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The Curious History of Quantum Mechanics

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The Quantum Handshake

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Abstract

We start with an account of the history of physics in the early 20th century as it applies to the development of quantum mechanics and its interpretation. This account is intended to show how the theory and interpretation were developed and came to be in the state in which we find them today. Writing about the development of science can be frustrating to the writer, because there are so many people involved, so many false starts, so many mistaken ideas, so much bad data, and a tangled story-line of rejected ideas and falsified theories left behind. I will attempt to streamline the lines of development by focusing on the ideas that turned out to be better and more important. I will, for the most part, ignore the bad ideas, the misconceptions, and the minor contributions. This perhaps distorts history, but I am not a historian, and I feel no obligation to achieve historical precision. Rather, I want to communicate the feel of the intellectually turbulent times when quantum mechanics was emerging. Many individual contributions will be ignored or neglected, but a picture of the development of quantum mechanics, with all its triumphs, paradoxes, and problems, should emerge.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    More precisely, if \(\sigma _{x}\) is the standard deviation of the position x probability distribution function (PDF) and \(\sigma _{p}\) is the standard deviation of the momentum \(p_{x}\) PDF, then \(\sigma _{x} \sigma _{p} \ge \hbar /2\). Similarly, if \(\sigma _{E}\) is the standard deviation of the energy PDF and \(\sigma _{t}\) is the standard deviation of the time PDF, then \(\sigma _{E} \sigma _{t} \ge \hbar /2\).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    John G. Cramer

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Correspondence to John G. Cramer .

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Cramer, J.G. (2016). The Curious History of Quantum Mechanics. In: The Quantum Handshake. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24642-0_2

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