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Banesh Hoffmann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Banesh Hoffmann

Banesh Hoffmann, in the 1979 film Continuum, speaking

about the theory of relativity

6 September 1906
Born
Richmond, England

Died 5 August 1986 (aged 79)

Residence UK, US

Citizenship British

Fields Special and general relativity

Institute for Advanced Study

Institutions
Queens College

University of Oxford
Alma mater
Princeton University
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Known for Einstein–Infeld–Hoffmann equations

Banesh Hoffmann (1906–1986) was a British mathematician
and physicist known for his association with Albert Einstein.

Contents
 1 Life
 2 Works
 3 See also
 4 References
 5 External links

Life
Banesh Hoffmann was born in Richmond, England, on 6
September 1906. He studied mathematics and theoretical
physics at the University of Oxford, where he earned his
bachelor of arts and went on to earn his doctorate at Princeton
University.
While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
Hoffmann collaborated with Einstein and Leopold Infeld on
the classic paper Gravitational Equations and the Problem of
Motion. Einstein’s original work on general relativity was
based on two ideas. The first was the equation of motion: a
particle would follow the shortest path in four-dimensional
space-time. The second was how matter affects the geometry
of space-time. What Einstein, Infeld, and Hoffmann showed
was that the equation of motion followed directly from the
field equation that defined the geometry (see main article).
In 1937 Hoffmann joined the mathematics department of
Queens College, part of the City University of New York,
where he remained till the late 1970s. He retired in the 1960s
but continued to teach one course a semester — in the fall a
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course on classical and quantum mechanics and in the spring

one on the special and general theories of relativity.
He died on 5 August 1986. One of the Queens College
mathematics department's honors for graduating seniors is
named in his honor.[1]

Works
Hoffmann became Einstein’s biographer in 1972 when he co-
authored Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel with Einstein's
secretary, Helen Dukas. The pair collaborated again in
compiling Albert Einstein: The Human Side, a collection of
quotations from Einstein's letters and other personal papers.
Hoffmann was also the author of The Strange Story of the
Quantum, The Tyranny of Testing, About Vectors, and
Relativity and Its Roots. He was a member of the Baker Street
Irregulars and wrote the short story "Sherlock, Shakespeare,
and the Bomb," published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
in February 1966.[2]

See also
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Banesh Hoffmann
 Basic concepts of quantum mechanics
 Einstein–Infeld–Hoffmann equations

References
1. ^
http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Academics/Degrees/DMNS/Math/
Resources/Pages/Awards.aspx
2. ^ List of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
3.
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External links
 An interview with Hoffmann about his experience at
Princeton
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The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s

Transcript Number 20 (PMC20)
© The Trustees of Princeton University, 1985

BANESH HOFFMANN
(with ALBERT TUCKER)
This is an interview of Banesh Hoffmann by telephone. He is
in New York. The interviewers, in Princeton, New Jersey, are
Albert Tucker and William Aspray. The date is 13 October
1984.
Aspray: Why don't we begin the interview by asking you
what the events were that led to your coming to Princeton in
1929?
Hoffmann: I was at Oxford University. I was sort of a strange
case. I had first of all taught myself Pitman's shorthand.
Secondly I had fallen in love with relativity, and I had taught
myself relativity because there was no one at Oxford who was
giving any lectures on it. I was neglecting my regular course
work, and I would have been in quite a sad situation if it hadn't
been for the fact that in my last year there was an exchange of
professors: G.H. Hardy, who was then at Oxford, went to
Princeton for a year, and Oswald Veblen, who was at
Princeton, came to Oxford for a year. And it just so happened
that Veblen was, interested in what he called projective
relativity.
Aspray: What was projective relativity?
Hoffmann: Well, in general relativity you have a theory of
gravitation. Now there was an attempt to get a larger
geometrical structure that would let you handle in a unified
way gravitation and electromagnetism. One of those attempts
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was by [Theodor] Kaluza and elaborated by [Oskar] Klein.

The idea was to add a fifth dimension in an undeveloped form,
sort of an embryonic thing. I can go into details if you want.
Aspray: I don't think that's necessary.
Hoffmann: Now Veblen, who was a geometer, realized that
this fifth dimension wasn't really needed, that you could make
a four-dimensional theory in which you had as the basis
projective geometry and used homogeneous coordinates, that
you'd have five homogeneous coordinates for four-
dimensional space and time.
Tucker: We understand.
Hoffmann: Now, Veblen came to Oxford and gave lectures. I
attended the lectures because they were about relativity. I'd
never heard about the Kaluza-Klein theory or the projective
theory. Veblen explained it all. I asked a lot of questions. It
ended up by his inviting me to come to Princeton and be his
research assistant. My duties would be not only to work with
Veblen, but also to take shorthand notes of his lectures and
then write them out so that they could be distributed. And after
being in Princeton a while, I was doing a fair amount of this
for various visiting people.
Tucker: Tell us about when you arrived in Princeton, the
things that struck you?
Hoffmann: Well, let me tell it from the point of view of
Oxford versus Princeton.
Tucker: Yes.
Hoffmann: When Veblen came to Oxford he was an absolute
revelation to me. His whole attitude towards mathematics was
different from the attitude that I had absorbed in the English
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schools and then at Oxford. I think that the essential difference

was that the Oxford professors and lecturers presented series
of lectures that were beautiful—complete and with no open
questions. This was the general impression that I had. But
Veblen was completely different. The Oxford lecturers
discouraged any interruptions; they were presenting a
beautiful structure, and we shouldn't ask questions, we should
just take it down.
Veblen was, I don't know how to describe it, cautionary. He
gave the impression that mathematics was an open subject that
was still developing and that you couldn't give honestly a
closed series of lectures. He not only allowed interruptions
and questions, he rather enjoyed them. There was, however,
one person, who shall be nameless, who asked too many
questions, very long questions that turned out to be dogmatic
statements rather than questions. That was the one instance in
which I thought that Veblen was showing impatience. But on
the whole his attitude was quite different from what I had been
brought up to think of as the essence of mathematics.
Tucker: I can make a comparison for you. At Princeton, I felt
that Wedderburn taught in the style that you noticed at Oxford.
Whereas the other professors that I had courses with at the
same time had this open attitude.
Hoffmann: Yes, you're quite right about Wedderburn. I'd
forgotten. As a matter of fact, wasn't he educated in England?
Tucker: He was educated in Scotland, Edinburgh.
Hoffmann: Scotland. I see.
Tucker: But that's not too different. Who were some of the
professors that you took courses from as a graduate student?
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Hoffmann: The chief one, apart from Veblen of course, was

H.P. Robertson. He was in relativity, so naturally I would
gravitate towards him. He gave a series of lectures, and I think
also he and Ed Condon gave a weekly seminar.
Tucker: Yes, that's right.
Hoffmann: They were trying to keep us current with all the
frustrating quantum things. You probably know that Ed
Condon happened to be in Germany when the quantum
revolution was really fomenting. He was so depressed. It was
so hard to keep up with what was going on that he decided that
he was going to give up his attempt to be a professor. But
somehow or other he got to Princeton, and I think that it was
because people persuaded him that, though he may not have
thought he knew it, he knew it better than anyone else in
America at the time. I was closer to Robertson than to Ed
Condon, but both were very important for me, along with, of
course, Veblen.
I have a little story about Ed Condon. His marriage was, I
think, not completely happy, I'm not sure. Anyway, he was
discussing a paper that someone had done. I've forgotten what
it was. But to make it general the writer of the paper said, "Let
there be n sexes." And Ed Condon, in writing a review of this
article, wrote, "Breathes there a man with hide so tough, he
thinks two sexes aren't enough."
Aspray: Can you compare the styles of Robertson and
Veblen?
Hoffmann: Veblen always seemed to be more tentative. If he
said something, he was not willing to sharpen it too much, I
think. Robertson and Condon and others didn't have so much
of that tentativeness. I'm not making any sense.
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Tucker: No, you are. The word tentative in reference to

Veblen is right. I have the same feeling.
Hoffmann: I'm glad to know that. When I met Veblen I had
never heard of Veblen, but Eisenhart's book on Riemannian
geometry had made me realize there was an Eisenhart and that
he was at Princeton. I therefore came to Princeton with the
strong feeling that the really important person was Eisenhart.
That was not the case. It was very clear that the prime mover
in everything was Veblen, assisted by Eisenhart, but Eisenhart
was not the prime mover. I thought also that Veblen's
mathematics was more profound than that of Eisenhart.
Tucker: Yes, and much broader.
Aspray: Did you study at all with T.Y. Thomas?
Hoffmann: I knew T.Y. Thomas, and I chatted with him a lot.
I don't know, I may have taken a course with him, that would
be on tensor analysis. Probably I took that course. My feeling
is that I knew a fair amount of the subject before I took the
course. It wasn't so much of a revelation to me.
Aspray: What about von Neumann?
Hoffmann: I was very often asked, I told you, to take notes in
shorthand and write them up, then take them to the professor
and make corrections, and finally have them distributed. You
know English wasn't von Neumann's native language, but he
spoke faster than anybody I've ever heard speak. It was really
quite a job taking that down even in shorthand. So my one
overwhelming feeling about von Neumann is he spoke so fast.
Tucker: He also thought very fast.
Hoffmann: He thought very fast, yes, and he was
extraordinarily subtle. He was most impressive. You've heard
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the story of Robertson driving von Neumann to somewhere.

Von Neumann asked him what he was working on, and
Robertson said such and such an equation. By the time they
got to the end of the ride von Neumann had solved the
equation in his head. Had you heard that?
Tucker: No, but it's typical.
Hoffmann: Yes, he was incredible.
Aspray: You mentioned earlier that you had come to
Princeton as Veblen's assistant. Had you intended to get a
doctoral degree at Princeton?
Hoffmann: I don't know when it was I decided to work for a
Ph.D. It must have been in Oxford that Veblen persuaded me
to think of a doctoral degree.
Aspray: How is it that you came to write your dissertation
most closely with Veblen, rather than with Robertson or one
of the others?
Hoffmann: The situation was not as simple as your question
suggests. You see, I learned about projective relativity from
Veblen in his lectures at Oxford, and when I came to America
Veblen wanted me to work with him. The problem was that
Veblen was an outstanding geometer but didn't have much feel
for the physics of relativity. I was not a geometer at all, but I
did have some feel for the physics of relativity. So in a sense I
was complementing Veblen. We published the paper
"Projective Relativity" jointly, and then it was decided that I
should do something on my own for a thesis. That paper didn't
count as my thesis.
There was a theoretical physics colloquium going on, and
Wigner and Robertson asked me to look into some basic
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questions in relativity that hadn't been explored, one of them

being how do you make measurements, experiments, to tell
you what the components of the metric tensor are. You would
have to shoot particles and find their trajectories in your
coordinate system and so on. It was a complicated matter.
Well, there were three or four such things, and I reported on
them at the seminar. Wigner and Robertson were so pleased
that they wrote to the board of Reviews of Modern Physics and
asked them to publish my paper, which they did. Then that
wasn't considered enough for the Ph.D. thesis, so I asked
Robertson what was a good topic that I could do just to make
it look like a thesis. He suggested that I try gravitational waves
and electromagnetic waves. So I worked on it, worked on it,
worked on it.
After several months I was utterly disgusted, because I had
shown that you couldn't have such waves if you wanted them
to be spherically symmetric. For a week I was biting my nails
wondering what on earth I should do. Suddenly it occurred to
me, "My goodness, you've got a much better result than the
waves. You've got a theorem that they can't exist." I am really
amazed that for a week I had been utterly despondent. Well,
that paper was accepted as a thesis. It was so short that I
decided to publish it in a journal with small page length, and I
think it had about 13 pages.
Tucker: That was "On the Spherically Symmetric Field in
Relativity"?
Hoffmann: That's right.
Aspray: I know that Veblen was quite enamoured with the
intellectual and social environment at Oxford. Could you
make some comparisons of Oxford and Princeton?
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Hoffmann: My impression was in a way the opposite. I

remember Veblen saying to me, with sort of scorn in his voice
for the Oxford system, words to this effect: "Look, you have
mathematicians, each mathematician assigned to a college.
There they are, off on their own, and they meet only once a
month when there is a meeting of the Mathematics Club of
Oxford or something. That's not the way to do mathematics.
You should all be in the same building, and you should all be
available and chatting." He was describing the sort of
atmosphere there was at Princeton, which I found very
comfortable. You could meet the professors on a sort of equal
footing at teas, and ask questions and not be bawled out for
doing so. I didn't get the impression that Veblen was
impressed by the social arrangements at Oxford, but that may
have been social arrangements not with regard to mathematics.
I really don't know.
Tucker: But he did like the architectural style. As you know,
when Fine Hall was built it had many features that were, we
thought, copied by Veblen and Wedderburn from the
Oxbridge.
Hoffmann: Absolutely. When I came to Princeton it seemed
to me that someone had a sort of salt shaker with Oxford-
looking buildings in it and just shook it all over the campus. It
was very amusing.
Tucker: Yes.
Hoffmann: You know the Magdeline Tower in Oxford. There
was a building with a Magdeline Tower in Princeton except
that it was not very high. I've forgotten the building, it's on
Nassau Street.
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Tucker: Yes, it's Holder Tower. And the Graduate College

was very English-looking.
Hoffmann: Indeed, yes.
Tucker: And the gowns that you wore to dinner.
Hoffmann: Oh yes.
Tucker: That was not at all American.
Hoffmann: No. It was interesting to see that when Veblen
lectured in Oxford he didn't wear a gown. Other lecturers all
wore gowns. The only exceptions were for experimental
physics and experimental chemistry, in that the gowns might
be dangerous. So they had a special dispensation that allowed
them to lecture without wearing a gown. Of course when I
came to America, nobody wore a gown for lectures at all. As
you remark, at the Graduate College they did ask us to wear
gowns for meals.
Tucker: At the University of Toronto where I did my
undergraduate work, many of the professors, even those
teaching mathematics, wore gowns to their lectures. So that
when I came to Princeton there was no sharp change from my
previous experience.
Hoffmann: Oh, so you didn't notice it.
Tucker: I mean that the atmosphere of the Graduate College
seemed much at home for me coming from Toronto.
Aspray: Did Veblen make his views about the relative
advantages of the Princeton situation versus the Oxford
situation widely known while he was in Oxford?
Hoffmann: That I don't know. I remember the scorn in his
voice as he told me, words to this effect: "All these
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mathematicians. They meet once a month, and then each goes

