Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar

Author:Manjit Kumar
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Science
ISBN: 9781848310353
Publisher: Icon Books
Published: 2009-10-15T10:00:00+00:00

Zurich lay well outside the golden quantum triangle of Copenhagen, Göttingen and Munich. As the new physics of wave mechanics spread like wildfire through Europe's physics community in the spring and summer of 1926, many were eager to hear Schrödinger discuss his theory in person. When the invitation arrived from Arnold Sommerfeld and Wilhelm Wien to give two lectures in Munich, Schrödinger readily accepted. The first, on 21 July, to Sommerfeld's 'Wednesday Colloquium', was routine and well-received. The second, on 23 July, to the Bavarian section of the German Physical Society, was not. Heisenberg, who at the time was based in Copenhagen as Bohr's assistant, had returned to Munich in time to hear both of Schrödinger's lectures before going on a hiking tour.

As he sat in the packed lecture theatre for a second time, Heisenberg listened quietly until the end of Schrödinger's talk, entitled 'New results of wave mechanics'. During the question-and-answer session that followed, he became increasingly agitated until he could no longer remain silent. As he rose to speak, all eyes were on him. Schrödinger's theory, he pointed out, could not explain Planck's radiation law, the Frank-Hertz experiment, the Compton effect, or the photoelectric effect. None could be explained without discontinuity and quantum jumps – the very concepts that Schrödinger wanted to eliminate.

Before Schrödinger could reply, with some in the audience already expressing their disapproval at the remarks of the 24-year-old, an annoyed Wien stood up and intervened. The old physicist, Heisenberg told Pauli later, 'almost threw me out of the room'.64 The pair had a history going back to Heisenberg's days as a student in Munich and his poor showing during the oral examination for his doctorate on anything connected to experimental physics. 'Young man, Professor Schrödinger will certainly take care of all these questions in due time', Wien told Heisenberg as he motioned for him to sit down.65 'You must understand that we are now finished with all that nonsense about quantum jumps.' Schrödinger, unfazed, replied that he was confident that all remaining problems would be overcome.

Heisenberg could not stop himself from lamenting later that Sommerfeld, who had witnessed the whole incident, had 'succumbed to the persuasive force of Schrödinger's mathematics'.66 Shaken and dejected at being forced to retire from the arena vanquished before battle had been properly joined, Heisenberg needed to regroup. 'A few days ago I heard two lectures here by Schrödinger,' he wrote to Jordan, 'and I am rock-solid convinced of the incorrectness of the physical interpretation of QM presented by Schrödinger.'67 He already knew that conviction alone was not enough, given that 'Schrödinger's mathematics signifies a great progress'.68 After his disastrous intervention, Heisenberg had sent a dispatch to Bohr from the front line of quantum physics.

After reading Heisenberg's version of events in Munich, Bohr invited Schrödinger to Copenhagen to give a lecture and participate in 'some discussions for the narrower circle of those who work here at the Institute, in which we can deal more deeply with the open questions of atomic theory'.

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