Abstract
“Once we have the fundamental equation (Urgleichung 1) we have the theory of everything” is the creed of some physicists. They go on to say that “then physics is complete and we have to seek other employment”. Fortunately, other scientists do not subscribe to this credo, for they believe that it is not the few Greek letters of the Urgleichung that are the essential physics but rather that physics consists of all the consequences of the basic laws that have to be unearthed by hard analysis. In fact, sometimes it is the case that physics is not so much determined by the specific form of the fundamental laws but rather by more general mathematical relations. For instance, the KAM-theorem that determines the stability of planetary orbits does not depend on the exact 1/r law of the gravitational potential but it has a number theoretic origin. Thus a proper understanding of physics requires following several different roads: One analyzes the general structure of equations and the new concepts emerging from them; one solves simplified models which one hopes render typical features; one tries to prove general theorems which bring some systematics into the gross features of classes of systems and so on. Elliott Lieb has followed these roads and made landmark contributions to all of them. Thus it was a difficult assignment when Professor Beiglböck of Springer-Verlag asked me to prepare selecta on one subject from Lieb’s rich publication list2. When I finally chose the papers around the theme “stability of matter” I not only followed my own preference but I also wanted to bring the following points to the fore:
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It is sometimes felt that mathematical physics deals with epsilontics irrelevant to physics. Quite on the contrary, here one sees the dominant features of real matter emerging from deeper mathematical analysis.
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Thirring, W. (2001). Introduction. In: Thirring, W. (eds) The Stability of Matter: From Atoms to Stars. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04360-8_1
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