to his own little cubby-hole and develops psychotic symptoms
almost and has no contact for a whole month with fellow
mathematicians." Obviously Veblen felt quite strongly about
it, but I don't think he would have expressed himself to the
authorities with quite the vehemence that he did to me.
Tucker: Did you know Henry Whitehead?
Hoffmann: Oh yes, of course.
Tucker: What were your contacts with him?
Hoffmann: Well, he was in pure mathematics, and I must say
that I'm not really a mathematician at all. So while I knew him
and chatted with him, I didn't really follow the work that he
was doing. He was doing it alone and with Veblen as you
know.
Tucker: Yes.
Hoffmann: He wrote that book.
Tucker: It was a Cambridge tract.
Hoffmann: Was it really? The Foundations of Differential
Geometry. I'd forgotten it was a Cambridge tract. Veblen had
previously done the quadratic differential forms book as a
Cambridge tract.
Tucker: That's right. They were both Cambridge tracts.
Hoffmann: I see. In that Differential Geometry, do you recall
the marvelous definition of a geometry?
Tucker: You mean, "It is whatever people of sufficient taste
say it is. "
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Hoffmann: You've got the essence of the phrase. I thought

that was wonderful.
Tucker: Veblen over the years had been in almost every form
of geometry, and I feel that he was trying at the time we were
graduate students to develop a definition of geometry that
would encompass everything the way the definition of Felix
Klein had in the 19th century.
Hoffmann: Yes. You mean the Erlanger Program? One never
heard of that at Oxford until Veblen came.
Tucker: Yes.
Aspray: Since you were in Princeton in 1930-31, you are one
of the few people we can ask about the founding of the
Institute. Do you have any memories of its first getting started
and the talk about it?
Hoffmann: I was completely on the outside, except that every
so often I learned some things that were happening. Veblen
didn't discuss it with me. I have the impression that Veblen
was really the prime mover, even though the money came not
from Veblen.
Tucker: I agree.
Hoffmann: He was tremendously enthusiastic about the
possibility. I feel strongly that if it hadn't been for Veblen the
Institute might not have settled in Princeton. Veblen arranged
for the Institute to use the Princeton University buildings to
some extent before they built their own.
Aspray: Do you have some memory of how much of Veblen's
time was spent during that period in working on founding the
Institute, as opposed to his own research and work with
colleagues and students?
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Hoffmann: That's very hard for me to say. My strong

impression is that it was a considerable amount of his time that
was being used on behalf of the Institute.
Tucker: However he did not become an actual professor of
the Institute until 1932. The year '32-'33 was, I think, the
critical year. The decision had already been made to have the
Institute at Princeton, but the assembling of the faculty and so
on was done by Veblen in the year '32-'33, when he was
already designated as a professor at the Institute and paid by
them starting in '32. The other professors in mathematics did
not start until the fall of '33.
Hoffmann: Yes. I'm looking at my notes here. Veblen at
Oxford was a preacher almost. He wanted to convert people
from the English type of mathematics into the more
venturesome things like topology and group theory and so on.
I think that there was a man, M.H.A. Newman, who was
studying topology, and that Veblen sort of boosted him.
Tucker: Yes, Max Newman spent a year at Princeton in '27-
'28, and he developed ideas in topology, or analysis situs as it
was called at that time, in conjunction with Alexander and
Lefschetz.
Hoffmann: I see.
Tucker: I got to know Max Newman very well, because I
spent a term at Cambridge right after I got my Ph.D. and he
was the supervisor of my National Research Fellowship.
Perhaps you know that he died earlier this year.
Hoffmann: Oh, no. I didn't know that.
Tucker: There was a very good obituary of him in one of the
recent notices of the American Mathematical Society, quoting
 13

from the obituary in the London Times. And Peter Hilton, a

topologist at SUNY Binghamton, had the duty of writing the
official obituary for the London Mathematical Society. I heard
from him just recently asking for anything I could contribute
from when Newman was here.
Hoffmann: Well, my feeling was that Veblen had exerted
pressure so that Newman could get the position at Cambridge.
Certainly Veblen was enthusiastic about that.
Tucker: Well, he had a fellowship at Johns, but did not ever
get a professorship at Cambridge. His professorship was at
Manchester. He became the head of a very strong school of
mathematics in the '50s and '60s at Manchester.
Hoffmann: I see. Veblen talked about him quite often and
was pleased that he was a topologist.
Tucker: That was because Max Newman was at Princeton the
year before Veblen was at Oxford.
Aspray: Were there other people that you think Veblen had
influence on at Oxford, as far as their research interests went?
Hoffmann: I really don't know what the ultimate effect of
Veblen's visit was. You would not see any two
mathematicians as different as Veblen and Hardy.
Tucker: That's right.
Hoffmann: I remember my friends said, "Oh Hardy,
marvelous person." So I went to one of his lectures, and I
couldn't understand a single word of it. So I decided, "Well,
Hardy is not for me." Quite possibly some of my friends who
could understand Hardy couldn't understand Veblen.
 14

Tucker: Are there any of your fellow graduate students that

you remember particularly?
Hoffmann: Well, there's Ed McMillan who won the Nobel
Prize.
Tucker: So you were closer to the physics group than to the
mathematics group?
Hoffmann: Yes.
Tucker: Did you know H.F. Bohnenblust?
Hoffmann: Oh, Bohnenblust, yes. He was in pure
mathematics, wasn't he?
Tucker: Yes. And did you know [A.H.] Taub?
Hoffmann: Oh, Abe Taub, yes. He and I were much closer
together in the work that we were interested in. There was
George Shortley, who did that book with Ed Condon, the
complete book, as it were, of atomic spectra. And Howard
Robertson, who translated Weyl's book into English.
Tucker: That's right.
Hoffmann: George Shortley and I had sessions with
Robertson going through the English translation of the book,
with Robertson explaining things to us. Then Shortley and I
would make lists of misprints—there were so many misprints
all through the book. It was quite embarrassing, but Robertson
was very happy about it and urged us to continue. There was
Leon Cohen.
Tucker: Yes.
Hoffmann: Leo Zippin and [Edward] Linfoot.
 15

Tucker: Yes, I remember Linfoot. Because of the fellowships

that were available, such as the Commonwealth Fellowship
and the Princeton Procter Fellowships, there were a number of
British students in mathematics all the way through that
period.
Hoffmann: That reminds me that H.P. Robertson had open
house once a week at his apartment with his wife. I used to go
there regularly as did various others; there might be half a
dozen or more. It seemed as if many of them found this a
home away from home because they were not indigenous
Americans.
Tucker: Yes.
Hoffmann: That I remember fondly. It was really a marvelous
experience.
Tucker: Then you were, I think, three years at Rochester
before you returned to Princeton.
Hoffmann: That's right. I returned for two years in Princeton
and then went to Queen's College.
Tucker: Would you like to speak a bit about those two years
that you were back at Princeton?
Aspray: Before you do, could I ask you a couple of questions
about your Rochester period? This was a period in which the
Depression was in full swing.
Hoffmann: Indeed, yes.
Aspray: How was it that you found a job at Rochester? Was it
difficult?
Hoffmann: When I got my Ph. D. it was '32, and there were
no jobs anywhere that anyone could see. I was trying this
 16

place, that place, the other place, and nothing happened. Then
I saw in the papers that George Eastman had died and had left
several million to the University of Rochester. So I went to see
Eisenhart, who was handling this sort of thing, and I said,
"Maybe there's an opening there." He suggested, "Why don't
you write?" I think he wrote also. Then I was called for an
interview, and there was a man there, Charles Watkeys.
Tucker: Yes, I remember him.
Hoffmann: He asked me to his house, and he began playing
some music. One was a composition of his own. I didn't know
it was his own, and. I said, "You know that sounds very
Elizabethan." He said, "Oh, you noticed." He said, "That's my
composition. I did it in the form of an Elizabethan madrigal."
He was a cellist, and I played the piano. I think that to some
extent on that basis he urged that I should be given the job.
And I got the job just like that. Pure accident.
Aspray: What were the conditions under which you came
back to the Institute?
Hoffmann: At Rochester in the math department there were
three people who were permanent. They would take on an
instructor for three years, and no matter what they wouldn't
extend it beyond three years. While I was there in 1932, one of
the three permanent people became ill, and so they asked me
to take over his work, his lectures and all, which I did. The
man recovered, and at the end of three years, although they
said they were very pleased with me, they simply wouldn't
give me any extension. I was really in quite a pickle because
of that. I came back to the Institute, and Veblen was so sweet.
He called me into his office, and he gave me a pep talk, and he
arranged for a stipend from the Institute. That was renewed for
a second year. You know—it's interesting that my being fired
 17

from Rochester led to my meeting Einstein and working with

him.
Aspray: What were your duties at the Institute?
Hoffmann: No duties. I was given a stipend. It was $1,000 or
so, and I could do whatever I wanted. In the second year of my
research at the Institute, Leopold Infeld came, and it turned
out that Infeld had been working on what was called the Born-
Infeld electromagnetic theory. I had worked on it
independently. So when Infeld came I got in touch with him,
and we hit it off nicely. We made a joint paper incorporating
his ideas and my ideas and extending them.
When that was done, Infeld said, "Why don't we go to Einstein
and see if we can work with him?" Infeld had met Einstein in
Berlin. It would never have occurred to me to dare ask to work
with Einstein, but we went and Einstein said, yes, he would be
happy to have us work with him. He said he could offer two
different problems. One was to find nonsingular solutions of
the gravitational field equations under certain conditions. The
other was to apply what is now called the E-I-H method for
finding the motions not just of test particles but of large bodies
in mutual gravitation and showing that the motion came as a
result of the field equations alone and not as the result of an
extra postulate like the geodesic postulate. Luckily Infeld and
I chose that one, because no one has ever solved the other
problem. There was Peter Bergmann there, and he was
working with Einstein on that other problem among other
things.
Tucker: We have located the reference you gave me of the
symposium that was held to celebrate the hundredth
anniversary of Einstein's birth. It has the strange title, if I may
 18

make a pun, Some Strangeness in the Proportion and was

edited by Harry Woolf.
Hoffmann: Right.
Tucker: There's a chapter there "Working with Einstein" [by
Hoffman], so we will make that chapter a reference for this
interview.
Hoffmann: There's also another one. The one that we were
just talking about had to do with a meeting in Princeton.
Tucker: Yes, and there's a companion volume for the meeting
in Jerusalem.
Hoffmann: Precisely. It is called Albert Einstein: Historical
and Cultural Perspectives and was edited by G. Holton and Y.
Elkana
Tucker: But I have looked at the one from Jerusalem, and
there was not the same opportunity there for reminiscing.
Hoffmann: Well, there was. I gave two papers. I gave one
which was not reminiscing, but then on pages 401 to 404 were
reminiscences by me. There I told of a dinner party—Einstein
invited me to his house—and of a sort of intellectual game that
we played. Did you read that?
Tucker: Is all of the Jerusalem symposium in one volume?
Hoffmann: No, it's in two volumes.
Tucker: Oh, that's the trouble. I was looking only at the first
volume.
Hoffmann: That volume was about quantum unified theories,
the gauge geometry and so on. It is not the volume in which
we had reminiscences.
 19

Tucker: Yes, I will get the second volume.

Hoffmann: You might also be interested in my main paper in
the second volume, which was on pages 91-105, but that's not
reminiscences, really.
I have one or two little anecdotes that you might find amusing.
Tucker: Please.
Hoffmann: I told you that I was making notes, and that there
were colloquia and so on. I didn't mention that one of the
extraordinary things about Princeton was the caliber of the
people that you would come to know. Here is a short list:
Einstein, von Neumann, Wigner, Pauli, Dirac—a lovely
person, Dirac—Bohr, Weyl, and also the Princeton faculty,
Robertson, Condon, etc. Now you probably know that Wigner
was a very careful person, not liking to hurt anyone's feelings.
Do you know the story about Wigner taking his car to be
repaired? It was repaired but broke down almost immediately.
He took it in again and again. At last in real exasperation he
said to the mechanic, "Go to hell, please."
Tucker: Yes, I learned that story from Joe Hirschfelder.
Hoffmann: Oh yes, I remember Joe. Well, that's an
introduction to the story that I want to tell you. Pauli was
giving a seminar, and Pauli was an absolutely overwhelming
person. He finished up something or other, and then he said,
"Any questions?" Wigner, putting his hand to his lips, you
know, as if he shouldn't really be saying this, said "Well, if
such and such would such and such, etc." And Pauli
interrupted him and said, "No, no, no. You're absolutely
wrong. What was the question?"
 20

Tucker: I know that gesture of Wigner's. I have seen it on

various occasions. He put his hand to his mouth as if to say he
should keep quiet, but then he spoke.
Aspray: What was your relationship with Wigner? Had you
taken courses with him when you first were at Princeton?
Hoffmann: I think I took one course with him in fact I
remember that I did. Wigner was presenting all sorts of things,
one after the other. I must say that on one occasion I got
utterly lost. It is possible that on this occasion pretty well
everyone got lost, but Ed McMillan put up his hand and said,
"Does this mean that this whole diagram then moves steadily
to the right?" And Wigner said, "Ah, yes, exactly so." So Ed
McMillan was the only person, I think, who knew what was
going on there. It was not easy to follow, but that's only
because I didn't have the background. But I did have the
background for Robertson.
Aspray: Did you have association with Wigner when you
came back to the Institute?
Hoffmann: I don't know what you mean by 'association'. We
were friendly, but he was not the key person—the key person
for me apart from Veblen and Einstein was Robertson.
Tucker: Yes. Well, we will thank you very much for this.
Hoffmann: I've really enjoyed it, especially because you are
able to corroborate some of the things that I felt.
The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s
550.1 H?ls2 62-15718
Hoffmann
The strange story of the quantum
 '

v- >.

NO? 13 T97S"

AUG 4 1982

...
 THE STRANGE STORY OF

QUANTUM

An account for the

GENERAL READER of the

growth of the IDEAS underlying

our present ATOMIC KNOWLEDGE

BANE S H HOFFMANN
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS, QUEENS COLLEGE, NEW YORK

Second Edition

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC. NEW YORK

 Copyright 1947, by Banesh Hoffmann.
Copyright 1959, by Banesh Hoffmann.
All rights reserved under Pan American and
International Copyright Conventions.

Published simultaneously in Canada by

McClelland & Stewart, Ltd.

This new Dover edition first published in 1959 is an

unabridged and corrected republication of the First
Edition to which the author has added a 1959
Postscript.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Dover Publications, Inc.

