Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution

by Carlo Rovelli

Einstein has provided the inspiration for quantum mechanics in numerous ways. He begins to realize, already in 1905, that the issues raised by these phenomena were serious enough to require a complete revision of mechanics. Born learns from him the idea that mechanics needs to be revised in depth. Einstein’s idea that light is a wave but also a cloud of photons inspires de Broglie to think that all the elementary particles could be waves, and that leads Schrödinger to introduce the ψ wave. Heisenberg is inspired by Einstein to restrict his attention to quantities that are measurable. There is more: Einstein is also the first to study atomic phenomena using probability, opening the path that leads Born to understand that the meaning of the ψ wave is to be found in probability. Quantum physics owes much to Einstein.