On Time

This book contains a cogent presentation on the principle of time in physics. It traces time as it appears in quantum mechanics and general relativity and weaves the story of time as it unfolds 3 separate branches of physics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics being the third one. * Philip Phillips, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign *Scientists have struggled with the role of time for as long as science exists, and this book provides a welcome fresh twist on the story by staging the problem in terms of causality. * Jasper van Wezel, University of Amsterdam *Zaanen has a wonderfully engaging writing style, and the reader is quickly drawn into his swirling orbit of ideas, intrigued, confused, enthralled, but never bored. … Zaanen’s book is at its best presenting numerous topics in current theoretical physics research for a general audience, most of which have never really been presented in this manner before: Feynman path integrals, imaginary time, Riemannian geometry, general relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, unitarity, black holes. * Subir Sachdev, Harvard University *For the educated reader, this book gives an interesting survey of the complexity of the quantum gravity problem. * E. Kincanon, CHOICE *

Jan Zaanen obtained his PhD in physics at Groningen University in the Netherlands, 1986. He was subsequently employed at the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, then moved in 1990 to Bell laboratories, Murray Hill, USA as a long-term visitor of the theory group. He returned to Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1993 where he got appointed as full Professor in Theoretical Physics in 2000. He became well known for his various groundbreaking discoveries in this field, honored by a Spinoza (“Dutch Nobel”) prize, a fellowship of the Dutch Royal Academy (KNAW) and visiting professorships at Stanford University, the Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris and the Solvay Institute in Brussels.