Symmetry: An Introduction to Group Theory and Its Applications

By Roy McWeeny

Book Overview

The crucial significance of symmetry to the development of group theory and in the fields of physics and chemistry cannot be overstated, and this well-organized volume provides an excellent introduction to the topic. The text develops the elementary ideas of both group theory and representation theory in a progressive and thorough fashion, leading students to a point from which they can proceed easily to more elaborate applications. The finite groups describing the symmetry of regular polyhedral and of repeating patterns are emphasized, and geometric illustrations of all main processes appear here -- including more than 100 fully worked examples. Designed to be read at a variety of levels and to allow students to focus on any of the main fields of application, this volume is geared toward advanced undergraduate and graduate physics and chemistry students with the requisite mathematical background.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486421821
• ISBN13: 9780486421827
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Gentle Manifesto

This book is less a manifesto than it is a very interesting look at how architecture has evolved over the last 2000 years. Venturi evocatively shows that there was no straight line approach to architecture, but rather an ever-changing and ambiguous path that Modernists chose to make short cuts through. In this sense, Venturi really does capture the complexity and contradiction in architecture in that there are many lessons...

still essential

"I like complexity and contradiction in architecture." That's how Robert Venturi starts this superb book. No great proclamation. It was an age tired of great proclamations. Instead, Venturi takes us through an impressively learned tour of his favorite things, a grand overview of great architecture, with acute formal analysis of facade and plan composition, sectional variety, and an accumulating realization that complexity...

Still Relevant...

Now that the bottom of postmodernism has actually fallen out and is being dragged along the street by the chains of American capitalism, it's "alright" for students of architecture to return to that misjudged canonical textbook of post-modernism, C+C by Venturi. While not as engaging as his other main work "Learning from Las Vegas", this book still leads the reader into a meticulous analysis of the physical composition of...

Gateway towards looking at architecture

I had to read this book for a class specifically regarding Robert Venturi and the postmodernism movement that he became a leading proponent of. However, this book is NOT a manifesto for a postmodern vacabulary- rather, this book looks at all architecture from the Parthenon to the common family home. Let me say that I have read many architectural theory books, but nothing that really inspired me to look at a building and really...