180 Varick Street
New York 14, N. Y.
My due to my friends
grateful thanks are
Carl G. Hempel, Melber Phillips, and
Mark W. Zemansky, f r many valuable sug-
gestions, and to the Institute for Advanced
Study where this booJc was begun.
B. HOFFMCANIST
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, N, J v February, 1947

,,,.
fit, (,.
'
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|
 CONTENTS

Preface ix

I PROLOGUE i

ACT I

II The Quantum is Conceived 16

III It Comes to Light
24
IV Tweedledum and Tweedledee 34
V The Atom of Niels Bohr 43
VI The Atom of Bohr Kneels 60

INTERMEZZO
VII Author's Warning to the Reader 70

ACT II

VIII The Exploits of the Revolutionary Prince 72

IX Laundry Lists Are Discarded 84
X The Asceticism of Paul 105
XI Electrons Arc Smeared 109
XII Unification 124
XIII The Strange Denouement 140
XIV The New Landscape of Science 174

XV EPILOGUE 200
Postscript: 1999 235
 PREFACE

THIS book designed to serve as a guide to those who would

is

explore the theories by which the scientist seeks to comprehend

the mysterious world of the atom. Nuclear fission and atomic
bombs are not the whole of atomic science. Behind them lie

extraordinary ideas and stirring events without which our

understanding would be meager indeed.
The story of the quantum is the story of a confused and

groping search for knowledge conducted by scientists of many

lands on a front wider than the world of physics had ever
seen before, illumined by flashes of insight, aided by accidents
and guesses, and enlivened by coincidences such as one would
expect to find only in fiction.
It is a story of turbulent revolution; of the
undermining of
a complacent physics that had long ruled a limited domain, of
a subsequent interregnum predestined for destruction by its
own inherent contradictions, and of the tempestuous emer
gence of a much chastened regime Quantum Mechanics.

Though quantum mechanics rules newly discovered lands

with a firm hand, its
victory is not complete. What look like
mere scratches on the brilliant surface of its domain reveal
ix
X PREFACE
themselves as fascinating crevasses betraying the darkness
within and luring the intrepid on to new adventure. Nor does

quantum mechanics hold undisputed sway but must share

dominion with that other rebel, and though, to
relativity;

gether, these two theories have led to the most penetrating

advances in our search for knowledge, they must yet remain
enemies. Their fundamental disagreement will not be re
solved until both are subdued by a still more
powerful theory
which will
sweep away our present painfully won fancies con

cerning such things as space and time, and matter and radi
ation, and causality. The nature of this theory may only
be surmised, but that it will ultimately come is as certain as
that our civilization will endure no more nor less.

What are those potent wraiths we call space and time,

without which our universe would be inconceivable? What
isthat mystic essence, matter, which exists within us and
around in so many wondrous forms; which is at once the
servant and master of mind, and holds proud rank in the
hierarchy of the universe as a primary instrument of divine
creation? And what is that swiftest of celestial messengers,

radiation, which leaps the empty vastnesses of space with

lightning speed?
Though true answers there can be none, science is fated to
fret about such problems. It must forever spin tentative

theories around them, seeking to entrap therewith some

germ of truth upon which to poise its intricate superstructure.

The balance is delicate and every change sends tremors cours

ing through the edifice to its uttermost tip. The story of

what happened to science when one provisional
relativity tells

theory of space and time yielded to another. The story of the

quantum tells of adventures which recently befell our theories
 Xl
PREFACE
of matter and radiation, and of their unexpected consequences.
serves well as
So abstract a matter as the quantum theory
with the
the basis for learned treatises whose pages overflow
mathematics. Here in this book
unfriendly symbols of higher
is its
story without mathematics yet without important omis
sion of concept. Here too is a glimpse of the scientific theorist

implements, as
he experiments
at work, pen and paper his

with ideas. Not the least of his gifts

is a talent for reaching

valuable conclusions from what later prove to be faulty

Be it a hint here or
premises. For his insight
is
penetrating.
a clue there, a crude analogy or a wild guess,
he fashions

working hypotheses from whatever material is at hand, and,

with the divine gift of intuition for guide, courageously
follows the faintest will-o'-the-wisp till it show him a way
toward truth.
The magnificent rise of the quantum to a dominant position

in modern science and philosophy is a story of drama and

incredible. It is a chaotic tale,
high adventure often well-nigh
but amid the apparent chaos one gradually discerns a splendid
irrelevant or
architecture, each discovery, however seemingly
till
nonsensical, falling cunningly into its appointed place
the whole intricate jigsaw is revealed as one of the major
discoveries of the human mind.
THE STRANGE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
 CHAPTER I

PROLOGUE

IN THE corner of a carefully darkened laboratory stands an

electrical machine on which two small, shining spheres of

metal frown menacingly at each other's proximity. It is a

standard machine for making electric sparks to which one
small addition has been made. Two metallic plates have been

joined to the spheres by slender conducting rods, as if to add

enormous ears to the two-eyed monster.

On another table stands a simple, almost closed hoop of

stiff wire mounted on an insulating stand. For the experimenter
the small gap in this hoop is the crucial part of the whole

apparatus. If his surmise is correct, it is here that the secret

will be revealed.
All is and the experimenter closes a switch
in readiness
to set the sparks crackling and spitting between the spheres.

Turning his back on the flashing sparks he waits for his eyes
to grow accustomed to the darkness. Is it imagination or does

he really see a faint glow filling the gap in the ring? It is not
easy to tell. It may be only a reflection. Gently he turns the
screw that forces the ends together, and as the gap becomes
narrower the glow seems to brighten. Closer yet, and closer,
2 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the ends are almost touching. Now there can be no doubt
till

The experimenter breathes a sigh of relief. Tiny electric sparks

are passing across the gap.
In so strangely simple a fashion did man first
wittingly
detect a radio signal.
This was in 1887, the experimenter a brilliant young German
physicist, Heinrich Hertz.
The commercial value of this discovery was beyond estima
tion. Why, then, did so able a man as Hertz leave it for
Marconi to capture the rich rewards of its
exploitation?
It was not atwith the idea of inventing anything so
all

practical as radio telegraphy that Hertz embarked on his

epochal experiments, nor, perhaps, was radio telegraphy their
most significant result. Hertz had set himself a task which
had long baffled scientists: to test the truth of a highly
mathematical theory concerning light, electricity, and magne
tism proposed twenty-three years before by the Scottish
physicist, James Clerk Maxwell. The thought of the commer
cial value of the work seems not to have troubled his mind
at all, and this passion for pure research for its own sake was
in a sense responsible for a most ironical situation. For without
it Hertz might never have bothered about a seemingly trivial
effect he had noticed in the course of his experiments. These

experiments were everywhere hailed as brilliantly establishing

the truth of Maxwell's theory on a rocklike basis of experi
mental fact Yet the seemingly trivial phenomenon which he
noticed was destined, in the hands of Einstein, to play a
momentous part in the evolution of the quantum theory and
thereby to aim at the theory of Maxwell a shattering blow
from which it can never fully recover.
To appreciate the work of Maxwell and Hertz, and the
 PROLOGUE 3

whole story of the quantum, we must first look briefly at some

of the theories men have proposed about light.
Though there have been many notable Jewish scientists
in modern times, the ancient Hebrew sages had no great
Having disposed of the whole
instinct for scientific inquiry.

problem of light with the pronouncement And God said, Let

there be light: and there was light, they quickly passed on to
more important matters. Light, for them, was little more than
the opposite of darkness, the circumstance of being able to see.
The Greeks, however, with surer scientific instinct, intro
duced a new idea of great importance. Realising there must
be something bridging the distances between our eyes, the
things we and the lamps illuminating them, they gave it
see,

objective reality and set about studying it and inventing

theories about it. When the modern scientist talks about light
he has in mind just this something. The distinction between
the mere sensation of being able to see and the newer, more

objective light is a significant one, being analogous to that

between the sensation experienced when one is struck by a
stone and the stone which actually traverses space to do the

hitting.

Unhappily, the Greeks, after an auspicious start, became

involved in conflicting theories. According to one of these,

light was something that streamed out of the eyes like water
from a hose, the idea being that we see an object by directing
this stream of light to hit it; much as a blind man "sees"

something by putting forth his hand to touch it. This theory

would explain why we see only in the direction we are facing,
and why we are unable to see with our eyes closed. But it
cannot explain, for example, why we do not see in the dark.
It was in an endeavor to meet such objections as this that the
4 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
philosopher Plato produced a theory which, for sheer profusion
of superfluous mechanism, is surely without equal. He de
manded a triple interaction between three separate streams
one from the eyes, one from what is seen, and one from the

lamp illuminating it! Plato's difficulty lay in his having got

the direction wrong in the first place. According to modern
ideas, when we see anything it is because light enters our

eyes instead of leaving them, and the curious thing is that

this view had already been vigorously put forward by the
great Pythagoras more than a hundred years before Plato.
The Pythagorean theory is simple. It holds that light is some
thing that streams out from any luminous body in all direc
tions, splashing against obstructions only to bounce off im
mediately. If, by chance, it
ultimately enters our eyes, it
produces in us the sensation of seeing the thing from which
it last bounced.
Here we see nature at her most lavish and wasteful, making
certain of catching our eyes by splashing her abundance of
light in every possible direction, and showing none of the
economy she delights to exhibit in the unerring precision of
the grapefruit.
Of course, the problem of light is not at all solved by such
a theory. Our troubles are just beginning. Every new dis
covery in science brings with it a host of new problems, just
as the invention of the automobile brought with it gas sta
tions, roads, garages, mechanics, and a thousand other sub

sidiary details. Here, for example, as soon as we realise that

there must be something bridging the space between our
eyes and what we see, a something to which we give the
name "light," we open the floodgates for a torrent of ques
tions about it; questions we could hardly have asked about
 PROLOGUE 5

it before we knew it was there to be asked about. For instance,

what shape and what size? Has it even shape or size?
is it,

Is it material or ethereal? Has it

weight? Does it jar anything
it strikes? Is it hot or cold? How
quickly does it move? Does
it move cannot penetrate thin cardboard, how
at all? If it

does it manage to pass through glass? Are the different colors

transmitted by the same light? These and a multitude of
even more embarrassing questions spring into being as soon
as we discover that light exists.
As the tale of the quantum unfolds we shall come across
answers to some of these questions, and shall enjoy the

spectacle of Science again and again changing its mind. Other

questions, whose answers lie outside the main stream of the
story, will be heard of no more.
Two different theories arose to explain how light leaps
across space to bear its Let us begin by
message to our eyes.
asking ourselves how we would move a stone that is out of
reach.There are only two different methods, and they cor
respond to these two theories of light: one method is to
throw something at the stone, and the other is to poke it
with a stick.

The idea of throwing something was the inspiration for

the first theory, the so-called particle, or corpuscular, theory.

According to this theory, light consists of myriads of little

specks, or "corpuscles," shot out by luminous bodies in all
directions like the fragments from a continually bursting
bomb.
The other theory, the wave, or undulatory, theory, was
modeled on the stick method. But we must explain a little,
since it is by no means obvious at first sight that prodding a
stone with a stick can have anything at all to do with waves.
6 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Let us remember though that, however rigid a stick may
be, it is bound to be slightly compressible. And to bring this
cardinal fact vividly before our minds let us pretend that
the stick is made of fruit jello. Of course, such a stick would
not move anything very heavy even if it did manage to hold
up under its own weight, but in abstract science and what
we are talking about now is abstract science, however seem
ingly related to gastronomy in abstract science it is the

principle that is
important, and the principle here is that the
stick can never be perfectly rigid. So fruit jello it is. And to
give it a fighting chance we must change the stone into a

ping-pong ball.

What happens when we push on one end of the jello stick?

The other end does not move immediately. Instead, a shudder
begins to glide majestically down the stick, in the fullness of
time reaches the other end, sets it in motion, and thus moves,
the ping-pong ball. This too, on a different scale, is what

happens when we prod the stone with a steel rod. Now

comes the crucial question. What was it that actually moved
along the jello stick? A pulse, a mere shudder! Nothing so
material as a thrown stone. Something as impalpable as the

lingering grin of Alice's vanished Chesire cat. Yet something

able, after all its travels, to move the ping-pong ball. If we
reflect on this and distill its essence we arrive at the conclu
sion that light could carry its message from place to place

by behavitig like a wave. We

come, in fact, to a wave theory
of light.
But a wave in what? After all, a wave isn't just a wave. It
must be a wave in something. Could it perhaps be a wave in
the air? No, because light can travel through a vacuum. This
fact alone shows that it cannot be a wave in any material
 PROLOGUE
medium; if there is
anything material filling a vacuum it

ceases to be a vacuum. Shall we therefore have to abandon

the theory for want of a medium in which our waves can
wave? By no means. No scientist is going to give up a promis
theory for want of a simple hypothesis which no
ing
one can
at the moment hope to disprove. All that is necessary is to

say theremust be some omnipresent, immaterial medium in

which light is a wave, and to be careful to give it the dignity
of an imposing name. It was called the luminiferous ether,
and its sole reason for existing was to bolster the wave theory
of light by lending it
pictorial plausibility.
Here, then, we have twp rival theories of light, the particle
theory and the wave theory. Which one is correct?
great Sir Isaac Newton, who made
The all his fundamental

discoveries in dynamics, gravitation, the calculus, and many

other phases of science in a mere dozen years of scientific

activity, found time during

that period to make significant
advances in optics. Feeling that since waves spread around
corners they could not explain why light travels in straight

lines, he preferred to work with the particle theory. True, by

this time many curious facts were known about light which
did not seem to 6t in with the particle picture. But Newton,
a man of consummate genius, had little trouble in overcom
ing such difficulties. By the time fie
had finished he had suc
ceeded, with only slight sacrifice of simplicity, in explaining
everything then known about light.
His particles
practically
were no longer characterless, however. Experimental facts
had forced him to endow them with a curious ebb and flow
in their power of being reflected. No longer was light anal
ogous to the discharge of a blunderbuss,
but rather to the

pulsating flight of birds.

We
do not intend it as a pun when
8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
we will prove of interest in
say that this rhythmic pulsation
the light of later history.

Though the wave theory did not lack adherents in New

ton's day, with so colossal a genius ranged against it it stood
little chance of victory. The wave theorists, led by the Dutch

Huygens, based their chief hopes on the

fact that
physicist
the experi
particles ought to bounce off each other, while
mental evidence pointed to the contrary fact that two beams
of light could cross each other without suffering any damage.
This alone, however, was scant basis for a theory to compete
with Newton's pulsating particles. .

