![]() ![]() They can leap from one fixed orbit to another, but may not rest between these states. The electrons in an atom, he said, occupy quantized orbits. Niels Bohr had extrapolated this theory to the arena of the atom. The universe is lumpy - a pile of rice as opposed to a scoop of mashed potatoes. Energy and matter are distributed in discrete amounts you must have multiples of certain minimum quantities. Quantum theory, on the other hand, held that everything is quantized, or expressed in multiples of a basic unit. He attempts to find the roots of genius in a man's life in this case, he is searching for the secret behind the greatest six-month burst of creativity in scientific history.īy 1925 quantum theory had already modified, if not supplanted, the classical Newtonian view that everything was a continuum: that energy could be emitted in an infinite range of amounts, that light undulated in continuous waves, and so forth. Moore, an emeritus professor of physical chemistry at the University of Sydney, Australia, and the author of the textbook ''Physical Chemistry,'' sets out to do more than chronicle Schrodinger's life and work. Walter Moore has written an admirable book about this intriguing man. He was the Lone Ranger of quantum mechanics - a stranger who rode into town, saw a problem, solved it, then virtually rode away from it all. Moreover, he had no love for the branch of physics he had saved. And in the 1920's world of theoretical physics in which collaboration was the norm, Schrodinger chose to work alone. After his great discovery, he never again exhibited this brilliance. Yet, until this flurry of activity, Schrodinger was nothing more than a competent, undistinguished physicist who had revealed no hint of his extraordinary brilliance early in his career. Robert Oppenheimer called Schrodinger's theory ''perhaps one of the most perfect, most accurate, and most lovely man has discovered,'' and the great physicist and mathematician Arnold Sommerfeld said wave mechanics ''was the most astonishing among all the astonishing discoveries of the twentieth century.'' ![]() During this time he discovered wave mechanics, which greatly accelerated the progress of quantum theory. How, then, does one explain Erwin Schrodinger? At the age of 38, positively geriatric for a theorist, Schrodinger changed forever the face of physics with four exquisite papers, all written and published in a six-month period of theoretical research that is without parallel in the history of science. (Dirac and Heisenberg, in fact, were accompanied by their mothers to Stockholm to accept their Nobel Prizes.) Dirac summed up the phenomenon in a poem he once wrote, the sentiment of which is that a physicist is better off dead once past his 30th birthday. Four of the giants of quantum mechanics - Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr - all crafted their greatest theories as very young men. Theorists commonly retire, intellectually speaking, by their 30's to become ''elder statesmen'' of physics. They do their best work in their 20's, then seemingly burn out. Theoretical physicists are the shooting stars of science. ![]()
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