Problems of Atomic Dynamics (Dover Books on Physics) by Max Born

by Max Born

In 1925-26, the future Nobel prize-winner Max Born presented two series of lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of one on the structure of the atom, the other on the lattice theory of rigid bodies. This volume contains the text of every lecture from both series, offering a remarkable look at the transition from the quantum theory of Bohr to a new direction in atomic dynamics."At the time I began this course of lectures," Born writes, "Heisenberg's first paper on the new quantum theory had just appeared. Here his masterly treatment gave the quantum theory an entirely new turn. The paper of Jordan and myself, in which we recognized the matrix calculus as the proper formulation of Heisenberg's ideas, was in press, and the manuscript of a third paper by the three of us was almost completed." In the course of the lecture series, Born introduced new developments as they Pauli's fourth quantum number, Dirac's formalism, and elements of his own work on a general operational calculus.Appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, Problems of Atomic Dynamics represents the foundations of quantum theory and offers a vivid look at science in the making, presenting clear-cut results that have withstood decades of experimentation.

Genres: Physics

Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Max Born (was a German-British physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s. Born won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Walther Bothe).

Reviews

[albin james · Rating 5 out of 5]

He used time, talent and heart
Such went his life among us
And far from great speeches, from great theories
To his task each day, one could say of him
He changed life

He was a professor, a simple professor
Who thought knowledge was a great treasure
That all the nobodies only had to get through
School and the right of anybody to get instruction

- Jean-Jacques Goldman