After the death of Newton, new experimental discoveries

were made about light and new techniques were invented to
handle the difficult mathematics of wave motion. For all its
ingenuity and simplicity, the particle theory
fell upon evil

days. The objection that waves

would bend around corners
was met when itwas found that the waves of light were mere
measuring the fifty-thousandth part of an inch
or so
ripples
from crest to crest, for such ripples would not spread
minute
out noticeably. Of
course, they would spread out a little, and
it could be calculated that this would mean that light ought

not to cast utterly sharp shadows but should produce definite

patterns of fringes at
the edges. Such fringes were actually
known to exist even in Newton's time and Newton had been
unable to account for them really satisfactorily. All the new
evidence, both experimental and theoretical, led decisively
away from the particle theory, and a hundred years
or so

after Newton's death the wave theory had been brought to

so fine a degree of perfection by the Frenchman A. J.
Fresnel
Fresnel de
as to reignsupreme in place of its defeated rival.
veloped the wave theory of light with such power and ele-
 PROLOGUE 9

gance that not any of the numerous intricate and beautiful

experiments then known could escape elucidation by it. And
iffurther proof were necessary that the particle theory was

wrong it was found later in the decisive experiment of the

Frenchman J.
B. L. Foucault, in which the speed of light
was actually measured in water. For it was on this point that

the two theories differed decisively. In empty space light

moves with the unthinkable speed of 186,000 miles per
second. According to Newton, the speed in water should be
even greater. The wave theory insisted it must be less. Science
waited long for a Foucault to appear who could devise an

experimental method for measuring such extreme speeds.

When the experiment was made it showed that the speed
in water was less than that in air by just the amount
demanded by the wave theory. The particle theory's star

had set, and from then on there was a new light in the
heavens.
Theevidence for the wave theory was already overwhelm

ing. Yet it was to receive even more decisive support. Not

long after the time of Fresnel there came a renaissance in the

ancient and somewhat stagnant sciences of electricity and

magnetism, a renaissance notable for the experimental re

searches of the Englishman M. Faraday, whose discovery of
electromagnetic induction and invention of the dynamo laid
the foundation for the present-day achievements of modern
electrotechnology.
Faraday had grasp of technical mathematics, a circum
little

stance which to a lesser man in so mathematical a field would

have proved an insurmountable obstacle. With Faraday,
though, it was to be an asset, for it forced him to plow a
lone furrow and invent a private pictorial system for explain-
10 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ing his experimental results to himself. This system, of an
extreme simplicity, and peculiarly nonmathernatical in ap
pearance, was based on what Faraday called "tubes of force/'
and though at first somewhat ridiculed by the professional
mathematicians of the time, it was to prove in some ways
superior to their own systems. The mathematicians looked for
the secret of electromagnetic effects mainly in the lumps of
metal and the wire that produced them. Faraday would
coils of

have none of For him, in a real sense, nothing less than

this.

the whole universe was involved, the wires, magnets, and

other material gadgets being rather insignificant incidents.
The two points of view are nicely contrasted in the simple
case of a magnet attracting a lump of iron. The mathemati
cians felt that the essential things here were the magnet, the
iron, and the numberof inches between them. For Faraday,
on the other hand, the magnet was no ordinary lump of mat
ter but a metal-bellied super-octopus stretching multitudinous,
invisible tentacles in all directions to the uttermost ends of
the world. It was by means of such tentacles, which Faraday
called magnetic tubes of force, that the magnet was able to
pull the iron to itself. The tentacles were the important thing
for Faraday; they, and not the incidental bits of metal, were
the ultimate reality.
Witheach experimental discovery Faraday brought new

support for his ideas. Yet for long his tubes of force were felt
to lack the precision needed for a mathematical theory. It
was many years Maxwell became deeply interested
later that

in Faraday's ideas. From this interest was to spring one of the

most beautiful generalizations in the whole history of physics,
ranking, indeed, with Einstein's theory of relativity and with
the quantum theory itself the former firmly corroborating
 PROLOGUE 11

its general form, and the latter corroding its very funda
mentals!
Maxwell's first step was to translate the seemingly mystical
ideas of Faraday into the more familiar language of mathe
matics. This in itself was no small task, but when it was ac
complished revealed the idea of Faraday as of the very-
it

quintessence of mathematical thought. From these labors

was born an important new physical concept, the field, which
was latem to form the basis of Einstein's general theory of
relativity. The electromagnetic field is more or less the refined
mathematical form of Faraday's tubes of force. Instead of
thinking of space as filled with a multitude of separate ten
tacles we have to imagine that they have merged their identi

ties within one smoothed-out and all-pervading essence of

tentacle, the electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field
is to be thought of as an ultimate physical reality, the sum
of all those innumerable stresses and tensions whose effects
we may observe when a magnet attracts iron, when a dynamo
makes electric current, when an electric train moves, and
when a radio wave carries our voices around the world. The
ubiquitous seat of all these tensions was called the ether, but
to preserve a careful distinction between this new ether and
the luminiferous ether demanded by the wave theory of light
it was referred to as the electromagnetic ether.

Not
content with translating Faraday's ideas into mathe
matical form, Maxwell went on to develop the mathematical

consequences of the theory and to extend its realm. Soon he

came to a contradiction. Evidently all was not well with the
theory, but what the remedy might be was not easy to de
termine. Various scientists sought for a cure, among them
Maxwell himself. So refined and mathematical had the theory
12 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
of electricity and magnetism become by now that when Max
well arrived at a cure by sheer intuition based upon most
unreliable analogies, he produced a group of equations differ

ing but slightly in external form from the old equations. But
not only did the new equations remove the contradiction,
they also carried a significant new implication. They required
that there should exist such, things as electromagnetic waves,
that these waves should move with the speed of light, and
that they should have all the other major knowi* physical

properties of light In fact, they must be the very waves in

vented to explain all that was known about light. When it
was shown that the intricate details of FresneFs brilliant
theories were contained without exception within the new
electromagnetic equations, the identification of electromag
netic waves with light waves seemed inevitable, and with it

the identification of the two ethers which scientists had been

at such pains to keep distinct.
Before the theory could be accepted it was necessary that
Maxwell's hypothetical electromagnetic waves should be pro
duced electrically in the laboratory. This turned out to be
difficult, much in producing them
the difficulty being not so
as in proving they had
actually been produced. As the years
went by and no such waves were detected, physicists began
to have misgivings as to the validity of Maxwell's ideas, es

pecially since they were based on rather loose analogies. No

matter how attractive Maxwell's theory might be on paper,
unless electromagnetic waves were actually detected in the

laboratory and their properties investigated it could at best

be regarded as no more than an extremely interesting though
rather dubious hypothesis.
Maxwell did not live to see the vindication of his theory.
 PROLOGUE 13
It was not till seven years after his death that the electro

magnetic waves he had predicted were first detected by Hertz.

The faint sparks crossing the gap in Hertz's simple hoop

told only that electromagnetic disturbances were traversing
the laboratory. To prove these disturbances were waves re
quired careful investigation. Hertz probed their behavior by
moving hoop from place to place and observing how the
his

intensity of the sparks varied. With sparks so dim this was

no easy task, yet by such crude means did Hertz prove that
the disturbances exhibited reflection and refraction and other
wavelike characteristics, and measured their wavelength. Sub

sequent measurement showed they moved with the speed of

light, thus removing any lingering doubts that they behaved

exactly as Maxwell had foretold and were fundamentally

identical with light waves. Not radio telegraphy but this was
the true significance of Hertz's work, that it established the
correctness of Maxwell's theory.
And this was no meager theory. We may well ask how it

could so positively assert, in the face of the clear evidence of

our senses, that radio waves and light waves are the same sort
of thing. Their difference lies in the frequency of the waves,
the rapidity with which they pulsate, the number of vibra
tions they make per second. Already in the older wave theory
of light, and even Newton's theory of pulsating
in particles,
this had been the difference between the various colors. It

was to be extended to other forms of radiation. When light

waves are of low frequency they correspond to red light. As
the rate of vibration increases, the color changes to orange,
then yellow, and so on right through the colors of the rain
bow up to violet.
But why stop at the ends of the visible spectrum? Let us
14 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
anticipate later events to give the complete picture. As we
go higher and higher in frequency we come to the invisible
light called ultraviolet, then to X rays, and finally to the

gamma rays from radium and other radioactive substances,

and to some of the constituents of the cosmic rays. As we
go lower in frequency than the red light waves, we pass
through the infrared rays, and the heat rays, and finally reach
the radio waves of Maxwell and Hertz. All these different

types of radiation were ultimately found to be the same thing,

differing only in frequency of vibration; differing, so to speak,
only as to color. And all were intimately linked in their
phenomena of electricity and magnetism,
properties with the
and with the mechanics of Newton. It is this magnificent
unification growing out of Maxwell's theory which gives some
measure of its greatness.
With superb conception to top the already consider
this

able achievements of Newton's dynamics, science could well

feel complacent. Had it not now reduced the workings of the

universe to precise mathematical law? Had it not shown that

the universe must pursue its appointed course through all

eternity, the motions of its parts strictly determined accord

ing to immutable patterns of exquisite mathematical ele

gance? Had it not shown that each individual particle of
matter, every tiny ripple of radiation, and every tremor of
ethereal tension must fulfill to the last jot and tittle the
sublime laws which man and mathematics had at last
his
made plain? Here indeed was reason to be proud. The mighty
universe was controlled by known equations, its every motion

theoretically predictable, every action proceeding ma

its

jestically by known laws from cause to effect. True, there

were insurmountable practical difficulties to prevent the mak-
 PROLOGUE 15

ing of a complete prediction, but in theory, could the num

berless observations and measurements be made and the

staggering computations be performed, the whole inscrutable

destiny of the universe would be revealed in every detail.
Nothing essential remained to be discovered. The pioneering
had been done and it was now only a matter of extending
the details of what was already known. A
few men with al
most prophetic powers were able to discern the stealthy ap
proach of distant storms, but their warnings did little to dis
turb the general equanimity. Physics was essentially solved,
and was found to be a complete and elegant system. The
physicist was content to cultivate his garden, unaware that he
would soon be cast forth into the wilderness because Planck

and his followers were about to taste of the bitter but life-

giving tree of knowledge.

Long before Maxwell the particle theory of light had lost
all reason for existence. With the wave theory of
light turn
ing up again independently from so unexpected a source as
electromagnetism, the particle theory was surely dead.
Yet in 1887, in the very experiments that confirmed the
existence of Maxwell's waves, Hertz had noticed a curious
happening. It was so slight as tobe hardly worthy of com
ment: merely that when light from the flashing sparks of his
transmitting apparatus shone on the open ends of his hoop>
the faint sparks in the gap came slightly more readily.
 CHAPTER II

ACT I

THE QUANTUM IS CONCEIVED

IN 1887 Hertz had noticed the curious fact that when ultra
violet light shone on his apparatus the sparks came slightly

more readily.
Little could he here within his grasp lay what
realize that

still remains one of the clearest and most direct evidences we

have for the existence of the quantum. The world was not yet
ready to receive so precious a gift The recognition of the
quantum had to await the turn of the century, and when it
came it was from a quite different quarter.
We now know how completely the quantum permeates
all of existence.With the physicist it hasbecome almost an
obsession, haunting his every equation, dictating his every

experiment, and leading him into long and not always fruit
ful argument with philosopher and priest on God and free

will. Already its advent has revolutionized certain aspects of

theoretical chemistry, and from chemistry it is but a short
step to biology, the science of life itself. Yet with the ubiqui
tous quantum insistently giving the plainest possible hints of
its existence, it was first
hesitantly recognized in a field where
16
 THE QUANTUM IS CONCEIVED IJ
its hints were somewhat obscure, and then partly as the result
of a happy guess.
The quantum made its official bow to physics in connec
tion with what
is called the "violet
catastrophe/' This piquant
title (which should have been reserved for one of the more

lurid pulp magazine tales of a certain celebrated mathemati

cian in one of our California colleges) was squandered by
the physicists on a purely theoretical catastrophe in both
senses of the phrase.
The violet catastrophe consisted in this: if one calculated
in what manner a body ought to glow when heated, one
found a mathematical formula which implied that all energy
should long ago have escaped from matter in a catastrophic
burst of ultraviolet radiation.
The
absence of any such occurrence was but one of the
reasons for concluding that the formula was incorrect. Yet
itwas not wholly bad. Actually, for light of low frequency
the results were good. It was for light of high frequency that
the formula went on a rampage and preached mythical
catastrophe.
Another line of attack on the problem of the glowing body
led to a different mathematical formula, which successfully
avoided the violet catastrophe, agreeing excellently with ex

periment for light of high frequency.

Did this solve the problem, then? By no means. For, while
the first low frequencies, was wrong for
formula, excellent for

high, the second, which could not be better for high fre
quencies, proved unsatisfactory for the low. Two formulas,
each only half right.

Such, in brief, was the state of affairs in this field when

l8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Max Planck, professor of theoretical physics in Berlin, entered
on his crucial series of researches.

Planck indulged in a little pure guesswork. He tried

first

the effect of various ways of maltreating the two imperfect

formulas until in 1900 he hit upon a single mathematical
formula which for low frequencies looked just like the first
and for high frequencies just like the second. No really
fundamental reasoning was involved here. It was largely
empirical patchwork and opportunism, like making a single
suit of clothes by borrowing the trousers from one
person
and the coat from another. By good fortune and excellent
judgment Planck managed to get trousers and coat to match,
the resulting suit being enormously more valuable than the
coat and trousers separately.
The new formula it is called the radiation formula

agreed splendidly with experiment But now Planck found

himself in the position of the schoolboy who, having man

aged with great cunning to steal a glance at the answers to

the day's homework, is
chagrined to find the problems never
theless difficult Planck was not altogether unprepared for
his new task of finding some sort of theoretical justification
for the formula he had so neatly contrived. Long and incon
clusive investigations had convinced him that only something
drastic could hope to save the situation. Armed with this
he worked on the problem with such a fury
vital conviction,

of concentration that at the end of but a few weeks he had

found the answer, an answer so unorthodox that only after
the lapse of seventeen eventful years did it earn him the
Nobel prize.
An accurate description of Planck's reasoning would carry
us too far into mathematical abstractions, but
something of
 THE QUANTUM IS CONCEIVED 1Q

the spirit of the work can perhaps be conveyed by a slightly

simplified narrative which, though not a literal account of

his argument, is at least artistically accurate in that some
part of the general quality and flavor is
preserved, as in a

parable. Nor will great harm be done if the story is told as

though it were in fact scrupulously exact.

