Welcome to the website for Physics - The First Science and Fragments of Time.

"Physics: The First Science" is an introductory physics textbook, published in 2011 by the Rutgers University Press to very favorable reviews. (See them at left.) We want it to change the established patterns of physics teaching! To that end we are now making it freely available right here on this website. Just use the navigation bar on the left.


cover" A new book by Peter Lindenfeld has now (July 2021) been published (Random Walk Books LLC, Princeton, New Jersey):

Fragments of Time: From a secure childhood in prewar Vienna to the challenges of emigration, adaptation, and pursuits in science and in educational and social change."

It is available from booksellers and Amazon. I hope you read it and enjoy it! Here is how it is described briefly on the back cover:

"It was a time of destruction of lives and futures and of rebirth and rebuilding. In his lively style with a wide sweep of insights Peter Lindenfeld recounts his personal and often intimate experiences, a microcosm of life during a time spanning nearly a century. The seemingly stable atmosphere of his childhood in Vienna is destroyed by the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. The forced exodus leads him to North America, first to Vancouver, then to New York and a life that melds his original culture with that of his new environment, creating a richness - in science and music, and in itellectual and political life - that transcends both."

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. The Illusion of Stability

Vienna - Exodus

2. Searching for a Safe Haven

Trieste - Leysin - Interlude and Apologia - Mirror - The New Country -Sooke -Vancouver

3. A Mixed Education

High School - First Work - Winnipeg - UBC - Now it's Physics - Chalk River - Columbia - International House and Beyond

4. The Real World at Last

Adulthood and Marriage - Rutgers - Building a Home - Bob Kates and the Kates Criterion - Children - Excursion into Religious Practice

5. The Sometimes-Examined Life

Beginnings and Choices - More than Physics - An Obstacle - Research - Oxford - Lore: Struggles and Progress - Promotion and Recognition - After Dinner Speech - Changes - Union Activity. George Horton - Physicseducationland - Teaching in Tirupati - Writing a Book - Livingston College - On Retirement, August 1999 - Conflicts and Resolution - Lore: Stroke and Death

6. Reprise

Parents Revisited - Return to Vancouver 1996 - Interlude 2010 - Tommy and Naomi: Development and Maturity - New Generations - At the Edge of the Future - The Party

Timeline

Acknowledgments



Peter Lindenfeld