The History of the Spectroscope
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Hendrik Antoon Lorentz's Struggle with Quantum Theory A. J
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Archive for History of Exact Sciences ISSN 0003-9519 Volume 67 Number 2 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149-170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 1 23 Your article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works, as long as the author of the original work is cited. You may self- archive this article on your own website, an institutional repository or funder’s repository and make it publicly available immediately. 1 23 Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. (2013) 67:149–170 DOI 10.1007/s00407-012-0107-8 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz’s struggle with quantum theory A. J. Kox Received: 15 June 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2012 © The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract A historical overview is given of the contributions of Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in quantum theory. Although especially his early work is valuable, the main importance of Lorentz’s work lies in the conceptual clarifications he provided and in his critique of the foundations of quantum theory. 1 Introduction The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853–1928) is generally viewed as an icon of classical, nineteenth-century physics—indeed, as one of the last masters of that era. Thus, it may come as a bit of a surprise that he also made important contribu- tions to quantum theory, the quintessential non-classical twentieth-century develop- ment in physics. The importance of Lorentz’s work lies not so much in his concrete contributions to the actual physics—although some of his early work was ground- breaking—but rather in the conceptual clarifications he provided and his critique of the foundations and interpretations of the new ideas. -
Introduction
Introduction The following two papers of Planck represent only a very small part of the historical development of our knowledge about the spectral energy distribution of electromagnetic radiation. They are the result of a long series of investigations undertaken not only by Planck (in his work on irreversible processes since 1878, and—stimulated by Maxwell's theory as developed especially by H. Hertz—on the application of thermodynamics to electromagnetic processes, from about 1891) but also by many other scientists who contributed to these experimentally and theoretically in the 19th century or earlier. Planck did not work in a vacuum. On the theoretical side, his formulations were most directly preceded by the theoretical research of Wilhelm Wien, who not only introduced the entropy of (resonator-free) radiation in 1894, but also in 1893 and 1894 discovered several regularities governing the form of the black-body radiation function introduced in 1860 by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff; in 1896 Wien found, simultaneously and independently with Friedrich Paschen, what is now called Wien's distribution law. But Planck also drew on J. H. Poynting's theorem on energy flux, as well as on the law for total radiation obtained by Josef Stefan in 1879 from measure ments of earlier authors and derived theoretically in 1884 by L. Boltzmann. Indeed, Planck may have retained as "youthful memories" his intense preoccupation, in his 19th year, with John Tyndall's works on heat radiation. On the other hand the results, as they become evident in these two papers, are only the initial steps in the direction of the quantum theory to be developed later. -
Einstein's Mistakes
Einstein’s Mistakes Einstein was the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century, but his discoveries were blighted with mistakes. The Human Failing of Genius. 1 PART 1 An evaluation of the man Here, Einstein grows up, his thinking evolves, and many quotations from him are listed. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at 14 Einstein at 26 Einstein at 42 3 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Einstein at age 61 (1940) 4 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Born in Ulm, Swabian region of Southern Germany. From a Jewish merchant family. Had a sister Maja. Family rejected Jewish customs. Did not inherit any mathematical talent. Inherited stubbornness, Inherited a roguish sense of humor, An inclination to mysticism, And a habit of grüblen or protracted, agonizing “brooding” over whatever was on its mind. Leading to the thought experiment. 5 Portrait in 1947 – age 68, and his habit of agonizing brooding over whatever was on its mind. He was in Princeton, NJ, USA. 6 Einstein the mystic •“Everyone who is seriously involved in pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man..” •“When I assess a theory, I ask myself, if I was God, would I have arranged the universe that way?” •His roguish sense of humor was always there. •When asked what will be his reactions to observational evidence against the bending of light predicted by his general theory of relativity, he said: •”Then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord. The theory is correct anyway.” 7 Einstein: Mathematics •More quotations from Einstein: •“How it is possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?” •Questions asked by many people and Einstein: •“Is God a mathematician?” •His conclusion: •“ The Lord is cunning, but not malicious.” 8 Einstein the Stubborn Mystic “What interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” Some broadcasters expunged the comment from the soundtrack because they thought it was blasphemous. -
