John Charlton Polkinghorne
‘The light dawns’ describes the period in 1925 and 1926 when modern quantum theory became fully fledged. German theorist Werner Heisenberg, working on spectroscopy, developed matrix mechanics. At the same time, Prince Louis de Broglie and then Erwin Schrödinger developed a second account of quantum theory — wave mechanics. The Schrödinger equation is the fundamental dynamical equation of quantum theory. Paul Dirac, in Cambridge, set out the general principles in his Principles of Quantum Mechanics, published in 1930. The superposition principle and double slits experiment are described and probabilities, observables, and the uncertainty principle explained. Finally, Niels Bohr's idea of complementarity and quantum logic are discussed.
Oxford University Press eBooks•Aug 29, 2002•0 citations