There is a certain mathematical trick, invented by the
Greeks, whereby a baffling smoothness is replaced by a series
of minute jerks much more amenable to mathematical treat
ment. This is a
the foundation of the calculus,
trick, simple
one in its
general aspects. For example,
try to we
calculate
if

(not measure) the length of the circumference of a circle

whose diameter is one inch we find the smooth circumference
offers little mathematical foothold. We therefore creep up
on the problem while it is not looking. We begin by calcu
lating something that does afford a firm mental footing.
Then, after reaching a secure position overlooking our slippery
problem, we can suddenly jump on it without risk of being
thrown.

Thus, in the case of the circumference, we mark the circle

into four, eight, sixteen,and so on equal parts and -join the
marks by straight lines, as shown. For each of these regular
polygons it is possible to calculate the total perimeter, and
it is obvious that as we take more and more smaller and
2O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
smaller sides their total length will come closer and closer
to the circumference of the circle. For instance, the total

perimeter of the sixteen-sided figure is much closer to the

circumference of the circle than is the sum of the sides of
the square. What the mathematician does is to calculate the

perimeter for a figure of some general number of sides.Then,

after he has finished the general calculation, he suddenly
smooths out the kinks by letting the number of sides in his
formula increase without limit. In this way the unmanageable
smoothness is not permitted to interfere with the details of
the calculation until after the general formula is obtained.

Incidentally, for a circle of one unit diameter the circum

ference is denoted by the Greek letter TT, a number which
keeps cropping up in the quantum theory. Approximately, re
3.14, but if we try
is to write its exact value it objects violently

and behaves like a

supremely gifted trooper goaded beyond
all human endurance, going on and on for ever without re
itself:
peating

^3.14159265358979323846264338327950 *

Let us now return to Planck. Even before 1900 he had

shown that for his particular purposes a lump of matter could
be represented by innumerable particles rhythmically bobbing
up and down. Some bobbed rapidly and others more slowly,
allfrequencies of oscillation being included. These oscillators,
as Planck called them, had one simple job: to absorb heat

and light energy by oscillating more and to give

violently
energy off again by letting the violence subside. They were

just like children's swings, which on being pushed sweep

through ever wider arcs; and they could hold energy as
naturally as a sponge holds water.
 THE QUANTUM IS CONCEIVED 21

A lump of matter absorbs energy by getting warm. Using

his simple model, Planck calculated in what way matter
would hold and give off heat and light at any temperature.
Since he was dealing with smooth changes in the amount of

energy absorbed or emitted, he employed the stratagem just

described, replacing the smooth changes by jerky ones which
he could calculate. On
completing the calculations he found,
as he had expected, that if he smoothed out the energy jerks
in the conventional manner he was right back in the violet

catastrophe. Now came the inestimable advantage of know

ing the answer to the day's homework. From the start Planck
had been prepared to seize any reasonable opportunity to
indulge in some little impropriety if only it would give him
the right answer, and here in his calculations he saw the
chance he was seeking a splendid chance, but a desperate
one, for it invited an impropriety far from little. If he could
bring himself to break with one of the most sacred traditions
of physical theory by refusing to smooth out the energy jerks
he could see a way to obtain the answer he knew agreed
with experiment.
But such an idea was fantastic; it was like saying that a

swing may swing with a sweep of one yard, or two yards, or

three, or four, and so on, but not with a sweep of one and a

quarter yards or any other in-between value. Even a child

would realize how fantastic that sort of thing would be. Yet
it did lead to the proper answer. . . .

If Planckeverything become smooth, the high fre

let

quencies would hog practically all the energy and cause

catastrophe. Somehow he had to restrain them. Leaving the
energy jerky did not in itself solve the problem, it but did
afford a chance to exercise against the high frequencies a
22 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
discrimination which was unconstitutional under the classical
laws. For Planck decreed that energy must be delivered
if

in neat bundles, he could then go a step further and penalize

the unruly higher frequencies by requiring them to gather
far bigger bundles than the lower. A low frequency could

then readily find the small quantity of energy needed for its
bundle. But a high frequency would be much less likely to

amass its onerous quota.

Using a convenient word, which had actually already ap
peared even in scientific literature in other connections,
Planck called this bundle or quota a QUANTUM of energy.
To make the answer come out right, Planck found he must
fix the quantum of energy for any particular frequency ac
cording to a definite rule and, from the mathematical point
of view, if hardly from the physical, a surprisingly simple one.

Introducing a special quantity which he denoted by the letter

h, he gave this illustrious and atomically explosive formula:

quantum of energy=h times frequency.

The fundamentalquantity h introduced by Planck and

nowadays called Planck's constant is the proud ensign of the
new physics and the central symbol of its defiance of the old
order. From it tremendous events were to spring, yet it was

hardly what one would call large. Its value was a mere

.000 ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo 006 6 ...

That h should be meant that the energy

so extremely small

jerks were incredibly feeble. Yet

not to smooth them out

entirely was something smacking of fire

and brimstone and
threatening peril to the immortal soul. This business of
bundles of energy was unpardonable heresy, frightening to
 THE QUANTUM IS CONCEIVED 23
even the bravest physicist, Planck was by no means happy.
And an added terror to his situation he knew he had had
to contradict his own assumption of jerkiness in the course
of his calculations. No wonder he strove desperately over the
years to modify his theory, to see if he could possibly smooth
out the jerks without sacrificing the answer.
But all was to no avail. The jerks do exist. The energy is

absorbed in bundles. Energy quanta are a fundamental fact

of nature. And to Max Planck had fallen the immortal honor

of discovering them.
 CHAPTER III

IT COMES TO LIGHT

FOR four years Planck's idea lived precariously, almost for

saken by its father. And then, in 1905, a certain clerk in the
Swiss patent office at Berne made a bold and momentous

pronouncement which was to revive Planck's languishing dis

covery and send it on its way strong and confident to its
fateful assignation with Bohr in 1913.
Not long before, this samehad given a complete
clerk

theoretical explanation of the so-called Brownian movement,

and hardly four months after his brilliant resuscitation of
Planck's discovery he announced a new theory concerning
the electrodynamics of moving bodies, which we now know
as the special theory of relativity. His name was Albert Ein

stein. So original and startling were his ideas that it was not
tillfour years later that he was called away from his tempo

rary haven in the patent office to join the university faculty

in Zurich.
Einstein decided that Planck's idea must be made even
more revolutionary than Planck himself had dared to imagine.
According to Planck, energy co.uld^enter matter only in
bundles; outside matter, where it took the form of radiation,
24
 IT COMES TO LIGHT 2

it must obey the smooth laws set down by Maxwell. But

Einstein showed that the two ideas would not balance each
other, and showed further that the balance would be restored
if radiation too consisted of bundles.
What was the net effect of these calculations? If anything,

was it not rather damaging to Planck? Did it not imply that

the upstart Planck conflicted with the well-established Max
well? It required boldness and deep insight for young Ein
stein to say rather that it was Maxwell who conflicted with
Planck.
Where Planck had demanded merely that matter should
absorb or give off energy in bundles, Einstein now insisted
that, even after escaping from matter, each quantum of

energy, instead of behaving solely like a wave to please Max

well, must somehow behave like a particle: a particle of light;
what we call a photon.
It was a revolutionary proposal. But Einstein had some
trump cards, prominent among them being the peculiar effect
Hertz had noticed some twenty years before.
Much had been learned about this effect since then. In
England Thomson had discovered the electron, and in
J. J.

Germany Lenard, who studied under Hertz, had tracked

down the mechanism of the Hertz effect by showing that
ultraviolet light is able to evaporate electrons from metal
surfaces much as the sun's rays evaporate water from the
ocean. It was this evaporation, now called the photoelectric
which caused the sparks to come more freely in Hertz's
effect,

hoop.
Einstein gave a theory of the photoelectric effect which
was an outstanding triumph for his new idea of light quanta.
Unlike his theory of relativity, his theory of the photoelectric
26 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
effect is
easy to understand, as will be seen when we tell

later how neatly it explained the many anomalies that had

been observed in that effect With the photoelectric effect
lying at the basis of such things as the photoelectric cell,

sound movies, and television, it is remarkable how many dif

ferent by-products have come from Hertz's academic investi

gation of Maxwell's slight modification of the electromagnetic

equations.
From Planck's jerkiness Einstein had developed the star
tling idea of a definite atomicity of energy. Imagine a sponge
in a bathtub. We liken it to a lump of glowing matter,
may
and the water bath to the ether. According to Maxwell,
in the

when the sponge is squeezed it sends out its water in the

usual way and causes waves in the bathtub. Planck's sponge
is of a rarer sort. Indeed it is more like a bunch of grapes than
a sponge, consisting of myriads of tiny balloons of various
sizes, each full of water. When this sponge is squeezed, the
balloons burst one after the other, each shooting out its con
tents in a single quick explosion a bundle of water and
setting up waves of the same sort as Maxwell's. Einstein,

however, took the sponge right out of the bathtub. He had

no use for the water in the tub. When he squeezed his
sponge gently, water fell from it like shimmering drops of
rain. The jerkiness came not only from the inner mechanism

of the sponge; it lay also in the very nature of the water itself,
for the water stayed in the form of drops even after it left
the sponge.
Einstein's was a very strange notion. To all intents and
purposes meant going back to the old particle theory of
it

Newton. Even Newton's pulsations were there, playing an

essential part. For it was the rate of these pulsations which, in
 IT COMES TO LIGHT 2J
the particle theory, was the frequency of the light, and fre
quency here had to play a double role. Not only must it
distinguish the color of the photon, but according to Planck's
rule, it must also determine its energy.
But who could believe so fantastic a theory? Had not the
particle theory gone completely out of fashion, and with ex
cellent reason, a hundred years before, and had not the wave

theory thrust itself forward through two independent lines

of research? How could a particle theory possibly hope to

duplicate the indisputable triumphs of the wave theory? And

who was this patent clerk anyhow? He was not a professor at
a university. To go back to anything like the particle theory
would be tantamount to admitting that the whole aes
thetically satisfying and elaborately confirmed theory of
electromagnetic phenomena was fundamentally false. Yet
Einstein, not lightly and vaguely, but specifically and quanti
tatively, after deep thought and powerful argument, was

actually proposing such a step.

Was it really so drastic, though? True, thewave theory had
turned up independently in two different places, but Einstein
was now merely evening the score to two all. And although
for over a century all experiments had gone dead against the

particle theory, had not such things as the violet catastrophe

at last shown that Maxwell's theory also was headed for
trouble? The fight was really not so unequal after all, even
at the start.
The battle hadbeen engaged by Planck. Soon Ein
first

stein was making things more and more uncomfortable for

the wave theory. While throwing off such items as the theory
of relativity, he found time to return again and again to the
attack, showing himself to be a mighty warrior, and exciting
28 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
an increasing following of researchers. Repeatedly he and his
followers brought forward new and important developments
in support of the new view of light; no mere theoretical hair

splitting, but direct and simple explanations of experimental

facts which had conveniently been avoided by the wave
theory. But surpassing them all remained Einstein's explana
tion of the photoelectric effect.
At first sight there is something weird and almost miracu
lous about the photoelectric effect. Yet even from the point
of view of Maxwell's theory it is natural that light should
have some power over electrons, for Maxwell showed that
light is electromagnetic, and an electromagnetic wave must
surely influence so essentially electrical a particle as the elec
tron. There was thus nothing really startling about the mere
existence of the photoelectric effect. It was not that
which
baffled thewave theory. The surprise came when precise
measurements were made of the speeds with which the elec
trons came off from the metal.
Maxwell's theory could be
If

trusted, when the intensity, or amount, of light was increased

the speeds of the electrons should be increased too. But what
the experimenters found was something different ilie speeds
remained just the same as before. It was the number of
electrons that increased. To increase the speeds the experi
menters found they must increase not the intensity of the

light but its frequency.

Here was a discrepancy between theory and experiment as
serious as the violet catastrophe itself, even if less
spectacular.
Maxwell's theory was unable to explain the facts. Let us see
how easily Einstein explained the whole thing with his pho
tons.
Einstein looked upon the photoelectric experiment as a
 IT COMES TO LIGHT 29
sort of shooting gallery, with the photons as bullets and the

teeming electrons in the metal as the ping-pong balls which

bob so tantalizingly on fountains of water. To increase the

intensity of the ultraviolet light is merely to increase the

number of photons being shot out per second. This must
inevitably result in more electrons being knocked out of the
metal per second; which is
precisely what the experimenters
observed.
The effect of a change in frequency
explained just as
is

elegantly. For, by Planck's rule, increasing the frequency of

the light means increasing the energy of each photon, which
is
analogous to using heavier bullets. The higher the fre
quency, therefore, the bigger the jolt on the electron, and the
bigger the jolt the greater the electron's speed. Again, this
was exactly what the experimenters had observed.
When Einstein gave his explanation of the photoelectric
effect, no really accurate measurements had been made of
the way the speeds of the electrons changed with the fre

quency of the light. In 1906 he made a definite prediction bn

this point, a predictionbased on his theory of photons and

involving mathematics of such simplicity that any high

school student can follow it. Later experiments, culminating
in the classic researches of R. A. Millikan in America in 1915,

established Einstein's formula with such precision and com

pleteness that for a comparable verification of a scientific
theory one must look to Hertz's confirmation of Maxwell's
wave theory of light! It is curious that Einstein, who de
stroyed Newton's theory of gravitation with his general
theory of should have played so large a part in
relativity,

resuscitating Newton's theory of light with his theory of

photons.
30 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Maxwell's theory was thoroughly outclassed over the photo
electric effect. And it came badly against all the
off just as

rest of Einstein's quantum ideas. Once the concept of the

photon had been conceded, it was extraordinary how many

well-known but little stressed phenomena, incomprehensible
from the Maxwellian standpoint, were found to be in strict
accordance with the new From
such diverse regions as
idea.

photoluminescence, specific heats, and even photochemistry,

Einstein and his followers gathered in the ammunition for
their sallies. And with every advance the photon proved to
be the simple key to just those problems which were unsolved

by the theory of waves. It was not primarily for his monu

mental theory of relativity that Einstein at last received the
Nobel prize in 1921 but for his services to theoretical physics
in general, and specifically for his theory of the photoelectric
effect. Two Nobel
prize was awarded to Milli-
years later the
kan, whose precise measurements had so excellently con
firmed Einstein's ideas.
Do not imagine that Einstein was the sworn foe of the

theory of Maxwell. Far from it. Not only is the theory of

relativity the apotheosis of Maxwell's concept
of the field,
but it also furnishes as beautiful a vindication of Maxwell's

theory as Maxwell's theory itself gave to the wave theory of

Huygens and Fresnel. The theory of relativity requires that
every physical law shall fulfill a stringent condition. When
the known laws of physics were tested against this condition

they failed one after the other. The old ideas of measurement
and simultaneity, of space and time, and of mass and energy,
all had to go. The whole science of dynamics, including

Newton's famous law of gravitation, had. to be remodeled.

