeneral relativity for their explanation; a revised chapter on relativistic stars, including new information on pulsars; an entirely rewritten chapter on cosmology; and an extended, comprehensive treatment of modern detectors and expected sources. Over 300 exercises, many new to this edition, givestudents the confidence to work with general relativity and the necessary mathematics, whilst the informal writing style makes the subject matter easily accessible.
Summary: Good introduction
Rating: 5
This books spends a good amount on the basic math and introduction to tensors. You don’t need much background to make your way through the material. It provides a nice set of exercises to reinforce the concepts presented in the text.
Summary: good first book for learning general relativity
Rating: 4
This book is a good introduction to relativity which does not pull punches mathematically speaking but still manages to be merciful to the beginner. I read this book with only a basic background in freshman college physics and calculus. It took me 2 6-month sessions over 2 years to go through it all in detail but it was worth it. It gave me a sufficient familiarity with the core concepts and underlying mathematics to consider tackling a more advanced book on relativity someday.
Summary: As easy as it can be
Rating: 4
Nice introduction to GR. Not extensive previous knowledge needed and as clear as it could be.
Summary: As the title says, a good ‘First Course’
Rating: 5
There are a lot of books on General Relativity. In approach they vary from no math, to essentially math books. This book is somewhere in the middle. It is said to be suitable for a one year course for beginning graduatestudents or for undergraduates in physics who have studied special relativity, vector calculus, and electrostatics.
To enable such a student to follow the math in in this book the first part of the book reviews special relativity and vector analysis. Then the book has a section on Tensor Analysis, which was newly developed in Einstein’s time when it was called tensor calculus. The treatment of these mathematical concepts in this book are, in my mind, sufficient for a review for a student that had studied them before, but will require some pretty good insight for a student that had not seen them before. This background information covers about a third of the book.
Chapter 5 of the book starts out, ‘Until now we have discussed only SR.’ The next two thirds cover curvature, physics in a curved spacetime, the Einstein field equations, gravitational radiation (the biggest chapter in the book), and on to the rest of GR.
By the end of the book the student has indeed completed a ‘first course’ in GR. There is still plenty more to go for the interested student specializing in this area.
Summary: Good Intro, but Leaves A LOT out
Rating: 3
As background, I am a senior undergrad doing a thesis on black hole perturbations (following Chandrasekhar). This was the first book I got on GR, a little over a year ago, and I fell in love with it. It does a great job of quickly, though not completely painlessly, introducing you to GR. HOWEVER, as I now continue my ventures further, I find a lot of fundamental concepts lacking in my education. I went from this book onto parts of Wald: not a good idea IMO. I am currently paging through Lovelock and Rund and wishing the mathematical aspect had been introduced in Schutz as well as here. In the end, very nice, well explained intro to the concepts, but you NEED to either supplement with better mathematical explanation, or move quickly to higher book.
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