索书号 O413/L849

Written for advanced undergraduates,physicists, and historians and philosophers of physics, this book tells thestory of the development of our understanding of quantum phenomena through theextraordinary years of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Ratherthan following the standard axiomatic approach, this book adopts a historicalperspective, explaining clearly and authoritatively how pioneers such asHeisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli and Dirac developed the fundamentals of quantummechanics and merged them into a coherent theory, and why the mathematicalinfrastructure of quantum mechanics has to be as complex as it is. The authorcreates a compelling narrative, providing a remarkable example of how physicsand mathematics work in practice. The book encourages an enhanced appreciationof the interaction between mathematics, theory and experiment, helping thereader gain a deeper understanding of the development and content of quantummechanics than any other text at this level.

Content :

Part I. The Discovery of Quanta:

1. Physics and theoretical physics in 1895;

2. Planck and black-body radiation;

3. Einstein and quanta, 1900-1911;

Part II. The Old Quantum Theory:

4. The Bohr model of the hydrogen atom;

5. Sommerfield and Ehrenfest - generalisingthe Bohr model;

6. Einstein coefficients, Bohr'scorrespondence principle and the first selection rules;

7. Understanding atomic spectra -additional quantum numbers;

8. Bohr's model of the periodic table andthe origin of spin;

9. The wave-particle duality;

Part III. The Discovery of QuantumMechanics;

10. The collapse of the old quantum theoryand the seeds of its regeneration;

11. The Heisenberg breakthrough;

12. Matrix mechanics;

13. Dirac's quantum mechanics;

14. Schrödinger and wave mechanics;

15. Reconciling matrix and wave mechanics;

16. Spin and quantum statistics;

17. The interpretation of quantummechanics;

18. The aftermath;