Out of all that had been theoretical physics there were but
 IT COMES TO LIGHT 3!

two main survivors of the storm that was relativity. One of

these was the set of conservation laws of mass, energy, and

momentum, which said that none of these could be created

or destroyed; but they were sorely changed from what they
had been! The other was the Maxwell equations; they came
through the storm unscathed, their form unaltered and proud
a supreme monument to the genius of Maxwell.
The conservation laws, which had been three distinct laws
in the older physics, were fused together by relativity in
indissoluble unity, nevermore to be separated. Mass was re
vealed as a form of energy; in fact, as the most concentratedly

potent form of energy known, though its powers were latent

and, at the time, there seemed little prospect of their being
released. These powers were truly enormous. According to
Einstein's formula, the energy inherent in a lump of matter
would be calculated by multiplying its mass by the speed of
light and the result again by the speed of light a truly stag

gering quantity. Such was the measure of atomic energy.

Part of this energy has now been tapped, with devastating
resultsfor the Japanese and momentous consequences for
mankind. Yet even, the atomic bomb for all its fury de
velops but a fraction of the full energy contained within its

mass.
The ether was a special victim of Einstein's fell activities.
Whichever way Einstein argued, whether for photons or for
Maxwell and waves, the ether came off badly, losing, in fact,

all reason for existing. In a pure particle theory of light, of

course, an ether would be superfluous. But in the theory of
which so smoothly incorporated Maxwell's electro
relativity,

magnetic waves, although these waves existed within the

framework of the new theory they no longer needed an ether
32 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
to wave That ubiquitous essence was superseded by space
in.

and time themselves, which had now taken on the power to

bend and to transmit waves.
was for the best that the ether, having served its purpose,
It

should thus ultimately disappear from physics. In its heyday

it had been a considerable nuisance, pretending to so many
mutually contradictory characteristics that some of the finest
scientific brains of the nineteenth century, brains that could

ill be spared from the ramparts of scientific progress, were

more complicated mechanical
kept busy trying to devise ever
models which would have properties bearing some faint re
semblance to those of the ether as then conceived. The mag
nitude of this task will be appreciated from just one instance
of the many discordant characteristics being claimed for the
ether (not that the modern quantum theory does not succeed
in encompassing phenomena which seem just as discordant! )
Since it transmits light waves with prodigious speed, and these
are of the special type called transverse waves, the ether can
not be a mere flabby jelly but must be a solid of extreme
rigidity, far transcending the rigidity of the finest steel. Yet,
although it must fill every nook and cranny of the universe,
this stupendously rigid essence must offer not the slightest
detectable resistance to the motions of the planets around
the sun.
There is an element of tragedy in the life story of the ether.
Its freely given services as midwife and nurse to the wave
theory of light and to the concept of the field were of incal
culable value to science. But after its charges had
grown to
man's estate it was ruthlessly, even joyfully, cast aside, its
faith betrayed and its last days embittered by ridicule and
 IT COMES TO LIGHT 33

ignominy. Now that gone it still remains unsung. Let us

it is

here give it decent burial, and on its tombstone let us in

scribe a few appropriate lines:

we had the luminiferous ether.

First
Then we had the electromagnetic ether.
And now we haven't e(i)ther.
 CHAPTER IV

TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE

WAVE or particle?
In the seventeenth century the particle theory of light had

gained the upper hand, only to be deposed by the wave theory

a hundred years l^ter. And although, in the nineteenth

century, the wave contracted with the electromagnetic theory

of Maxwell a marriage so brilliiant and strategic that the

particle felt it must forever renounce hope of regaining its

lost glory, the dawn of the twentieth. century saw the begin

nings of counterrevolution.
By now, though, the wave was well entrenched, and the
resurrected particle, instead of bringing about a quick and
decisive victory, succeeded only in plunging physics into civil

war which was to drag on for more than a quarter of a century

and to spread so rapidly that, by the time the armistice of
1927 was reached, the whole of physical science was irrevo
cably involved.
We have already watched the ominous gathering of the
dark clouds of war, and the early skirmishes and flurries which
herald the approaching storm. Now, the better to follow the

restless, shifting tide of battle as the technical reports come

34
 TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE 35
in, we must pause to inspect the main armaments of the
rival theories, for they will be used later in strange places.
The armed might of the wave was great. It could well af
ford to keep the whole of the electromagnetic theory and the
measurement of the speed of light in water as a second line
of defense, for more primitive armaments alone were
its

seemingly overwhelming. We will look at but one of them.

The earliest insurrection against the particle theory of
Newton had been armed with the fact that waves, but not
particles, are able to pass through one another without in
jury, a phenomenon curiously named "interference."
The interference of waves was used to explain how it was
that scientists could make two beams
of light produce not
more light but darkness. Imagine that we are shining two
lamps on a bare white wall. The wall will be more or less
evenly illuminated, and there will be nothing out of the
ordinary to be noticed. Even if we could find lamps as small
as pin points, as bright as a flash of lightning, and shining
with light of a single frequency, there would still be nothing
strange or unexpected to notice.
But now suppose that instead of using two different lamps
we make one lamp do double duty for instance, by letting
it shine through two
pin holes in a screen. Then the appear
ance of the wall would be different. No longer would it be
uniformly illuminated. Instead, it would look something like
the back of a miniature zebra, dark bands running across it
in definite, regular patterns. These patterns are called inter
ference patterns. The light has interfered to produce darkness.
Interference patterns were discovered only after Newton's
death. It would have been interesting to know what Newton
and his particles could have done about them. They have
36 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
yet to be explained in terms of any simple particle theory.
For the wave theory, though, they were a conclusive vindica
tion.

Imagine that an eccentric and cold-blooded millionaire in

search of amusement insists on using you as his guinea pig
in an experiment on the emotions. While his tough-looking
bodyguards watch you closely, ready to pounce on you at
the slightest sign of resistance or rebellion, the millionaire
thrusts into your hands a bundle of thousand-dollar bills,
the very
only to snatch it* away from your trembling fingers
next moment; no sooner are you resigned to having lost it
than he puts it in your hands again, but removes it before you
can grasp it. If he continues his little game over and over

again, there will be rhythmic fluctuation in

a considerable

your capital value which you might be justified in finding a

trifle upsetting and not at all the best antidote for hyper

tension. Now comes the question, would two such million

aires be worse than one? Not necessarily. If they kept exactly
in step with each other they would indeed be worse, for your

capital assets would fluctuate twice

as violently as before.

But suppose they kept exactly out of step. Then at the precise
moment when one millionaire proffered the money the other
would snatch it up, the net result being that your capital
assets would remain steady at their usual zero, or ten cents,

or whatever they may have been. There would be no violent

fluctuations, and you would find the presence of the two

millionaires far more restful than that of either one alone.
For when they are exactly out of step they interfere with each

other, to produce no resulting effect.

In just the same way, if two waves of light always reach a

certain spot exactly in step, their vibrations reinforce each
 TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE 37
other and produce a greater brightness than either would
alone.But if they always arrive completely out of step 7 their
vibrations oppose each other so that the net result is zero

disturbance, or darkness.

N STEP, THEREFORE LIGHT.

0UT OF STEP. THEREFORE DARK.

STEP, THEREFORE LIGHT,

OUT OF STEP. THEREFORE DARK.

N STEP. THEREFORE LIGHT.

The diagram illustrates how a single

lamp shining through
two pinholes in a screen can produce interference patterns on
a wall. Since the waves from the lamp reach the two pinholes
simultaneously, the new waves that issue from the other side
of the screen are in step with each other. At some places on
the wall these waves are always in step and so produce bright
ness. At other from the pinholes
places, though, the distances
are just such as to makethe waves always out of step. At those

places their effects cancel and the result is darkness.

This is the wave theory's official explanation of interference
38 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
patterns. It constitutes one of the most powerful and aggres
sive weapons of its armory in its struggle with the particle
theory. For the particle theory to explain these interference
effects one would have to imagine that the same particle went

through both pinholes at once, surely a fantastic thing to

imagine. Let us agree, then, with the physicists who made the
experiments that when we find interference we are dealing
with waves.
It was mainly by demonstrating interference that Hertz
established the validity of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic
waves. It was interference too that showed that rays are X
waves, for when X rays are passed through crystals they
produce on a photographic plate a characteristic pattern which
can be interpreted as the result of interference of waves dis
turbed by the regularly arranged atoms in the crystal. These
X-ray diffraction patterns, as they are called, will appear again
in our story.

Long before the coining of Maxwell, the formidable power

of the wave theory had overwhelmed the hapless particle. It
was a hundred and years before the particle recovered
fifty

sufficiently to begin the struggle anew. After so long a subjuga

tion it could not hope to attack the wave openly on its own

ground. It had to resort to cunning and seek out those obscure

parts of the land where the power of the wave was practically
nonexistent: shabby, uncultivated wildernesses which the wave
had found too forbidding to develop. Defense was easy here,
for the heavy artillery of the wave was powerless in such

rough country, and the terrain was unsuited to the wave's

refined and civilized habits. In such neglected places did the

particle find refuge, and there it

doggedly built for itself a new
existence, tapping rich veins of gold beneath the barren
 TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE 39

ground. In the beginning the power of the particle was to that

of the wave as a pebble is to the ocean, but so vigorous and

rapid was its revival that soon its might stood forth like huge
continents in the seven seas of physics, and in defense of its
realm it
produced many new weapons to match the colossal
power of the wave's interference. By far the most dramatic of
these was the photoelectric effect. Millikan's exact experi
mental verification of Einstein's formula could well be held in
reserve by the particle to counter the second line of defense of
the wave. There was something more primitive and striking
about the photoelectric effect which it could well use in its
front line: something just as conclusive for the particle as
were the interference patterns for the wave, and something far
more vivid.

Imagine that you have lined up along the seashore, near

the water's edge, a long row of similar bottles. You leave
them unattended while you have lunch. When you return
you find one or two of them here and there lying on their sides,
but most of them standing where you had left them
just
before lunch. Would you suppose that a huge wave had care

fully taken pot shots at one or two of your bottles while just
as carefully avoiding all the others? Such things occur only in
the realm of the Disney cartoon. Much more likely that some
one had passed by who could not resist the temptation to
throw pebbles.
Now, what do we find in the photoelectric effect?. The
ultraviolet light does not knock electrons out of the metal from
all over the surface at once. It knocks them out from here
and there with no regularity or uniformity at all, except on the
average. Could a wave cause such haphazard damage? There
is no
possibility here of interference patterns, for everything is
40 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
uniform on the average. Surely only carelessly aimed particles
could produce such sporadic and random effects. Surely light
must be made of particles. If there is still doubt, we can call

upon the evidence of very weak light. Suppose light was a

wave. Then we could make the light so weak in intensity that,
an hour would elapse before enough energy had fallen
say, half
on the whole surface to knock out a single electron. Since the
light waves impartially over all of the surface, there would
fall

be no concentration upon any single electron. Weeks and

weeks could pass before anything happened, and then suddenly,
when enough energy had accumulated, electrons would start
popping out right and left like an artillery barrage at zero hour.
But nothing like this happens in The electrons main
practice.
tain a sporadic, desultory bombardment. And often this bom
bardment starts even before there has been time for the waves
to produce any effect even if
they were all concentrated on a

single spot. With particles this is

just what one would expect,
for light is bombardment of photons. When
conceived of as a
the light is weak the bombardment is intermittent and the
electronic response correspondingly sporadic.

Though perhaps lacking the thoroughness and solidity of

organization of the wave, the photon has here a front-line
weapon the equal of the wave's. Let us, for good measure,
jump ahead of our story to include yet another evidence that

light consists of particles. In 1911, after a dozen years of

research, the English physicist C. T. R. Wilson invented that
invaluable device the cloud chamber which renders visible the
paths of individual electrons and other charged particles pass

ing through In 1923 the American physicist A. H. Compton

it.

made a fundamental experiment which could be

interpreted
only on the theory that light bounces off electrons like one
 TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE 41
billiard ball off another. This was decidedly against the wave
theory, of course, and two years later, working with Simon,

Compton was able to observe in a cloud chamber the effects

of individual impacts in this cosmic game of billiards. The

electron tracks were directly observable, and the paths of the

photons could be easily inferred from the positions of pairs

of successively struck electrons. These various experiments left
no doubt that individual photons were bouncing off electrons
in strict accordance with the mathematical laws of impact. It
is difficult to conceive of a game of billiards in which the cue
ball is a wave, nor could one fulfill the laws of impact under
such circumstances. Certainly light must consist of particles,
then. And for this clear-cut demonstration of the fact Comp
ton was to share the Nobel prize with Wilson in 1928.
We
have now seen the primary armaments on the two sides.