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman
Wolfgang Pauli Niels Bohr Paul Dirac Max Planck Richard Feynman Louis de Broglie Norman Ramsey Willis Lamb Otto Stern Werner Heisenberg Walther Gerlach Ernest Rutherford Satyendranath Bose Max Born Erwin Schrödinger Eugene Wigner Arnold Sommerfeld Julian Schwinger David Bohm Enrico Fermi Albert Einstein Where discovery meets practice Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology IQ ST in Baden-Württemberg . Introduction “But I do not wish to be forced into abandoning strict These two quotes by Albert Einstein not only express his well more securely, develop new types of computer or construct highly causality without having defended it quite differently known aversion to quantum theory, they also come from two quite accurate measuring equipment. than I have so far. The idea that an electron exposed to a different periods of his life. The first is from a letter dated 19 April Thus quantum theory extends beyond the field of physics into other 1924 to Max Born regarding the latter’s statistical interpretation of areas, e.g. mathematics, engineering, chemistry, and even biology. beam freely chooses the moment and direction in which quantum mechanics. The second is from Einstein’s last lecture as Let us look at a few examples which illustrate this. The field of crypt it wants to move is unbearable to me. If that is the case, part of a series of classes by the American physicist John Archibald ography uses number theory, which constitutes a subdiscipline of then I would rather be a cobbler or a casino employee Wheeler in 1954 at Princeton. pure mathematics. Producing a quantum computer with new types than a physicist.” The realization that, in the quantum world, objects only exist when of gates on the basis of the superposition principle from quantum they are measured – and this is what is behind the moon/mouse mechanics requires the involvement of engineering. -
25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect
S´eminaire Poincar´e2 (2004) 1 – 16 S´eminaire Poincar´e 25 Years of Quantum Hall Effect (QHE) A Personal View on the Discovery, Physics and Applications of this Quantum Effect Klaus von Klitzing Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Festk¨orperforschung Heisenbergstr. 1 D-70569 Stuttgart Germany 1 Historical Aspects The birthday of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) can be fixed very accurately. It was the night of the 4th to the 5th of February 1980 at around 2 a.m. during an experiment at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Grenoble. The research topic included the characterization of the electronic transport of silicon field effect transistors. How can one improve the mobility of these devices? Which scattering processes (surface roughness, interface charges, impurities etc.) dominate the motion of the electrons in the very thin layer of only a few nanometers at the interface between silicon and silicon dioxide? For this research, Dr. Dorda (Siemens AG) and Dr. Pepper (Plessey Company) provided specially designed devices (Hall devices) as shown in Fig.1, which allow direct measurements of the resistivity tensor. Figure 1: Typical silicon MOSFET device used for measurements of the xx- and xy-components of the resistivity tensor. For a fixed source-drain current between the contacts S and D, the potential drops between the probes P − P and H − H are directly proportional to the resistivities ρxx and ρxy. A positive gate voltage increases the carrier density below the gate. For the experiments, low temperatures (typically 4.2 K) were used in order to suppress dis- turbing scattering processes originating from electron-phonon interactions. -
CV Klaus Von Klitzing
Curriculum Vitae Professor Dr. Klaus von Klitzing Name: Klaus von Klitzing Born: 28 June 1943 Major Scientific Interests: Solid State Research, Experimental Solid Physics, Low Dimensional Electron Systems, Quantum Hall Effect Nobel Prize in Physics 1985 Academic and Professional Career since 1985 Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research and Honorary Professor at Stuttgart University, Germany 1980 - 1984 Professor at the Technical University Munich, Germany 1978 Habilitation 1972 Ph.D. in Physics 1969 - 1980 University of Würzburg, Germany 1962 - 1969 Diploma in Physics Technical University Braunschweig, Germany Functions in Scientific Societies and Committees (Selection) 2011 Scientific Advisory Board Graphene Flagship 2008 Scientific Committee Bayer Climate Award Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina www.leopoldina.org 1 2007 EURAMET Research Council 2006 Board of Trustees “Institute of Advanced Studies” of TUM 2005 Jury Member START-Wittgenstein Program Austria 2005 Scientific Committee International Solvay Institutes 2000 NTT - Basic Research Laboratory Advisory Board 1992 Bord of Trustees of the German Museum Munich, Germany 1989 Bord of Trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig Honours and Awarded Memberships (Selection) 2019 Member of Orden Pour le Mérite 2012 TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor 2011 Honorary Degree of the National University of Mongolia 2011 Honorary Degree of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 2010 Honorary Member of the Deutsche Hochschulverband -
