James Peebles - Nobel Prize in Physics, 2019 (7 books)

PHILLIP JAMES EDWIN PEEBLES (b. 1935) is a Canadian-American astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University.  He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and structure formation.  He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019 "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos", with one half awarded to him "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology", and the other half going jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."

Most of Peebles' work since 1964 has been in the field of physical cosmology to determine the origins of the universe.  In 1965 he was part of a group at Princeton headed by physicist Robert Dicke that was interested in physical evidence of the Big Bang theory.  They predicted the existence of the CMB and planned to seek it just before it was found by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.

Peebles was one of the first cosmologists to consider cold dark matter as crucial to the formation of structures such as galaxy clusters and galaxies.  He has led statistical studies of clustering and superclustering of galaxies, and calculated the universal abundances of helium and other light elements, demonstrating agreement between big bang theory and observation.  His 2004 Shaw Prize citation states: "He laid the foundations for almost all modern investigations in cosmology, both theoretical and observational, transforming a highly speculative field into a precision science."

His books on physical cosmology — PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY (1971), THE LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE (1980), and PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY (1993) — had a significant impact in convincing physicists that the time has come to study cosmology as a respectable branch of physics.  He also wrote a textbook on QUANTUM MECHANICS (1992), and co-edited (with Lyman Page and Bruce Partridge) a compilation of reminiscences by cosmologists, FINDING THE BIG BANG (2009).

COSMOLOGY'S CENTURY (2020) describes how scientists working in independent directions found themselves converging on a theory of cosmic evolution interesting enough to warrant the rigorous testing it passes so well. He explores the major advances — some inspired by remarkable insights or perhaps just lucky guesses — as well as the wrong turns taken and the roads not explored.

Peebles' most recent work, THE WHOLE TRUTH (published August 2022), is a personal meditation on the quest for objective reality in natural science.  He traces the history of thought about the nature of physical science since Einstein, and succinctly lays out the fundamental working assumptions.  Through a careful examination of the general theory of relativity, Einstein’s cosmological principle, and the theory of an expanding universe, Peebles shows the evidence that we are discovering the nature of reality in successive approximations through increasingly rigorous scrutiny.


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:

* Cosmology's Century (Princeton, 2020)
* Finding the Big Bang [ed.] (Cambridge, 2009)
* The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe (Princeton, 1980 [2020])
* Physical Cosmology (Princeton, 1971)
* Principles of Physical Cosmology (Princeton, 1993)
* Quantum Mechanics (Princeton, 1992 [2020])
* The Whole Truth (Princeton, 2022) – ePUB

In addition to the above books, this collection includes 120 academic articles and miscellaneous papers by Peebles, including his Nobel Lecture "How Physical Cosmology Grew".


Please seed and share with others. :-)