The Shape of a Life
One Mathematician’s Search for the Universe’s Hidden Geometry
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The Shape of a Life
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
About this listen
A Fields medalist recounts his lifelong transnational effort to uncover the geometric shape - the Calabi-Yau manifold - that may store the hidden dimensions of our universe.
Harvard geometer and Fields medalist Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. Beginning with an impoverished childhood in China and Hong Kong, Yau takes listeners through his doctoral studies at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War protests, his Fields Medal-winning proof of the Calabi conjecture, his return to China, and his pioneering work in geometric analysis. This new branch of geometry, which Yau built up with his friends and colleagues, has paved the way for solutions to several important and previously intransigent problems. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, this book offers listeners not only insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics.
©2019 Shing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Few scientists have enthralled more people than Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Six Easy Pieces and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Beloved for his engaging character and zest for life, he is an American icon. In this selection of letters, Feynman's towering genius and singular personality shine like dazzling stars.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely delightful
- By csk on 07-07-05
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Significant Figures
- The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 254
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 212
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Beware
- By Anton Kurtz on 12-08-18
By: Ian Stewart
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A Mind at Play
- How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
- By: Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 525
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 448
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 448
Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I wanted more information about Information Theory
- By Bonny on 05-08-18
By: Rob Goodman, and others
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How the Laser Happened
- Adventures of a Scientist
- By: Charles H. Townes
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In How the Laser Happened, Nobel laureate Charles Townes provides a highly personal look at some of the leading events in 20th-century physics. This lively memoir, packed with firsthand accounts and historical anecdotes, is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of science and an inspiring example for students considering scientific careers.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great for aspiring physicists
- By James S. on 10-06-18
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Frank Ramsey
- A Sheer Excess of Powers
- By: Cheryl Misak
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 29
When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great biography, not appropriate as an audiobook
- By Scott on 06-18-24
By: Cheryl Misak
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Hood
- Trailblazer of the Genomics Age
- By: Luke Timmerman, David Baltimore
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Lee Hood did that rarest of things. He enabled scientists to see things they couldn't see before and do things they hadn't dreamed of doing. Scientists can now sequence complete human genomes in a day, setting in motion a revolution that is personalizing medicine. Hood, a son of the American West, was an unlikely candidate to transform biology. But with ferocious drive, he led a team at Caltech that developed the automated DNA sequencer, the tool that paved the way for the Human Genome Project.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Revealing Biography
- By Jean on 07-27-17
By: Luke Timmerman, and others
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Einstein's War
- How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I
- By: Matthew Stanley
- Narrated by: Matthew Stanley
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare - scientists trapped in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct.
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3 out of 5 stars
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When will I learn?
- By Paul on 01-01-20
By: Matthew Stanley
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Robert Oppenheimer
- A Life Inside the Center
- By: Ray Monk
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 361
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 306
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis in the race to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough that was to have eternal ramifications for mankind and that made Oppenheimer the “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” But with his actions leading up to that great achievement, he also set himself on a dangerous collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch-hunters. In Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center, Ray Monk, author of peerless biographies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, goes deeper than any previous biographer in the quest to solve the enigma of Oppenheimer’s motivations and his complex personality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A comprehensive biography
- By Jean on 10-17-14
By: Ray Monk
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Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field
- How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
- By: Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 404
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 336
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Story5 out of 5 stars 336
Two of the boldest and most creative scientists of all time were Michael Faraday (1791-1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). This is the story of how these two men - separated in age by 40 years - discovered the existence of the electromagnetic field and devised a radically new theory which overturned the strictly mechanical view of the world that had prevailed since Newton's time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing narration of an incredibly well told story
- By Paul de Jong on 03-01-21
By: Nancy Forbes, and others
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Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work
- By: Kitty Ferguson
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time, a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking's life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not What it Appears
- By Heizenberg on 04-04-12
By: Kitty Ferguson
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Gods of the Upper Air
- How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
- By: Charles King
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 301
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 257
A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced". What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Much Needed despite poor performance
- By J. Kahn on 08-21-19
By: Charles King
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The Hidden Habits of Genius
- Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness
- By: Craig Wright
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 354
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 310
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 307
What is genius? The word evokes iconic figures like Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a fourth grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. The Hidden Habits of Genius explores the meaning of this contested term, and the unexpected motivations of those we have dubbed "genius" throughout history, from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Click-bait title, minimal substance inside
- By James S. on 11-27-20
By: Craig Wright
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The Idea Factory
- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
- By: Jon Gertner
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,017
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 850
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 851
In The Idea Factory, New York Times Magazine writer Jon Gertner reveals how Bell Labs served as an incubator for scientific innovation from the 1920s through the1980s. In its heyday, Bell Labs boasted nearly 15,000 employees, 1200 of whom held PhDs and 13 of whom won Nobel Prizes. Thriving in a work environment that embraced new ideas, Bell Labs scientists introduced concepts that still propel many of today’s most exciting technologies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story -- horrible pauses
- By Rodney on 01-29-13
By: Jon Gertner
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The Element
- How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
- By: Ken Robinson Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Ken Robinson Ph. D., Lou Aronica
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,952
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,497
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,490
The Element shows the vital need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about human resources and imagination. It is an essential strategy for transforming education, business, and communities to meet the challenges of living and succeeding in the 21st century.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not Great
- By Samantha on 04-02-12
-
How the Hippies Saved Physics
- Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival
- By: David Kaiser
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 165
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 128
In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally, I understand entanglement
- By Gary on 05-27-12
By: David Kaiser
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What is the best way to think about the world? How often do we consider how our own thinking might impact the way we approach our daily decisions? Could it help or hinder our relationships, our careers, or even our health? As acclaimed mathematician David Sumpter shows, thinking about thinking is something we rarely do, yet it is something science questions all the time. He has spent decades studying what we could all learn from the mindsets of scientists, and Four Ways of Thinking is the result.
