Heisenberg's applications of quantum mechanics (1926-33) or the settling of the new land

By Charles P. Enz, 

Department de Physique Théorique Université de Genève, 1211 Genève 4, Switzerland


1. Introduction 

The discovery of quantum mechanics between 1925 and 1926 was almost simultaneously followed by the 'setting out for the new land' ('Der Aufbruch in das neue Land', title of Chapter 6 of Ref. 1) to explore the new theory with respect to its physical interpretation and its formal structure. Heisenberg played an important part in both these stages. 

In his exploratory role Heisenberg mainly contributed as co-author of the '3-man paper' ('3-Männerarbeit', see Ref. 2, letter [102], and Ref. 3, p. 95) with Born and Jordan [4] but also as partner of Pauli in an exchange of letters on the development of a formalism of action and angle variables (see Ref. 2, letters [117] and [118], and Ref. 3, Section V.4). This endeavour was never published because the problem had just been solved in a most elegant way by Dirac [5]. 

In a third stage devoted to the 'settling of the new land' quantum mechanics was applied to the physical problems left unexplained by the old quantum theory. Here again Heisenberg made important contributions which are described in this paper.


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