Favorite Prefaces V
P. W. Anderson
I reread Concepts in Solids with both pride and embarrassment. Pride, both because it was this set of lectures which inspired Brian Josephson to invent his effect — not every book can point to the precise Nobel prize it inspired — and because l did, in a very brief space, manage to touch some of the key topics which are still not adequately covered in your average solid state theory book. For instance, it is shocking that the main texts used in this country still do not touch on the Mott transition or the “Magnetic State.” I was aiming at conceptual, not mechanical physics, and I hope I got there.
Embarrassment, because after all, there has been 30 years of physics since then. For instance, I note that I guessed absolutely wrong in dismissing tight-binding theory out of hand: it has not yet totally coine into its own but it is, in my present opinion, the right way to think about most bonding in solids. I am not ashamed of skipping localization – only Mott was interested in it, and neither of us yet knew where to go next. I was prescient about broken symmetry — as Josephson realized — but left out phase transitions, as I myself noted.
Nonetheless, I believe that the average student will still be harmed less by this book than by any number of other books I should not name, and I welcome the reissuance.