For the wave it was interference. For the particle it was the
photoelectric effect and the manner in which light bounces
off electrons. We have met other, more intricate weapons on
either side, but for our purposes we may concern ourselves

mainly with these, for they are basic and primitive. Let us now
see what was the course of battle.
At the seemed confused, with first one side and
start all

then the other scoring the advantage. But the big guns of the
wave theory proved to be lacking in mobility, and in its chosen
terrain the particle was able to develop big guns of its own only
to find them equally immobile. Soon the battle had degen
erated into trench warfare, with neither side able successfully
to attack the other. The photon could not capture the land
of the wave and the wave could not overrun the domains of
the photon. A stalemate set in with each side comfortably hold
ing its own. The field of science was split between two warring
42 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
camps, with the prospect neither of a quick decision nor of a
reasonable compromise.
Science was not unfamiliar with situations where one
theory covers one set of facts while a different theory explains
another, but in previous cases there had been a plausible rea
son why should happen. For instance, it did not cause
this

anxiety that Maxwell's equations did not apply to gravitation,

since nobody expected to find any link between electricity and
gravitation at that particular level. But now physics was faced
with an entirely new situation. The same entity, light, was at
once a wave and a particle. How could one possibly imagine
its
proper size and shape? To produce interference it must be
spread out, but to bounce off electrons it must be minutely
localized. This was a fundamental dilemma, and the stalemate
in the wave-photon battle meant that it must remain an engima
to trouble the soul of every true physicist. It was intolerable
that light should be two such contradictory things. It was

against all the ideals and traditions of science to harbor such

an unresolved dualism gnawing at its vital parts. Yet the evi
dence on either side could not be denied, and much water was
to flow beneath the bridges before a way out of the quandary
was to be found. The way out came as a result of a brilliant
counterattack initiated by the wave theory, but to tell of this
now would spoil the whole story. It is well that the reader
should appreciate through personal experience the agony of the

physicists of the period. They could but make the best of itr
and went around with woebegone faces sadly complaining that
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they must look on
light as a wave; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, as a
particle. On Sundays they simply prayed.
 CHAPTER V

THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR

IN 1911, with the battle between wave and particle locked in

hopeless stalemate, a young man, Niels Bohr, crossed the,gray
seas from his native Denmark to continue his studies in Eng
land. After a year at Cambridge he proceeded to Manchester,
where a man called Rutherford was professor of physics. Scien
tifically, Bohr was practically unknown. By professional stand
ards his mathematical technique would not be called
outstanding. But to him had been given the precious gifts of
imagination ^nd daring, and an instinct for physics having little
need for intricate mathematics. Only to one such as he would
the quantum reveal next treasure, and today brilliant scien
its

tific virtuosos revere this quiet, unassuming man as the spiritual

leader in atomic research. In 1922, the year after Einstein, he
received the Nobel prize for physics. Two years before that,
Bohr had become head of a newly created institute for theoret
ical physics inCopenhagen, which under the inspiration of his
leadership was to grow into a world center of atomic research,
attracting outstanding scientists of all nations, and exerting an
incalculable influence on the headlong course of physical
science.

43
44 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
This was Bohr. But who was the man Rutherford under
whom he had come to study?
Back in the year 1895, a scant fifty years before the advent
of the atomic bomb, when Rutherford was
yet young, the
German physicist W. K. Roentgen startled the world with his
discovery of X
rays. While experimenting with the passage of
electrical discharges through gases, he came upon them more

or less accidentally through noticing the glow they produced in

fluorescent material lying near his apparatus. When the Nobel

prizes were initiated in 1901, the award for physics went to

Roentgen. It was not till

1912, however, that his X rays were
shown to exhibit diffraction patterns characteristic of waves.
The discovery of X rays stimulated research in many direc

tions,and a year later led the French scientist H. A. Becquerel

to an accidental discovery of even greater moment
Since the new-found rays caused fluorescence, it seemed

possible they would be given off by substances which glow in

the dark after exposure to light. Sure enough, Becquerel found
that certain salts of uranium did give off these rays after being

exposed to light. And then, by a fortunate chance, he dis

covered that they gave them off even without being exposed to

light. This was

indeed surprising. Uranium, then the heaviest
known element, was found to be giving off penetrating rays
them somehow without external aid.
spontaneously, generating
Becquerel had stumbled on what we now call radioactivity, and
itproved to be profoundly disturbing. For, however minute in
amount, here was energy without visible means of support.
How did it arise? Whence did it come?
The radiations of Becquerel held irresistible fascination
for the incomparable Marie Curie. Then a young and little-

known scientist, she was later to become the only person ever
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 45
to be awarded the Nobel prize twice, sharing the physics
award with Becquerel and her husband Pierre Curie in 1903
and receiving the chemistry prize alone in 1911. Working in
Paris, she and her husband were able, in 1898, to announce the
existence of two new elements, each more powerfully radio
active than uranium. One they called polonium for Poland, the

country of Marie's birth and the object of her fervid patriotism.

The other they called radium. There followed four happy
years of cruel, exhausting labor to distill by hand, from tons
and tons of the refuse of uranium ore, a few small specks of
precious radium salts.

The radioactivity of radium was almost incredible. It was

by far the most active substance known, some two million
times more potent than uranium. From within itself it sent
forth an endless stream of energy in various forms: it glowed

spontaneously in the dark and maintained itself a little

warmer than its surroundings; it was
found to give off
later

heavy radioactive gas previously unknown; it was to become

a means of combating cancer; above all, it was to be recog
nized as a radiant witness to the terrible seething and boiling
that goes on unceasingly within the very heart of matter.
The amount of energy issuing from a speck of radium is

extremely small, but such miniatures often foreshadow great

events in science. Becquerel and the Curies had initiated the
atomic age.
It is
largely to Ernest Rutherford, and
English col
his

laborator F. Soddy, that we owe our understanding of the

inner meaning of radioactivity. Working in Canada, they
performed a masterly series of experiments which established
the fundamental facts of the radioactive process and led
them to formulate as early as 1903 a theory of the radioactive
4^ THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
disintegration and transmutation of atoms which, in its funda
mentals, is
accepted to this day. Rutherford was to make other
profound discoveries of enormous significance regarding the
atom which were to establish him as the greatest experi
mental physicist of the age. In 1908 he received the Nobel
prize for chemistry, the same award going to Soddy in 1921.
According to Rutherford and Soddy, radioactive atoms
were exploding and tearing themselves- apart. Three types of
rays were being sent forth, dubbed a rays, rays, and y rays,
(3

after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet The y rays
turned out to be X rays far more penetrating than those found
by Roentgen, and the rays proved to be streams of electrons.
(3

As for the <* rays, they were fragments of radium which yet
were not fragments of radium. Though they resulted from the
explosion of the radium atoms, they were not radium but
atoms of a. different substance, the inert and very light gas
helium, in what was called an ionized state because it carried
electric charge. When an atom of radium exploded, not
only were the <* and (J particles it gave off different substances,
but so too was the fragment that was left. This in turn was
radioactiveand exploded, and its residues after it, in a long
chain of transmutations, ending in that most leaden of sub
stances lead. A new vista had been opened up for science.
At that time little was known of the structure of the atom.
The discoverer of the electron, Thomson, who received the
Nobel 1906, tentatively suggested that the atom
prize in
consisted of a ball of positive electricity with electrons em
bedded in it like plums in a pudding. The swiftly flying
from radioactive substances were splendid weapons
particles
with which to belabor the atom and wrest from it its secrets.
As Lenard, who received the Nobel prize in 1905, had al-
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 47
ready pointed out, the particles passed so readily through
(3

atoms that there must be vast open spaces therein. But it was
the a particles that provided the real puzzle, for they suffered
violent collisions with atoms which could not possibly be
accounted for on the basis of the Thomson model.
In 1911 Rutherford, now at Manchester and a Nobel
laureate, proposed a new atomic model to account for these
extraordinary collisions. He showed that the positive electric
charge in the atom must be concentrated in a minute, heavy
nucleus no more than the million-millionth of an inch across.
Itwas impact with such compact, heavy nuclei that deflected
the a particles so violently. The electrons in the atom, instead
of being inside, as in the Thomson model, must be flying
around the nucleus at relatively enormous distances, their

combined negative electric charges just balancing the positive

charge of the nucleus, and the whole structure bearing a
marked resemblance to a miniature solar system.
Rutherford was no amateur or dilettante. He did not pro
pose his model of the atom till he had mathematically proved
the experimental evidence so compelling that escape from
his conclusions seemed impossible. And indeed his atomic
model is the basis of all our modern ideas of atomic structure.
Yet the ability of the Rutherford atom to explain the results
of experiment was offset by theoretical blemishes so deep
rooted that only the most drastic treatment could hope to
eradicate them. Let us tell here of two of these.

According to Maxwell's theory, a Rutherford atom would

glow with light of all frequencies. Real atoms, on the con
trary, had long been known to be very particular as to the

frequencies of light they will permit themselves to be known

by. Each element chooses for its own use, as a sort
of trade-
48 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
mark, a special group of frequencies of light, and no element
ever successfully counterfeits the trademark of another. Take

hydrogen, for example, the lightest and least complicated of

all the elements. The spectroscopist, with his elaborate ritual

for making hydrogen glow and examining its light with a

prism, does not obtain a spectrum containing all the colors of
the rainbow. Instead, he finds a complicated assortment of

particular colors only. Since they appear as lines in the spec

trum, they are called spectral lines. They can be arranged in
families according to their position, and other indications.
For hydrogen, on measuring the frequencies of the various
lines and tabulating them in families, the spectroscopist finds
the following array of numbers:

2,465,910,000,000,000 2,922,560,000,000,000 3,082,400,000,000,000

456,770,000,000,000 616,650,000,000,000 690,650,000,000,000
159,870,000,000,000 233,870,000,000,000 274,070,000,000,000

Now, these numbers, which can be measured with extraordi

nary precision, must certainly have a deep significance. They

are the trademark of hydrogen, which no othe: element may

usurp. It is inconceivable that the whole intricate system of

individual trademarks should be a mere accident; that each
trademark should be no more than a fortuitous aggregate of
frequencies. These numbers must conceal the intimate per
sonal secrets of hydrogen. But what is their message?
It was more than sixty years ago that an obscure Swiss
schoolteacher, Johann Jakob Balmer, became fascinated by
the riddle of these frequencies. In those days no more than
four frequencies of the hydrogen atom were known, the
others lying in the infrared and ultraviolet, beyond the visible

part of the spectrum. From this meager material Balmer

extracted an extraordinary formula which, though it ac-
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 49
counted excellently for the four known frequencies, was
altogether too strange to be readily accepted; its success might
well have been merely accidental.
Balmer worked with wavelengths. Here is the kind of rule
he discovered, modernized, and modified to refer to fre
quencies:
Take the mysterious number 3,287,870,000,000,000 and
with it build a sort of irregular laclder leading down, the

depths of its rungs being obtained by dividing this number

respectively by i, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, ... What makes Baliner's
formula particularly intriguing is that these latter are not
mysterious numbers. They are just the squares of the natural
numbers i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... The ladder is shown on page 50.
What has all this to do with the hydrogen frequencies
listedon page 48? Simply this: the frequencies in the first
horizontal row are the distances from the first rung to the

second, third, fourth, etc.; the frequencies in the second row

are the distances from the second rung to the third, fourth,

fifth, etc.
Balmer deduced the essentials of this remarkable rule from

only the first four frequencies of the second row, and even
went so far as to suggest that the other rows should exist too.
The years passed. More and more frequencies were measured,
not only for hydrogen but for the other elements as well.
For all these, as the Swiss scientist W. Ritz showed in 1908,
a ladder principle held. From the most meager data Balmer
had performed the amazing feat of finding a key that was to
fitthe spectra of all the elements, and this he did so far be
fore his time that he received no real recognition while he was

alive.

The accuracy with which Balmer's concept fits the facts,

5 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM

ETC.
OETPTW 9 1,33 0,000,000.000 UNITS
RUNG
FIFTH DEPTH }3I1O, OOO OOO,OOO UNITS
f
FOURTH RUNG DEPTH 205,400,000,000,000 UNITS

DEPTH 365,3*0.000,000,000 UNITS

SECOND RUNG DEPTH e2l,*70,000,OOO OOO UNITS

l

FIRST RUNG DEPTH 3,aTeTO 000,000> 000 UNITS

%

The Balmer Ladder

 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 51
itsprofound simplicity and elegance, and the systematic entry
of the natural numbers can leave no doubt that it represents

a profoundly significant detail of the hidden anatomy of

nature. It reveals a veritable backbone of the universe. Com

pared with it Rutherford's atom, with its insistence upon send

ing out light of all possible frequencies, appeared as a mere
amoeba.
That was the first objection to Rutherford's atom. The
second objection does not take so long to explain. It is simply
that according to Maxwell's theory a Rutherford atom is an

impossible structure. There is one essential difference between

planets moving around a sun in the Newtonian manner and
electrons flying around an atomic nucleus in conformity with
the laws of electrodynamics. Planets move around the sun

peacefully in elliptical orbits. But electrons moving around a

nucleus would act very violently. They would not only send
off their energy in waves of light of all frequencies, but while

so doing would rapidly spiral right into the nucleus. If the

atom were something after the style of the Rutherford
really

model, how could it possibly exist for any length of time?

With Rutherford's atom battling for its life against such
catastrophic objections as these,young Bohr came forward
in 1913 with proposals which can only be described as heroic.

Had he not, he argued, come across this second objection

before? Was it not something like the violet catastrophe all

over again? And did this not indicate that an injection

if so,

of quantum would aid the ailing theory? And did not this in
turn mean that the relatively slender experimental evidence
for Rutherford's model must outweigh the voluminous, but
already badly shaken evidence for the electromagnetic theory
5^ THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
of Maxwell? True, Rutherford's own evidence was based
directly on Maxwellian mathematics, but it is a poor re
search worker who insists on fully
understanding his own
intuition. And Bohr did not let himself be deterred
by this
small item; which was indeed good judgment, since the need
to rely on
Maxwell for want of something better still mocks the
triumphs of some of the most modern theories of atomic
physics.
To say that in setting up his quantum theory of the atom
Bohr was guilty of outright plagiarism would be going too far.
But there can surely be no reasonable doubt tremen as to his
dous unacknowledged obligation to that illustrious English
man and instinctive diplomat, the Lord Chancellor in lolanthe.
The incident is
graphically related by W. S. Gilbert. The
Lord Chancellor from unsuspected
fairy lolanthe, to save the

bigamy and the plot of the opera from serious collapse, has
revealed to him that she is his long-lost wife, thereby breaking
a sacred vow of silence and incurring the penalty of death.
While the remaining fairies look sorrowfully on, the fairy
queen steels herself to pronounce dread sentence on the
lolanthe they all love.
But hold! What is this? A commotion! More; an interrup
tion! As if
impelled by a common, overmastering purpose
their control, the ermine-clad
utterly beyond peers of the realm
are pouring in from all sides. What can itbe that brings them
here so powerfully? No one can tell! It is one of those unex

plained mysteries so characteristic of opera. From their actions

it would seem
they are attracted by the sight of that veritable
Prospero in incongruous formal attire down front whose baton
so potently conjures forth music from the void.
Certainly they
have eyes for him alone. Whatever the reason, the advent of
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 53
the peers is more than opportune, for it gives the fairies courage
to try one last desperate chance to save their beloved lolanthe:

THE FAIRY LEILA. Hold! If lolanthe must die, so must we all;

for, as she has sinned, so have we!

THE FAIRY QUEEN. What!
THE FAIRY CELIA. We are all fairy duchesses, marchionesses,
countesses, viscountesses, and baronesses.
LORD MOUNTARARAT. It's our fault. They couldn't help
themselves.
QUEEN. It they have helped themselves, and pretty
seems
freely, too! (After a pause.) You have all incurred death; but
I can't
slaughter the whole company! And yet (unfolding a
scroll) the law is clear every fairy must die who marries a
mortal!
LORD CHANCELLOR. Allow me, as an old Equity draughts
man, to make The subtleties of the legal mind
a suggestion.
are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple
the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that
every fairy shall die who don't marry a mortal, and there you
are, out of your difficulty at once!
QUEEN. We like your humour. Very well!

