Geometry, Topology and Physics, Second Edition (Graduate Student Series in Physics)

There seem to be a few books on the market that are very similar to this one: Nash & Sen, Frankel, etc. This one is at the top of its class, in my opinion, for a couple reasons:

(1) It's written like a math text that covers physics-related material, not a book about mathematics for physicists. I prefer this; you may not. As a consequence, this book is more rigorous than its alternatives, it relies less on physical examples, and it cuts out a lot of lengthy explanation that you may not need. Of course, there are drawbacks to all of these "features" -- you need to decide what you need and what's best for you.

(2) It's most comprehensive, with Frankel coming in second, and Nash & Sen least comprehensive (though they have quite a bit on Fibre bundles and related topics). Nakahara has a chapter on complex manifolds, which is absent from the other two. Nakahara also concludes with a nice intro to string theory, which is absent from the other two as well (though nothing you couldn't find in Polchinski or the like). Actually -- I modify this slightly. Frankel covers less subjects than Nakahara, but with more depth (though also more wordiness -- I quit Frankel about 2/3 through because it wasn't succinct enough and I got tired of it).

Depending on your tastes, I would recommend this book before the other two.

It presupposes that you have an understanding of algebra (groups, rings, fields, etc.) but it has an introduction to the necessary components of topology within. Frankel has presupposes both algebra and topology; Nash & Sen presupposes only algebra.


A wonderful exposition on the mathematics of modern physics   July 22, 2001
hsurreal (Stanford, CA United States)
49 out of 51 found this review helpful

Nakahara is one of my favorite books. It gives the reader the necessary knowledge in differential geometry and topology to understand theoretical physics from a modern viewpoint. Each chapter in Nakahara would normally take a full semester mathematics course to teach, but the necesseties for a physicist are distilled with just the right amount of rigor so that the reader is neither bored from excessive proof nor skeptical from simple plausibility arguments.

The first few chapters (homotopy, homology) are rather dry, but the text picks up after that. The manifold chapter is really good, particularly the Lie groups section which gives a geometric viewpoint of the objects which get very little attention in a typical particle physics course. Unfortunately, nothing is said on representation theory, but that can be found in Georgi's book. The cohomology chapter is wonderfully quick and to the point. I found myself having to tell myself to slow down because of the excitement I had in reading it. The Riemannian geometry chapter reads wonderfully and serves as a great reference for all those general relativity formulae you always forget. The end of that chapter has an exquisite little bit on spinors in curved spacetime. The complex geometry chapter is also wonderful. I find myself going back to it all the time when reading Polchinski's string text. The chapters on fiber bundles seem a bit on the overly mathy side, but then again, all the pain is in the definitions which becomes well worth it in the end. I haven't read the last few chapters (spending all of my time in Polchinski!) but I definitely will when I have some spare time. The notation in Nakahara is also really self explanatory and standard. It is written with the physicist in mind who doesn't mind a bit of sloppiness or ambiguity in his notation.

With regards to Frankel, Nakahara is much more modular than Frankel. Each chapter of Nakahara is pretty much self contained whereas Frankel kinda needs to be read straight through. I find it very difficult to just look up a random thing in Frankel and learn about it on the spot, whereas this seems to work in Nakahara just fine. Frankel is a bit more respectful of proper mathematics which also makes it a harder text to read for physicists.

Nakahara is a great text. When I visited Caltech I noticed it on the bookshelf of every theorist that I talked to. Anyone who wants to understand how it is that geometry is so important in modern theoretical physics would do himself a favor in buying this book.


An excellent book   September 19, 2006
Ricardo Avila
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This is the best book of its type, that is, a book that contains almost all if not all the advance mathematics a theoretical physicist should know. I have studied chapters 2-9 and it has the perfect balance between rigorous presentation of topics and practical uses with examples. The level is for advance graduate students. The range of topics covered is wide including Topology topics like Homotopy, Homology, Cohomology theory and others like Manifolds, Riemannian Geometry, Complex Manifolds, Fibre Bundles and Characteristics Classes. I believe this book gives you a solid base in the modern mathematics that are being used among the physicists and mathematicians that you certainly may need to know and from where you will be in a position to further extent (if you wish) into more technical advanced mathematical books on specific topics, also it is self contained and brings lots of exercises that help learn the concepts presented, my advice, get it is a superb book!


Excellent book   December 3, 2001
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

A very nice blending of rigor and physical motivation with well chosen topics. Plenty of examples to illustrate important points. Especially noteworthy is its description of actions of lie algebras on manifolds : the best I have read so far.

Most of the topics are intepreted in terms of their topological/geomtrical structure (and the interplay between those two), but that's what the title of the book says. So you will learn things again in new ways, and gain a powerful new set of tools. If nothing else, it gives you a nice warm fuzzy feeling when you read other field/string theory books that glosses over the mathematics.

One minor rant : the notation of the book can be better. I personally uses indices to keep track of the type of objects (eg. greek index=components of tensors, no index=a geometrical object etc..), but Nakahara drops indices here and there "for simplicity". But that's my personal rant.

Good book. Buy it.


Great book.   March 26, 2005
Gargantua (France)
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

This is a very useful book for understanding modern physics. You absolutely need such a book to really understand general relativity, string theory etc. For instance, Wald's book on general relativity will make much more sense once you go through Nakahara's book. It is very complete, clearly written, comprehensive and easy to read. I would also recommend Morita's "Geometry of differential forms' and Dubrovin,Novikov and Fomeko's 3 volume monograph, if you can find it. All in all, Nakahara's book is one of the best buys, precious book.