Rating: 
Summary: If you can get another book
Review: As a grad student I don't find this book very helpful at all. Our professor recommended this book but he does not teach out of it. I am usually asking to borrow other text books to really learn the subject. In general, its not bad as a book to bridge you from the undergraduate to graduate level but to really get something out of quantum try something else, especially for this price.
Rating: 
Summary: Clearly written, traditional approach to QM
Review: Having had this text recommended for my graduate quantum class, but not taught from (instead taught out of the execrable book by J.J. Sakurai), I think that Merzbacher has written a very readable and very thorough book. Clearly, it is not a book aimed at undergraduates, but it is very elegantly written and uses the approach mirrored in Gasiorowicz and others, building the subject up with ordinary calculus and slowly bringing in matrix algebra. For a more modern treatment, and one very well written for the motivated self-studier, try Shankar's "Principles of Quantum Mechanics".
Rating: 
Summary: This book is highly ineffective in helping students.
Review: Hi, This book is very poor in helping students trying to solve its problems. The problems are such a great extension of what is covered in each chapter, I'm not even sure if most professors could completely solve its problems. I am looking for a legal solution manual to this book. I will pay top dollar for it.
Rating:
Summary: Clearly written, traditional approach to QM
Review: I cannot let the posted reviews go unanswered. I have taught from the various editions of Merzbacher for many years (since I was a graduate TA for a QM course) and have always had good results with it. It is not, however, an undergraduate text at most institutions. And any student advanced enough to be in a course where Merzbacher is appropriately used knows that graduate physics textbooks are not intended to be problem solving manuals. At this stage of one's development, one knows how to convert the principles learned from lecture and study into appropriate problem solving strategies. My principal complaint is the price; I cannot ask my students to pay $100 for a textbook, even in 1999. More's the pity.
Rating: 
Summary: Complete and Thorough
Review: I took the University of Michigan's Physics 511 course from this book. At first I found it too wordy and indirect but over the course of the term it really grew on me. Merzbacher's discussion of 2nd quantization (and the QSHO problem in general) is superb as is his sections on the Feynman path integral representation. Definitely my first choice amongst similar texts such as Sakurai, Shankar, and Cohen-Tannoudji.
Rating:
Summary: Complete and Thorough
Review: I took the University of Michigan's Physics 511 course from this book. At first I found it too wordy and indirect but over the course of the term it really grew on me. Merzbacher's discussion of 2nd quantization (and the QSHO problem in general) is superb as is his sections on the Feynman path integral representation. Definitely my first choice amongst similar texts such as Sakurai, Shankar, and Cohen-Tannoudji.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe a Decent Reference, but Bad to Learn From
Review: I was lucky to have other books and a great instructor in Quantum Mechanics, otherwise I wouldn't have learned the subject at all. The language of this book is very dry and abstract at the same time, leaving the reader without an idea of what it all has to do with the real life. The approach to teaching is by no means classical and lacks examples. Another thing that I didn't like (and that unfortunately occurs so often in scientific literature) is the way references were handled: the author would send you 10 chapters back to substitute formulas 178 and 186 into another one 5 chapters back to get a result on the current page, whereas in good books relevant formulas would just be re-typed once again for reader's convenience.
Having said all that, I also need to say that the author did a good job picking the problems for this text. They are of moderate difficulty and well related to the discussion in a preceding chapter.
Rating:
Summary: modern
Review: Merzbacher is one of the `classic' learning books on quantum mechanics. It is commonly grouped together with Messiah, Schiff and Davydov. Unlike most of the other classics however, Merzbacher has moved with the times and managed to keep up with current trends in quantum mechanics. When I originally flipped through this book I was impressed by the wealth of the content and the large number of interesting exercises that applied the fundamentals to the basic principles of various fields of research (quantum optics and quantum information for example). I then resolved to work through all of the problems and exercises. After having completed this book I am less impressed than I hoped I would be. The problems in this book are divided into two classes, the first being exercises interspersed throughout the text, the second being problems at the end of each chapter. None of the exercises in the text are difficult but they tend to disrupt the flow of the book as they (especially towards the end of the book) are of the form: `now you have seen the most trivial case, verify this formula for the cases n=5,6,7 which will involve you inverting 27 4x4 matrices' (I exaggerate slightly). I am a little irritated by this as it requires the reader to switch into autopilot and wade through pages of algebra to get a result you knew you would get anyway. The problems at the end of each chapter range from the ultimately trivial to applications to some research topics (but still fairly straightforward). The style of the presentation of the subject matter is a little quirky and idiosyncratic in places. This book is in its 3rd edition and it is easy to pick additions in this edition. The typo density increases in these chapters/sections and the text just skims the derivations. Merzbacher seems to occasionally choose a deliberately more complicated explanation for some topics. I would not recommend this book for a reference as Merzbacher does leave some useful formulas to the problems/exercises. I have trouble recommending this book as a learning book as well. Shankar is certainly the best (modern) learning book in my opinion. You could simulate the content of Merzbacher by using Shankar and then referring to the literature/references for the advanced topics that Merzbacher treats.
Rating:
Summary: modern
Review: Merzbacher is one of the `classic' learning books on quantum mechanics. It is commonly grouped together with Messiah, Schiff and Davydov. Unlike most of the other classics however, Merzbacher has moved with the times and managed to keep up with current trends in quantum mechanics. When I originally flipped through this book I was impressed by the wealth of the content and the large number of interesting exercises that applied the fundamentals to the basic principles of various fields of research (quantum optics and quantum information for example). I then resolved to work through all of the problems and exercises. After having completed this book I am less impressed than I hoped I would be. The problems in this book are divided into two classes, the first being exercises interspersed throughout the text, the second being problems at the end of each chapter. None of the exercises in the text are difficult but they tend to disrupt the flow of the book as they (especially towards the end of the book) are of the form: `now you have seen the most trivial case, verify this formula for the cases n=5,6,7 which will involve you inverting 27 4x4 matrices' (I exaggerate slightly). I am a little irritated by this as it requires the reader to switch into autopilot and wade through pages of algebra to get a result you knew you would get anyway. The problems at the end of each chapter range from the ultimately trivial to applications to some research topics (but still fairly straightforward). The style of the presentation of the subject matter is a little quirky and idiosyncratic in places. This book is in its 3rd edition and it is easy to pick additions in this edition. The typo density increases in these chapters/sections and the text just skims the derivations. Merzbacher seems to occasionally choose a deliberately more complicated explanation for some topics. I would not recommend this book for a reference as Merzbacher does leave some useful formulas to the problems/exercises. I have trouble recommending this book as a learning book as well. Shankar is certainly the best (modern) learning book in my opinion. You could simulate the content of Merzbacher by using Shankar and then referring to the literature/references for the advanced topics that Merzbacher treats.
Rating:
Summary: A failed attempt
Review: This book was originally written to make Schiffs book on quantum mechanics available to a wider audience. It was supposed to be simpler and more readable. Never happened. It is too wordy by far and many topics are actually covered very superficially with the student then being expected to solve difficult problems as though the treatment had been complete. Unfortunately, this is a common malady of physics texts. If you want a wordy, good, reasonably complete, text then Messiah's book is excellent.
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