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Fractal recursion of logic gates
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Causal Inference
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Causal Inference provides a brief and nontechnical introduction to randomized experiments, propensity scores, natural experiments, instrumental variables, sensitivity analysis, and quasi-experimental devices. Ideas are illustrated with examples from medicine, epidemiology, economics and business, the social sciences, and public policy.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not appropriate for audible and the reader don’t know how to read math
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Throughout history, scientists have come up with theories and ideas that just don't seem to make sense. These we call paradoxes. The paradoxes Al-Khalili offers are drawn chiefly from physics and astronomy and represent those that have stumped some of the finest minds. With elegant explanations that bring the listener inside the mind of those who've developed them, Al-Khalili helps us to see that, in fact, paradoxes can be solved if seen from the right angle.
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If you're like most people, geometry is a dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade. It's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face.
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Excellent, but not suited for an audiobook
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In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics.
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Beware
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Probing the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Incompleteness indelibly portrays the tortured genius whose vision rocked the stability of mathematical reasoning—and brought him to the edge of madness.
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drones on and on for hours!
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
This is an audiobook about math, but it contains no numbers. Math Without Numbers is a vivid, conversational, and wholly original guide to the three main branches of abstract math - topology, analysis, and algebra - which turn out to be surprisingly easy to grasp. This audiobook upends the conventional approach to math, inviting you to think creatively about shape and dimension, the infinite and infinitesimal, symmetries, proofs, and how these concepts all fit together. Join this freewheeling tour of the inimitable joys and unsolved mysteries of this curiously powerful subject.
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please leave your politics at home
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The Joy of x
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Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, and insight.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great listen
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Quanta and Fields
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Sean Carroll is creating a profoundly new approach to sharing physics with a broad audience, one that goes beyond analogies to show how physicists really think. He cuts to the bare mathematical essence of our most profound theories, explaining every step in a uniquely accessible way. Quantum field theory is how modern physics describes nature at its most profound level. Starting with the basics of quantum mechanics itself, Sean Carroll explains measurement and entanglement before explaining how the world is really made of fields.
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Failed to tell a story
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What listeners say about The Shape of a Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Carlos Rangel
- 01-30-24
The Chinese Communist Party would love this book
I love reading biographies. But I am not a fan of political propaganda. This book has way too much Chinese loving content, it gets tiring and makes me wonder if it was really necessary to have so much of it. In the book, it almost feels like fluff. Now, I think China is a country that has a rich history and has contributed so much to humanity. With that said, I think the author loves to cast a blind eye to the human abuses the CCP is getting away with, not to mention the threat they pose to its neighbors including Hong Kong.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 06-17-24
One of the best popular math book
I really like the passion of Shing Tung Yau on math and his devotion for training students! He is a great mathematician!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Ley Ouchi
- 12-13-22
The shape of the author's life
I quickly took the book convinced by the cover and expecting some new perspectives on sacred geometry.
I am an artist and in the art world, we are taught that art matters, not the artist.
If you have time, patience, and wanna listen in detail to someone's life that you have never heard before that's the book.
I wish I can have my credit back.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Steven White
- 01-17-23
A book full of complaints
Not enough math. Just a bunch of the author complaining about other people, and sniping at them. Tedious and embarrassing to listen to.
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2 people found this helpful