Princeton Companion to Physics

The Princeton Companion to Physics

Edited by
Frank Wilczek and Cristiane Morais-Smith
A meticulously arranged oak library table covered with open physics reference books, each page dense with crisp equations, diagrams of wave interference, and annotated graphs. A single sleek silver laptop displays a structured table of contents titled “Companion to Physics.” The table sits in a quiet, high-ceilinged academic reading room lined with tall, blurred bookshelves in the background. Soft, diffused daylight enters through high windows, creating gentle reflections on the laptop screen and subtle shadows in the page folds. Captured at eye level with a shallow depth of field, focusing tightly on the pages and screen, the photographic realism and clean, professional aesthetic evoke scholarly rigor and organized, authoritative knowledge.
A pristine black chalkboard filling most of the frame, its surface covered with elegantly written white and colored chalk equations: Maxwell’s equations, Schrödinger’s equation, E=mc², and carefully drawn space-time diagrams and wave functions. Chalk dust lightly coats the bottom edge and forms a faint cloud near smudged portions. The chalkboard is mounted on a simple, well-lit lecture hall wall, with blurred wooden paneling and a hint of a projection screen in the distance. Overhead fluorescent lighting casts even, soft illumination with minimal glare, highlighting the chalk’s texture. Shot straight-on with sharp focus and symmetrical composition, the photographic image feels precise, contemplative, and academically serious, suggesting a concise visual index of great physics ideas.

About this project

The Princeton Companion to Physics will be a one-volume (~1200 pp.) major reference work, composed of approximately 250 carefully curated, thematically organized articles on the essential ideas and subfields of research comprising the discipline of physics.  After an Introduction, a Reader’s Guide, and an essay on Order of Magnitude Thinking/Estimation, seven sections – on Concepts, Milestone Observations and Experiments, Unifications, Great Equations, The State of the Art, The Human Side, and At the Frontier – will follow.

Readership and intended level

Intended to serve as a masterclass in the study of modern physics, The Princeton Companion to Physics will be accessible to an unusually broad readership of specialized and general audiences.  It will be written at a level no higher than final-year undergraduates will find accessible, and it will suit three main audiences: undergraduates, for which the book will explain what they are learning and why it is important; graduate students, to introduce the field as a whole as they decide which area to pursue; and scholars and professionals in physics and in the sciences more broadly, to provide concise information on areas outside their own specialties

Photo by Jan Kopu0159iva on Pexels.com

Key collaborators

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, edited by Timothy Gowers, serves as a model for the present work. (Additionally, The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics, edited by Nicholas Higham is another precedent.)

The Princeton Companion to Physics will have two Volume Editors: Frank Wilczek and Cristiane Morais-Smith. A carefully selected team of Associate Editors, representing the main areas and subdisciplines of physics, will in turn help to develop a master list of articles for each section (i.e. a detailed table of contents) and to identify the ideal authors for these articles. These contributing authors will, upon agreeing to take part, write approximately 250 articles in total (of varying lengths, ranging from approximately 1,000–15,000 words each) on the topics identified by the Volume and Associate Editors. Contributors will be carefully chosen by the Volume and Associate Editors for both their expertise and their expository skill, and all contributions will be peer reviewed by the Associate and Volume Editors. 

The Editorial team will be working in close collaboration with the Publisher (Ingrid Gnerlich at Princeton University Press) and a Packager (Sam Clark at T&T Productions) to project manage and produce this book to the highest standards.

Detailed project information

Further details about the project will appear on a separate page that is currently under construction. There you will eventually be able to find detailed information about the eight parts of the volume; a list of all proposed article titles, including article word counts; information about “who does what”; and a list of confirmed contributors. We hope that this section of the website will be live some time in March 2026.

Photo by Michelle Tiemann on Pexels.com

Timeline

Writing, acceptance, copyediting, and typesetting will be done on a rolling basis. We are working to the following general timeline.

  • Publication by Autumn 2029, if not earlier 
  • December 1, 2025: Delivery of complete list of proposed articles and contributors
  • December 1, 2026: Delivery of manuscripts for one-third of the assigned articles, ready for copyediting
  • December 1, 2027: Delivery of manuscripts for two-thirds of the assigned articles, ready for copyediting
  • July 1, 2028: Delivery of all manuscripts for the Work, ready for copyediting

Contact information

Volume Editors

Associate Editors

Publisher and Project Manager