Bookshelf

The Principles of Quantum Mechanics

P.A.M. Dirac

The original formulation — still the clearest statement of the mathematical structure.

Optics

Eugene Hecht

The reference text I return to most for Fourier optics and interferometry.

Biomedical Optics

Lihong V. Wang & Hsin-i Wu

Foundational for tissue optics, light transport theory, and photoacoustic imaging.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz

The most honest book about what building a company actually feels like.

Zero to One

Peter Thiel

The contrarian question as a framework for identifying truly important problems.

The Innovator's Dilemma

Clayton Christensen

Why incumbents fail — essential reading for anyone translating research into products.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn

How paradigm shifts actually happen — and why normal science resists them.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas Hofstadter

Self-reference, recursion, and the nature of cognition. Changed how I think about formal systems.

The Emperor's New Mind

Roger Penrose

Consciousness, computation, and the limits of algorithmic reasoning.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Richard Feynman

The physicist's approach to curiosity — playful, relentless, and unafraid of looking foolish.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes

How fundamental physics became the most consequential technology in history.

Elon Musk

Walter Isaacson

The case study for deep-tech company building at civilization scale.