Q&A w/ A. Zee
A. Zee, professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, joins us for a brief exchange. He authored Fly by Night Physics: How Physicists Use the Backs of Envelopes (Book of the Month: May 2021).
Are there one or two authors that have had an outsized influence on your work overall?
Many physicists of my generation were influenced very early on by the popular books that George Gamow wrote… He inspired me to write popular books for the general public. More recently, one of my heroes has been Steven Weinberg. Both his popular books and his textbooks are great models of what good writing should be.
Do you have a favorite novel or novelist or fiction genre?
I read a lot of fiction. In fact, recently I was on a David Mitchell kick. He’s one of my favorite authors… I would still rank Cloud Atlas at the top of this list. So now I’m on another kick: I’m reading Nicole Mones… I just read her novel, The Last Chinese Chef.
Can we expect more books from you in the future?
Yes, I do have a forthcoming book. It is now in production. It’s called Quantum Field Theory in Two Words—so the title is a contradiction in itself… It fills a gap… Many readers of popular physics don’t seem to get past quantum mechanics. They seem to be stuck on Schrödinger’s cat… I hope it will be able to reach a wide audience.
