HEISENBERG, WERNER KARL. - [FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF QUANTUM MECHANICS]
Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen. (Quantum-Theoretical Re-Interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations).
Berlin, Julius Springer, 1925. 8vo. In: 'Zeitschrift für Physik', Volume 33, p.879-893. The entire volume is offered here. Contemporary half cloth binding over marbled boards and gilt spine lettering. Small rubberstamp on title page. Else fine and clean throughout.
¶ First edition of Heisenberg's groundbreaking paper describing the new quantum mechanics.
Before Heisenberg's discovery the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum theory was the leading theory. By the early 1920's most physicists agreed that the Bohr-Sommerfeld theory had problems and that there was a need to replace it with a new quantum theory. Heisenberg's main achievement was to replace the idea of orbital path with what could be observed, namely the light emitted and absorbed by the atoms. Because of the unfamiliar mathematics which Heisenberg's new theory used, several physicists had doubts about its consistency. But Max Born soon realized that the laws, which the theory relied on, were the same as the laws, which apply to matrix algebra. In 1925 Born and his student Pascual Jordan published "Zur Quantenmechanik" which reformulated Heisenbergs theory in terms of matrices, in the special case of one degree of freedom. With "Zur Quantenmechanik II" (or the "Three Man Paper") published 1926, Heisenberg, Born and Jordan described the new theory in the general case of arbitrarely many freedom degrees. The same year Schrödinger independantly published his alternative replacement theory, Wave Mechanics. "Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung ..." is considerd the birth of the new quantum theory and Heisenbergs break through.
Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel prize in physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics."
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