Abstract
We have often mentioned the spin of the electron in our previous considerations. In this chapter we want to discuss the experimental evidence for the existence of spin. Furthermore, we shall develop its mathematical description.
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Biographical Notes
GOUDSMIT, Samuel Abraham, American physicist of Dutch origin, *11.7.1902, † 4.12.1978. G. taught from 1928 to 1941 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. from 1941 to 1946. From 1948 he worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., in particular on the structure of atomic spectra. To interpret the latter, in 1925, together with G. Uhlenbeck, he introduced the spin of the electron into quantum theory. This concept proved to be of much greater importance than the discoverer expected. In 1944/45, G. was the leader of a secret mission (“Alsos”) to investigate the German project on atomic energy. He received the Max Planck medal of the German Physical Society in 1964.
UHLENBECK, Georg Eugen, Dutch-American physicist, *Batavia 6.12.1900. U., a university professor in Utrecht and Ann Arbor, introduced in 1925, together with S.A. Goudsmit the hypothesis of “spin” as an intrinsic rotation of the electron. U. published, among other works, “Over statistische methoden in de théorie der quanta” in 1927 and received, together with S.A. Goudsmit, the Max Planck medal of the German Physical Society in 1964 [BR]. de HAAS, Wonder Johannes, Dutch physicist, *Lisse at Leiden 2.5.1878, † Bilthoven 26.4.1960. H. was a co-worker a the “Physikalisch Technische Reichsanstalt” in Berlin from 1913 until 1915. Together with Einstein, he demonstrated the Einstein-de Haas effectin 1915, i.e. the occurrence of a torque when an iron bar is magnetized in different directions. The verification of this effect was considered a confirmation of the existence of the Ampere molecular currents. After he had been a teacher at a secondary school in Deventer and the “Konservator” of the Texler Foundation in Haarlem, H. was a university professor at the Technical University in Delft and of the University of Groningen. From 1924 to 1948, he was the successor of H. Kamerlingh Onnes and together with W.H. Keesom, was joint director of the low-temperature laboratory in Leiden. There, together with his students, he performed basic investigations of paramagnetism at very low temperatures, superfluidity of helium, and superconductivity. In 1927, simultaneously, but independently of W.F. Giauque, H. applied the procedure of the adiabatic dimagneti-zation of paramagnetic salts to produce temperatures far below 1°K. This procedure had been suggested by P. Debye in 1926. Furthermore, in 1930, he discovered, together with his assistent J. van Alphen, the effect named after both discoverers. This effect is of importance for the investigation of the behaviour of electrons in metals [BR].
PAULI, Wolfgang, Austrian-German-Swiss physicist, *Vienna 4.12.1900, † Zürich 15.12.1958. As a fifth-semester student of A. Sommerfeld in Munich, P. wrote a summary on the theory of relativity for the Mathemat. Enzyklopaedia. In 1921 he proved in his Ph.D. thesis that quantum theory at that time was still incorrect. In his discussions with W. Heisenberg, M. Born and N, Bohr, P. contributed substantially to the development of matrix mechanics.At the beginning of 1926 he applied the new theory successfully to the hydrogen atom. In 1924, P. discovered the exclusion principle (Pauliprinciple), for which he got the Nobel Prize in 1945. In the same year he postulated the existence of nuclear spin to explain hyperfine structure. In 1927 he set up the field equations for the electron, which included spin in nonrelativistic form; in the following years, together with Heisenberg, he made initial contributions to quantum field theory. After periods in which he worked in Göttingen, Copenhagen, and Hamburg, P. returned in 1928 as a professor to Zurich at the ETH. In 1930 he put forward the neutrino hypothesis. Prom 1940 to 1945, while working in the United States, he was concerned especially with meson theory. In 1946 he returned to Zürich, where he devoted himself primarily to quantum field theory and particle physics. In 1953, he began discussions with Heisenberg on the unified theory of matter(“Weltformel”), which the latter had developed. P. greatly influenced the physics of his time. With his profound analysis of the epistomological suppositions of science and his criticism of obscurity, he was considered the “conscience of physics”. [BR]
LARMOR, Sir Joseph, English physicist and mathematician, *Magheragall, Co. Antrim, Ireland 11.7.1857, † 1942. From 1903
L. was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. He worked on problems in theoretical physics, especially on the theory of the electron, in the course of which he discovered the so-called Larmor precession. He made important contributions to relativity theory, and wrote Aether and Matter(1900).
Rabi, Isaac Isidor, American physicist, *Rymanov (Galicia) 29.7.1898, † 1988. R. was a professor at Columbia University in New York from 1929. By suitably changing the molecular beam method discovered by O. Stern, R. could detect in 1933/34 the nuclear spin of sodium and determine the nuclear magnetic moments and the hyperfine structure of the spectral lines. R. developed the resonance method to determine the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei. In 1944, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. During the Second World War, R. participated in the development of radar. [BR]
ZEEMAN, Pieter, Dutch physicist, *Zonnemaire (at Zierikezee) 25.5.1865, † Amsterdam 9.10.1943. Z. was a university professor in Amsterdam. In 1895, he discovered and studied the Zeeman effect, which had already been observed ten years earlier by Charles Jean Baptiste Fievez. In 1902, together with H.A. Lorentz, who gave an explanation of the Z. effect on the basis of his so-called electron theory— meanwhile outdated — Z. received the Nobel Prize in physics. [BR]
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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Greiner, W. (1993). Spin. In: Quantum Mechanics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-30374-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-30374-0_12
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