Feynman lectures on gravitation
By: Richard P. Feynman, [based on notes by] Fernando B. Morinigo, William G. Wagner ; edited by Brian Hatfield ; with a foreword by John Preskill and Kip S. Thorne.
Contributors: Morinigo, Fernando B.; Wagner, William G.; Hatfield, Brian.
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Reading, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
Subjects: Gravitation; Quantum gravity
Description: The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are based on notes prepared during a course on gravitational physics that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech during the 1962-63 academic year. For several years prior to these lectures, Feynman thought long and hard about the fundamental problems in gravitational physics, yet he published very little.

These lectures represent a useful record of his viewpoints and some of his insights into gravity and its application to cosmology, superstars, wormholes, and gravitational waves at that particular time. The lectures also contain a number of fascinating digressions and asides on the foundations of physics and other issues.

.

Characteristically, Feynman took an untraditional non-geometric approach to gravitation and general relativity based on the underlying quantum aspects of gravity. Hence, these lectures contain a unique pedagogical account of the development of Einstein's general relativity as the inevitable result of the demand for a self-consistent theory of a massless spin-2 field (the graviton) coupled to the energy-momentum tensor of matter.

This approach also demonstrates the intimate and fundamental connection between gauge invariance and the Principle of Equivalence.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-228) and index.