Essays on Einstein's Science And
MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science PREPRINT 63 (1997) Giuseppe Castagnetti, Hubert Goenner, Jürgen Renn, Tilman Sauer, and Britta Scheideler Foundation in Disarray: Essays on Einstein’s Science and Politics in the Berlin Years ISSN 0948-9444 PREFACE This collection of essays is based on a series of talks given at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, March 3 – 4, 1997, under the title “Einstein in Berlin: The First Ten Years.“ The meeting was organized by the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, and co-sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Although the three essays do not directly build upon one another, we have nevertheless decided to present them in a single preprint for two reasons. First, they result from a project that grew out of an earlier cooperation inaugurated by the Berlin Working Group “Albert Einstein.“ This group was part of the research center “Development and Socialization“ under the direction of Wolfgang Edel- stein at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education.1 The Berlin Working Group, directed by Peter Damerow and Jürgen Renn, was sponsored by the Senate of Berlin. Its aim was to pursue research on Einstein in Berlin with particular attention to the relation between his science and its context. The research activities of the Working Group are now being continued at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science partly, in cooperation with Michel Janssen, John Norton, and John Stachel. -
Max Planck Society's Careful Planning Reaps Benefits
briefing Within the east German research insti- “We were not treated unfairly, according tutes of the Leibniz Society, three-quarters of to western rules,” he says. “But the rules were institute directors, and over a third of depart- ost see the against us. For example, the selection process ment heads, come from west Germany. The West German was in English, whereas we could have done directors of the three new national research M better in Russian, and publication record was centres are west Germans, and 55 per cent of ‘takeover’ as having a major criterion, whereas we had had few department heads are from west Germany chances to publish in western journals.” with a further eight per cent coming from been inevitable There were also cultural differences. “We abroad. all spoke German, yet after 40 years of cultur- Even more extreme ratios exist in the 20 peared for the good of east Germany’s scien- al divide it was hard to really talk to each Max Planck institutes, with only three of the tific future, he says. At his own Institute for other,” says Horst Franz Kern, dean of sci- 240 institute directors and department Plant Biochemistry, from which he retired as ence at the University of Marburg, who heads being east Germans. In contrast to director at the end of 1997, “even those hired chaired the Wissenschaftsrat’s committee on universities and other research organiza- on temporary grant money come increas- biology and medicine at the time of the tions, 40 per cent of these top jobs are occu- ingly from west Germany”. -
Klaus Von Klitzing 1985 NOBEL PRIZE in PHYSICS Yoseph Imry, Tel Aviv (School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University)
europhysics BULLETIN OF THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY news J.A. Volume 16 Number 11/12 November/December 1985 Klaus von Klitzing 1985 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS Yoseph Imry, Tel Aviv (School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University) An October 16, 1985, the Swedish meanwhile been surpassed by an order Academy of Sciences announced the of magnitude and the result was found award of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics to be universal — independent of mate to Klaus von Klitzing of the Max-Planck rial and sample properties. The plateaux Institute in Stuttgart, for the discovery were also observed by Kawaji and of the Quantized Hall Effect (QHE). The Wakabayashi 2). QHE was reported in 1980 in a paper1) Besides its sheer beauty, this striking by von Klitzing in collaboration with G. result touches upon several topics of Dorda of Siemens and M. Pepper of fundamental interest, has important ap Cambridge. As shown in Fig. 1, the Hall plications to precision measurements Klaus von Klitzing now aged 42 began his conductance Gxy of a 2D electron gas in and metrology, has motivated and will physics studies at the Technical University an MOS was found, for finite ranges of undoubtedly lead to novel develop in Braunschweig and then in 1972 moved to the gate voltage in which the regular ments. Moreover, it relies on the physics the University of Wurzburg gaining his Habi conductance, Gxx, was severely reduc of devices of great industrial interest 3). litation in 1978 after spending a period at the ed, to be quantized with plateaux having Before explaining the effect briefly University of Oxford. -
