terms of its constituent particles, and has played a fundamental role in the development of quantum mechanics.
Based on lectures taught by Professor Kardar at MIT, this textbook introduces the central concepts and tools of
statistical physics. It contains a chapter on probability and related issues such as the central limit theorem
and information theory, and covers interacting particles, with an extensive description of the van der Waals equation
and its derivation by mean field approximation. It also contains an integrated set of problems, with solutions
to selected problems at the end of the book and a complete set of solutions is available to lecturers on a password
protected website at www.cambridge.org/9780521873420. A companion volume, Statistical Physics of Fields, discusses
non-mean field aspects of scaling and critical phenomena, through the perspective of renormalization group.