Reading Dr. Michael A. Nielsen

If you are reading this blog, the odds are high that you are a physicist. Then, you may have probably heard about Dr. Michael A. Nielsen, the Quantum Computation pioneer and coauthor (with Isaac L. Chuang) of the reference book on the subject, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information.

Two years ago, Dr. Nielsen had a permanent position at the University of Queensland. In spring ’07, he moved to Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. In September ’07, he decided to make a change and “shift [his] creative work to a completely new direction”: the “development of new tools for scientific collaboration and publication.” Since Perimeter “was not willing to support” his new activity as a faculty member, he resigned his job in June ’08. Now, he defines himself as a writer. And so he is.

Dr. Nielsen has a blog. He started it in 2003, but now his posts are longer and more frequent. If you are interested in science, research, IT, and progress, it is a must-read.

He’s also writing a book on The Future of Science. There’s a full category about it in his blog (you can, e.g., read a very appealing invited talk on Doing science online he delivered in QIP2009).

I really really encourage you to read Dr. Nielsen writings. I am really looking forward to his book.

Amazon order

Today I didn’t go to class. I’ve been having a sore throat for some days, and today it was specially painful when I woke up, so I stayed in bed for all the morning.

In the afternoon I felt some kind of guilty, since during the last two weeks I couldn’t go to even half of the classes I should. I hope this gets balanced somehow by spending some time ordering the books for the semester from Amazon. Here goes the list:

• Introductory Nuclear Physics, by K.S. Krane

• Solid State Physics, by N.W. Ashcroft and N.D. Mermin

• An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, by M.E. Peskin and D.V. Schroeder

• A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem, by R.D. Mattuck

• The TeXbook, by D.E. Knuth

• The LaTeX Companion, by F. Mittelbach, M. Goossens, J. Braams, D. Carlisle and C. Rowley

Yes, they are a lot of books, and some of them are quite expensive… So I must show my deepest gratitude to my parents, who made this possible!

I spent the rest of the day relaxing and playing the piano.

P.S.: Today I somehow faced the two main cons of stopping relying on my parents next year: the money for the things I enjoy and my piano.