Abstract
For Born’s and thus for Göttingen’s route to quantum mechanics personal experience in experimental physics was an essential ingredient as was the close monitoring of experimental results relating to quantum effects in atomic physics like the Ramsauer effect, which was widely discussed in Göttingen (Ramsauer in Annalen der Physik, 369:513–540, 1921). It meant a return to more mathematical work when Born embarked on for the application of celestial mechanics to the atom from 1922 on, first with Wolfgang Pauli and then with Werner Heisenberg.
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Notes
- 1.
Born to Sommerfeld, 13 May 1922; (Sommerfeld 2004, 118f.) “Auch sonst lasse ich meine Leute quanteln, um Ihnen ein wenig Konkurrenz zu machen.”
- 2.
Bielz (1925) summarizes the Göttingen dissertation of 1924.
- 3.
Born, Gerlach and Stern to Franck, 22 February 1921, SBB Born papers, folder 954, pp. 1–2.
- 4.
For the interpretation as a “dramatic event” see e.g. Mehra and Rechenberg (1982, Chap. III, 262). That Bohr’s talks did not present much spectacular news can be be inferred from a comparison of the notes taken of the event (SBB Born papers, folder 1819) and the published Copenhagen lectures, which had been submitted to Zeitschrift für Physik back in January 1922 (Bohr 1922).
- 5.
Born to Gerlach, 16 May 1921, DMA Gerlach Papers 83.
- 6.
Born to Gerlach, 23 May 1921, DMA Gerlach Papers 83.
- 7.
Born to Gerlach, 10 Oct 1921, DMA Gerlach Papers 83.
- 8.
Verzeichnis der im Rechnungsjahre 1921/1922 bewilligten Zuwendungen, Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Berlin, I. Abt. Rep. 34, Nr. 13.
- 9.
Born to Einstein, 29 November 1921, Born and Einstein (1961, p. 91ff).
- 10.
A critical discussion of the applicability and the limits of Bohr’s theory can be found already in this book, including the untenability of flat orbital models, the unobservability of electron rings by X-ray analysis and that atomic dynamics may relate to infinite-dimentsional quadratic forms (matrices) which may have both a discrete and an continuous spectrum, Cp. pp. 712, 754, 594f.
- 11.
Born to Einstein, 12 February 1921, Born and Einstein (1969, 81, 100). On Brody, see Born (1975, 214).
- 12.
Born and Brody (1921), Born (1922b), Born and Pauli (1922), Born and Heisenberg (1923), Brody (1921) , Schrödinger (1922).
- 13.
Born to Curator, 4 July 1921, UAG 4 V h 35, Bl. 185.
- 14.
David Cassidy’s description of Heisenberg’s Göttingen time still gives a good overview about the collaborations and publications (Cassidy 1992).
- 15.
For a discussion from the experimental perspective, see Im (1995).
- 16.
Franck to Bohr, 25 September 1921 (Bohr CW, Vol. 8, p. 689).
- 17.
Born to Einstein, 29 November 1921, Born and Einstein (1969, 92f).
- 18.
Hund (1923), Minkowski and Sponer (1923), Sponer (1923); cf. also the summary (Minkowski and Sponer 1924).
- 19.
Cf. Jähnert (2015), where Hund’s and Franck’s work on the Ramsauer effect is rather seen as “peripheral for the development of matrix mechanics or a successful quantum theory of collision processes” (p. 212); on Franck’s collaborations and discussions see Lemmerich (2007, 116).
- 20.
There is a priority debate in the secondary literature about this point, typically attributing invention of this technique to the respective person treated, i.e. Heisenberg by Jammer (1966), Mehra and Rechenberg (1982), Cassidy (1992), Kramers by Dresden (1987), or Van Vleck by Duncan and Janssen (2007). All their datings are preceded by the treatment in Hilbert’s lectures, which have widely been heard and studied as the lecture notes were available (Hilbert 2009a, 503–602). This may be a typical example of the problems with dating a key idea which was, however, essentially developed collectively.
- 21.
Received 11 June 1925. For a detailed description of Franck’s research and his collaboration with Born cf. Lemmerich (2007, 82ff.).
- 22.
Franck followed (Klein and Rosseland 1921; Franck 1922, 1924; Born and Franck 1925).
- 23.
Cf. for details (Im 1996, 86f.) and (Lemmerich 2007, 125ff.).
- 24.
Scattered information about the practices of coordinated and collective work towards matrix mechanics like at Born’s home, where, e.g., sessions of discussion and computation were interrupted by joint music-making, as mentioned in recollections, letters and anecdotes, have not yet been systematically analyzed.
- 25.
Thanks to the “History and Foundations of Quantum Physics” project at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, which ran from 2006–2012, a number of publications emerged that probably used an unprecedented broad basis of archival sources. Cp. e.g. Duncan and Janssen (2007), Joas and Lehner (2009), Blum et al. (2017), Jähnert (2019).
- 26.
AHQP Interview with James Franck, 9–14 July 1962.
- 27.
Cp. the reconstruction of Heisenberg’s views and the confrontation with Schrödinger from a biographical perspective in Cassidy (1992, 214–216), the deconstruction of a matrix mechanics revolutionary narrative in Beller (1983) and the suggestion of a dialogical historiography of quantum mechanics in Beller (1999, esp. Chap. 2), which, e.g., demonstrates that Heisenberg’s call for the elimination of unobservables was an ex post facto statement.
- 28.
Undated notes of a speech c. September 1925, Hilbert papers 657, 33.
- 29.
Born had asked in a letter to Hilbert, 28 November 1915, UAG 40A, Nr. 21, what he would say “regarding our attempt at a quantum mechanics.”
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Schirrmacher, A. (2019). Göttingen’s Multiple Avenues Towards Quantum Mechanics. In: Establishing Quantum Physics in Göttingen. SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22727-2_5
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