Leonard Susskind Teaches You “The Theoretical Minimum” for Understanding Modern Physics

in Physics, Stanford | May 2nd, 2013 5 Comments

susskind-g For the past decade, Leonard Susskind, one of Amer­i­ca’s pre-emi­nent physi­cists, has taught a series of six cours­es in Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram.  The series “explores the essen­tial the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tions of mod­ern physics,” help­ing life­long learn­ers (like you) attain the “the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum” for think­ing intel­li­gent­ly about mod­ern physics. Over the years, the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram (where, in full dis­clo­sure, I serve as the direc­tor) has taped the lec­tures and made them avail­able to a glob­al audi­ence on YouTube and iTunes. We’ve even burned the lec­tures onto CDs and shipped them to remote loca­tions in Afghanistan and Nepal where con­nec­tiv­i­ty is still lack­ing. This week, Susskind’s pop­u­lar lec­tures found a new home of sorts with the launch of The The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum, a new web site that presents the six cours­es in a way that’s neat, clean and easy to nav­i­gate. The site also offers a short text sum­ma­ry of each lec­ture, plus relat­ed ref­er­ence mate­ri­als. You can jump into the cours­es and get start­ed on your own intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney via this list:

Note: Susskind’s cours­es, and many oth­ers, also appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our col­lec­tion of 875 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Hig­gs Boson with Leonard Susskind, the Father of String The­o­ry

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

Leonard Susskind, Father of String The­o­ry, Warm­ly Remem­bers His Friend, Richard Feyn­man


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Comments (5)
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  • sonya says:
    May 3, 2013 at 2:16 am

    Thank you!
    I appre­ci­ate the effort, because for me this is a very help­ful expla­na­tion of some gen­er­al­ly impor­tant laws.

    Reply
  • Isadora says:
    May 3, 2013 at 9:46 pm

    I’ve been look­ing for some­thing like this for YEARS now. That’s why I love Open Cul­ture.

    Reply
  • nate says:
    May 4, 2013 at 6:30 pm

    the best free physics mate­ri­als hands down. I’d love to see these adapt­ed for cours­era

    Reply
  • duzzi says:
    March 9, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    These lec­tures seem very uneven. Some are clear and well artic­u­lat­ed, some are con­fus­ing (and seem­ing­ly con­fused). It would also be nice if Mr Susskind would avoid talk­ing with is mouth full … it gets a bit annoy­ing after a while.

    Reply
  • wallace dowdy says:
    July 6, 2014 at 6:47 pm

    if dark mat­ter per­me­ates everything,including the space between sub­atom­ic particles,then black holes should be effect­ed as well. might this sug­gest a per­ma­nent con­nec­tiv­i­ty between relat­ed emit­ted and infalling par­ti­cles?

    Reply

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