The Heroic Age: The Creation of Quantum Mechanics, 1925–1940 1st Edition – Ebook Instant Download/Delivery ISBN(s): 9780190655174,0190655178

Product details:

• ISBN-10: 0190655194
• ISBN-13: 9780190655198
• Author: Robert D. Purrington
  

Quantum theory is one of the great achievements of twentieth century physics. Born at the very beginning of the century, it attained a definitive form by 1932, yet continued to evolve throughout the century. Its applications remain fully a part of modern life. It should thus come as no surprise that literature on the history of quantum theory is vast, but author Robert D. Purrington approaches the story from a new angle, by examining the original physics papers and scientific studies from before the creation of quantum mechanics to how scientists think about and discuss the subject today. The Heroic Age presents for the first time a detailed but compact and manageable history of the creation of quantum theory, and shows precisely where each important idea originated. Purrington provides the history of the crucial developmental years of quantum theory with an emphasis on the literature rather than an overview of this period focusing on personalities or personal stories of the scientists involved. This book instead focuses on how the theoretical discoveries came about, when and where they were published, and how they became accepted as part of the scientific canon.

Table contents:

Part I. Forbears

1. “Clouds on the Horizon”: Nineteenth-Century Origins and the Birth of the Old Quantum Theory

2. 1913: The Bohr Theory of the Hydrogen Atom

3. Tyranny of Data: Atomic Spectroscopy to 1925

4. Quantum Theory Adrift: World War I

Part II. Theory

5. At the Creation: Matrix Mechanics and the New Quantum Theory

6. SchrÖdinger and Wave Mechanics

7. The End of Certainty: Uncertainty and Indeterminism

8. Formalism: “Transformation Theory”

9. Hilbert Space and Unitarity

10. Intrinsic Spin and the Exclusion Principle

11. Angular Momentum, Symmetries, and Conservation Laws

12. Scattering and Reaction Theory

13. Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum-Field Theory to 1940: the Rise of Particle Physics

14. Foundations and Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: Interpretation and the Measurement Problem

Part III. Applications: Atomic and Nuclear Physics

15. Nuclear Theory: the First Three Decades

16. Quantum Theory and the Birth of Astrophysics

17. Atomic and Molecular Physics

18. Condensed Matter: Quantum Solids and Liquids

19. Epilogue

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