Cosmology

This book is unique in the detailed, self-contained, and comprehensive treatment that it gives to the ideas and formulas that are used and tested in modern cosmological research. It divides into two parts, each of which provides enough material for a one-semester graduate course. The first part deals chiefly with the isotropic and homogeneous average universe; the second part concentrates on the departures from the average universe. Throughout the book the author presents detailed analytic calculations of cosmological phenomena, rather than just report results obtained elsewhere by numerical computation. The book is up to date, and gives detailed accounts of topics such as recombination, microwave background polarization, leptogenesis, gravitational lensing, structure formation, and multifield inflation, that are usually treated superficially if at all in treatises on cosmology. Copious references to current research literature are supplied. Appendices include a brief introduction to general relativity, and a detailed derivation of the Boltzmann equation for photons and neutrinos used in calculations of cosmological evolution. Also provided is an assortment of problems.

Professor Steven Weinberg Jack S. Josey-Welch Foundation Chair in Science and Regental Professor and Director, Theory Research Group Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979 National Medal of Science, 1991 Benjamin Franklin Prize, American Philosophical Society, 2004 Member, U. S. National Academy of Sciences Foreign Member, Royal Society of London Honorary Member, Royal Irish Academy Member, American Philosophical Society Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences J. Robert Oppenheimer Prize, 1973 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1977 Earned degrees A.B., Cornell University, 1954 Ph.D., Princeton University, 1957 Honorary degrees Harvard University, A.M., 1973 Knox College, D.Sc., 1978 University of Chicago, Sc.D., 1978 University of Rochester, Sc.D., l979 Yale University, Sc.D., 1979 City University of New York,Sc.D., 1980 Clark University, Sc.D., 1982 Dartmouth College, Sc.D., 1984 Weizmann Institute, Ph.D. Hon.Caus., 1985 Washington College, D.Litt., 1985 Columbia University, Sc.D., 1990 University of Salamanca, Sc.D., 1992 University of Padua, Ph.D. Hon.Caus., 1992 University of Barcelona, Sc.D., 1996 Bates College, Sc. D., 2002 McGill University, Sc. D., 2003 University of Waterloo, Sc. D., 2004