7.12 Comm Mx
commentary The quantum centennial One hundred years ago, a simple concept changed our world view forever. spectrum, but did not agree with experi- tion of this experimentally successful radia- Anton Zeilinger ments for all wavelengths. Planck had the tion law from other known laws of physics, When Max Planck announced his quantum advantage of close access to the most recent but he slowly had to accept that he had found assumption in his talk at the German Physical experimental results obtained by Otto Lum- something fundamentally new. Society in Berlin on 14 December 1900, mer and Ernst Pringsheim and by Ferdinand The next important step in the early days nobody, including himself, realized that he Kurlbaum and Heinrich Rubens, also work- of quantum mechanics came in 1905, when was opening the door to a completely new ing in Berlin, on the spectral distribution of Albert Einstein introduced his radical theoretical description of nature. Quantum black-body heat radiation emerging from a hypothesis of quanta of light to explain the physics has had unsurpassed success in hole in a box kept at a certain temperature. photoelectric effect. For a while, this explaining many phenomena — from the Planck eventually found a full explana- remained the only significant instance of the structure of elementary particles, through tion, but only after forcing himself “to an act quantum being taken seriously. Einstein’s the essence of chemical bonds or the nature of of despair” by assuming that energy can only hypothesis met with strong objections from many solid-state phenomena, all the way to be exchanged between the light field inside the his contemporaries, including Planck him- the physics of the early Universe. -
The Search for the Gentle Tremble
Flashback_Gravitational Waves The Search for the Gentle Tremble Gravitational waves are some of the most spectacular predictions of the 1915 general theory of relativity. However, it wasn’t until half a century later that physicist Joseph Weber attempted to track them down. In the early 1970s, Max Planck scientists also began working in this research field, and developed second-generation detectors. The groundwork laid by these pioneers meant the waves in space-time ceased to be just figments of the imagination: in September 2015 they were finally detected. TEXT HELMUT HORNUNG Albert Einstein is beset by doubt: it will never be possible to de- of relativity ultimately benefits gravitational waves, too, which tect gravitational waves – the tremble in space-time is simply too strike a chord with at least one physicist: Joseph Weber. weak! Yet it was he himself who had postulated their existence, Born in 1919 in New Jersey, the researcher at the University of which follows from the general theory of relativity he put forward Maryland has an idea for a simple experiment: he suspends an in- in November 1915. A short time later, in 1916 and again in 1918, he credibly heavy aluminum cylinder – 1.5 meters long and 60 centi- devotes a paper to this phenomenon. meters across – in a steel wire loop and attaches piezo sensors to Two decades later, he suddenly has a change of heart: “I have its middle to register oscillations. The whole test rig is housed in been working with a young colleague [Nathan Rosen] and we have a vacuum chamber. -
A Solution of the Interpretation Problem of Lorentz Transformations
Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 30 July 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0705.v1 Article A Solution of the Interpretation Problem of Lorentz Transformations Grit Kalies* HTW University of Applied Sciences Dresden; 1 Friedrich-List-Platz, D-01069 Dresden, [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected], Tel.: +49-351-462-2552 Abstract: For more than one hundred years, scientists dispute the correct interpretation of Lorentz transformations within the framework of the special theory of relativity of Albert Einstein. On the one hand, the changes in length, time and mass with increasing velocity are interpreted as apparent due to the observer dependence within special relativity. On the other hand, real changes are described corresponding to the experimental evidence of mass increase in particle accelerators or of clock delay. This ambiguity is accompanied by an ongoing controversy about valid Lorentz-transformed thermodynamic quantities such as entropy, pressure and temperature. In this paper is shown that the interpretation problem of the Lorentz transformations is genuinely anchored within the postulates of special relativity and can be solved on the basis of the thermodynamic approach of matter-energy equivalence, i.e. an energetic distinction between matter and mass. It is suggested that the velocity-dependent changes in state quantities are real in each case, in full agreement with the experimental evidence. Keywords: interpretation problem; Lorentz transformation; special relativity; thermodynamics; potential energy; space; time; entropy; non-mechanistic ether theory © 2020 by the author(s). Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY license. Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 30 July 2020 doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0705.v1 2 of 25 1.