A lively and erudite introduction for readers with a background in undergraduate mathematics but no previous knowledge of physics.

Michel Talagrand is the recipient of the Loève Prize (1995), the Fermat Prize (1997), and the Shaw Prize (2019). He was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians and is currently a member of the Académie des Sciences (Paris). He has written several books in probability theory and well over 200 research papers.

Introduction; Part I. Basics: 1. Preliminaries; 2. Basics of non-relativistic quantum mechanics; 3. Non-relativistic quantum fields; 4. The Lorentz group and the Poincaré group; 5. The massive scalar free field; 6. Quantization; 7. The Casimir effect; Part II. Spin: 8. Representations of the orthogonal and the Lorentz group; 9. Representations of the Poincaré group; 10. Basic free fields; Part III. Interactions: 11. Perturbation theory; 12. Scattering, the scattering matrix and cross sections; 13. The scattering matrix in perturbation theory; 14. Interacting quantum fields; Part IV. Renormalization: 15. Prologue - power counting; 16. The Bogoliubov-Parasiuk-Hepp-Zimmermann scheme; 17. Counter-terms; 18. Controlling singularities; 19. Proof of convergence of the BPHZ scheme.