Thus the Lord Chancellor. Thus also Niels Bohr. Faced with
a situation equally critical, he too inserted a single word.
Instead of the Maxwellian law

Electrons moving around a nucleus radiate their energy and

spiral into
the nucleus

he boldly suggested

Electrons moving around a nucleus don't radiate their energy

and spiral into the nucleus.

Having taken this decisive step to save the Rutherford atom by

making the Maxwell theory the scapegoat for its impossibility,
54 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
he was now free to make any new rules he chose without feel

ing constrained by the ordinary niceties. With the way thus

cleared, he replaced the Maxwellian laws by two rules

expressly constructed to remove the other great blemish of the

Rutherford atom to supply it with a backbone.
Planets moving around the sun may move in circles of any
The
size. smaller the circle the greater the speed of the planet.
To make a planet move in any particular circle with the sun
as center, all that is
necessary is
properly with
to start it off

the right speed for that size of circle; nature will take care of

everything else. According to the Newtonian theory of gravita

tion, all such circles are possible planetary orbits.
Following
the lead of Rutherford, Bohr took over this general picture;
but he made some important amendments greatly restricting
the freedom of the electrons moving around the nucleus. Only
certain special orbitswere to be permitted them, the rest
being declared out of bounds. No longer could an electron
roam fancy free wherever it wished but, more like a trolley car
than a bus, it must keep strictly to the tracks laid down by
Bohr, though, as we shall see shortly, it did have a little more
freedom than the conventional trolley.
Bohr laid down mathematical precision,
his tracks with

using a formula that had actually been discovered the previous

year by J. W. Nicholson of Oxford.
In retrospect we can see how direct an extension of Planck's
fundamental idea was this new concept of Bohr's. Planck's

great discovery amounted to a rule restricting the oscillations

of his bobbing particles to certain permitted amplitudes only,
all other amplitudes being forbidden. Bohr was simply
apply
ing the idea of forbidden motions to particles moving in circles
instead of just oscillating up and down. So close was the
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 55

parallel, when, later on, the Nicholson-Bohr rule

in fact, that

was being extended to more complex motions it was found that

the rule for selecting permitted orbits and the rule governing
the bobbing particles could be expressed by the same formula.
This formula uses a rather pretty mathematical symbol, and it
is so compact that little damage will be done if it is placed on

exhibition:

For our purposes here it is to be examined no more closely

than you or I would examine the usual museum piece, noting
beauties and peculiarities, and listening to the smooth patter
of the guide, but quickly passing on to the next exhibit. Here
Ve notice Planck's constant h on the riglu, and also the letter
n. This n, called a quantum number, is used to denote the
natural numbers one after another in turn. The natural num
bers are thus seen to be purposely inserted in the formula %

point to remember for later in our story.

For the professional mathematician this formula is
packed
with information, applicable to all sorts of circumstances. For
the case of electrons moving in circles around a nucleus it can
be interpreted as saying, in the jargon of Nicholson and Bohr,

that the angular momentum of the electron must be an integral

multiple of Planck's constant divided by twice n. But this is

rather technical. Let us (with an eye to future developments)

try to interpret more graphically the formula for the present

case.

Imagine the electron orbits to be trolley tracks and your

self the contractor who must
build them. Deciding to start
with the tracks for an electron of some particular speed, you
take from your pocket a well-thumbed copy of "Everybody's
56 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Manual of Electron Trolley Track Construction" and look
up
the size of the circle needed for that speed. Next tele
you
phone the factory and tell them to send you some track capable
of withstanding the speed you are interested in.
They send it

to you in segments, and at once you realize that

you have on
your hands a harder problem than you thought. For, because
of unusual manufacturing difficulties, the factory is able to
make the track only in segments of a particular length depend

ing on the speed to be withstood. The factory thus has a

manual of its own, and it does not agree any too well with
yours. For example, your track must have a length of seventeen
units, but for speed the factory can make track only in
this

segments of three units length. Though flexible, the track is

so tough as to be quite unbreakable; and three doesn't go intor
seventeen. What will you do? You cannot build the orbital
track you want because there would be an overlap. You will

simply have to declare that particular orbit impossible to con

struct. That is no way to make money, though. You will have

to try your luck again with a different speed. This one turns
out to need a circle of length twenty-five units, but the factory

happens to construct track for it only in

lengths of four units.
Again the segments don't fit the circle, and you begin to despair
of ever being able to construct an orbit. However, a systematic
search of both manuals reveals several possibilities. There is
one in which the segment happens to be exactly the length of
the circumference. There is a larger one where the correspond

ing segment is the circumference. Another, yet

just half
larger, where the segments step around the circumference just
three times. Another four times, and so on without end. These
are the permitted orbits, all others being forbidden.

Though the above analogy may seem arbitrary, it is hardly

 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 57
more so than was the original rule it describes. Restricting
the electrons to special orbits in this blunt way was Bohr's
first amendment. But nature would not let him
stop there. The
restrictions on the freedom of the electrons were too drastic

and some outlet had to be provided for their natural wander

Bohr permitted an electron to jump the tracks whenever
lust.

it felt like it, did not play truant In the forbidden

so long as it

zone but immediately lighted on another permitted orbit, there

dutifully to follow its rounds till once more seized with wander
lust The electron was now a cross between a trolley and a
flea.

This jumping permit was Bohr's second amendment. It

brings up a special question. Since each orbit belongs to a
different energy, an electron jumping from one orbit to an
other must either gain or lose energy in the process. What

happens, then, to the law of conservation of energy, which says

that energy may be neither created nor destroyed, but only
altered in form? Did Bohr renounce this law? Not at all. It
was the high spot of the theory. He could now bring in Ein
stein's idea of the photon. The energy an electron lost in a

jump was to be converted into a photon of light whose color,

or frequency, could be calculated by Planck's rule on page 22.
If the electron gained energy in the jump instead of losing it>

it did so by swallowing up a photon of the appropriate fre

quency instead of emitting one.

Such was Bohr's drastic theory of the atom. The first step
was to renounce Maxwell. The second was to forbid all orbits
but a select group. And the third was to allow jumps from one
orbit to another provided the energy differences were taken
care of by single photons. The theory was more a
theory of the
electrons moving around the nucleus than of the atom as a
58 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
whole. And if we look at It carefully we perceive that it is really
a direct transcription into theoretical terms of the formula dis
covered by Balmer and his followers. Actual atoms exist; there
foreBohr begins by renouncing Maxwell. They glow with only
certain special frequencies which are differences between levels

in a frequency ladder. Since frequencies become

energies on
being multiplied by h, Bohr boldly incorporates an energy
ladder in his atom by allowing his electrons only certain

special orbits, his orbits forming, as it were, an energy ladder

with circular rungs.
Bohr's theoiy does give the hydrogen frequencies with

astounding accuracy, but it was so direct a transcription of the

Balmer formula that there could be little credit in such a
performance as it stood. Were the matter to have rested there,
scant attention might have been paid to so arbitrary and curi

ously unorthodox a theory. But there was a spectacular by

product which absolutely compelled attention. Let it be freely
conceded that all those things about special frequencies and
had been so obviously and unashamedly
differences in levels
shoved into the theory right from the start that it would have
been surprising if they had not returned at the end. What
made the theory famous overnight was the wonderful dividend

paid. For in explaining the hydrogen frequencies

it it inciden

tally gave a full explanation of the mysterious number 3,287,-

870,000,000,000 from which we built our ladder. This was

sheer profit. It was not something purposely injected into the

theory at the start. It came out of the theory by a relatively

roundabout route, and thereby established the theory as a
paramount contribution to science. The number turns out to
be a none too complicated arithmetical hodgepodge of simple
 THE ATOM OF NIELS BOHR 59

physical constants and mathematical odds and ends. Here is

the recipe for it which came out of Bohr's theory in 1913:

INGREDIENTS
Group I
Group II

(a) the mass of the electron (e) Planck's constant, h, raised

(b) the charge of the electron, to the third power

raised to the fourth power

(c) the number 2

(d) the number v squared
9

Instructions:

Multiply the ingredients of Group I together, and divide by

Group II. The result will agree with experiment to within two
one-hundredths of one per cent.

This is the sort of concoction physicists relish. Such close

agreement with experiment would have been remarkable even
for a well-established theory. Considering the radical character

of Bohr's collection of new rules, it is little short of miraculous.

Later developments will indicate, indeed, that it is rather

miraculous!

Newton, who built such great things on the foundations*

laid by Galileo, was born the year Galileo died. Bohr was born
in 1885, the year in which Balmer announced his formula.
 CHAPTER VI

THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS

BOHR'S bold thrust into the unknown was in the direct line of

progress, conforming meticulously to the best revolutionary

tradition. In defying Maxwell, Bohr did no more than follow

the precedent of Planck and Einstein; in specifying the allowed

orbits, no more than amplify Planck's original call to arms; in

introducing the photons, no more than present Einstein's idea

with further triumphs. His theory was the rallying point for
scattered forces of revolution and his genius lay in instinctively

knowing how to bring them together. Almost all the ingredients

of the theory were the common property of hundreds of phys
icists. But there was
only one Bohr.
The of Bohr's theory was meteoric. Almost immediately
rise

the energy ladder implied by its orbits was shown to have a

direct physical existence by experiments of
J.
Franck and G.
Hertz in Germany, which won them the Nobel prize in 1925.
Success followed success with such rapidity, new theoretical
resultswere so readily discovered and found to agree so closely
with experiment, that in the general excitement the old con
troversy between wave and particle was almost forgotten. Bohr
had opened up so attractive and fertile a region that few men
60
 THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS 6l

could be drawn aside to contemplate the barren-looking wastes

whereon the wave-particle war was still being fought.
All too soon, however, the world was plunged into another
kind of war: a war of cannon and human blood, of primitive
airplanes and heartbreak, of submarines and starvation, and
mud-bespattered death. H. G. J. Moseley, finest of England's
younger scientists, enlisted in the ranks and there was none
with wisdom enough to say him nay. He was killed in the abor
tive attacks near Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, and it was

Rutherford himself who wrote his obituary.

In the intensifying gloom the flame of abstract research
still shone. War could not extinguish so elemental a fire.

Archimedes, lost in abstract contemplation, had been oblivious

of the enemy blow that killed him. With the Napoleonic Wars

ravaging Europe, French engineers made the first accurate

survey of the size of the earth. During World War I, Einstein
perfected his theory of gravitation, the general theory of
rela

tivity. And while that war was still memory, an

fresh in

English expedition under A. S. Eddington journeyed to distant

islands with delicate eclipse apparatus, tested Einstein's theory,
confirmed its prediction of the bending of light rays, and
announced to a war-weary world that England's former enemy
was host to the greatest scientist of the age.
Despite war and its aftermath, Bohr's theory grew mightily
in stature even as it increased in complexity, its circular orbits

giving place to elliptic, and to other orbits of quite involved

shapes. Of many
its brilliant achievements let us briefly men
tion but a few.
In 1913, young Moseley, experimenting with X
rays, found
fundamental regularities implying that the nuclear charge
increases by equal amounts from one element to another. This
62 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
was a strong confirmation of Rutherford's atomic model, and
the main details of Moseley's work were later shown to be an

equally strong confirmation of Bohr's theory.

Though Planck's original formula was in excellent agreement
with experiment, his oscillating particles were hardly more
than a schematic representation of matter. In the old days
nothing better had been available, but now the success of the
Bohr atom emphasized that the theoretical basis of PlancFs
formula must be modernized to fit the new concepts of matter.
The problem proved unexpectedly difficult, but in 1917, using
general arguments, Einstein showed, among other notable
things, not only that PlancFs radiation formula could be
derived in terms of atoms containing energy ladders, but also
that the relationship Bohr had assumed between the energy

jumps and the light was a necessary consequence, thus at one

stroke confirming both Planck and Bohr.

Again, there is the Zeeman effect, for which the Dutch

physicist P. Zeeman shared the Nobel prize in 1902 with his
brilliant compatriot H. A. Lorentz. Back in 1896, influenced

by the theories of Lorentz, Zeeman examined the light from

glowing atoms situated in the field of a powerful magnet and
found the spectral lines slightly broadened. Later, with more

powerful equipment, he and others found that individual

spectral lines split into groups of three, and even more.
The
Zeeman triplets could be accounted for on the Maxwellian

theory of Lorentz, but not the more complex splitting. Though

the Bohr theory also encountered difficulties with the more

complex splitting, it was equal to the challenge of the triplets.

In the normal hydrogen atom the allowed orbits were speci
fied by the single quantum number n. It turned out that under

the influence of a magnet the allowed orbits became more

 THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS 63
numerous so that two quantum numbers were required for
each orbit. This led to a complete explanation of the Zeeman
triplets with one reservation.
The German physicist }. Stark, who received the Nobel prize
in 1919, used electricity where Zeeman had used magnetism

and found in 1913 that this led to an even greater complication

of the spectral lines. What normally were single lines now
became as many as thirty-two and more. In this instance the
classicaltheory was powerless. It could give no explanation of
the effect, a fact which made the Bohr theory's victory all the
more impressive. For in 1916, in the midst of war, Schwartz-
schild and Epstein independently showed that, with a third
quantum number, Bohr's theory successfully accounted for the
details of this intricate type of splitting. But here too we must

make a reservation.
Whennormal atoms are studied spectroscopically with the
most powerful instruments, the spectral lines are found to be
individual bundles of fine lines forming so delicate a pattern
that only the bundle as a whole could be discerned with the
earlier instruments. No external influence such as a magnet
is causing this so-called fine structure. Where can the Bohr

theory find an internal influence that will explain it?

It was the German theorist A. Sommerfeld who, in the

war year 1915, found a solution to the problem. The key was
relativity. According to relativity, the
faster anything moves the

heavier it becomes. Applying this principle to the Bohr atom,

Sommerfeld found a formula, agreeing excellently with ex
periment, which has since been bettered in minor details only,
and incidentally has had a remarkable history. But to this
paragraph too we must add a reservation.
The reservation in all these cases is the same. The original
64 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Bohr theory was too giving not only the spectral lines
prolific,
that were observed but also many more that were not. This

prodigality was a fundamental defect of the theory, showing

up not just in these specific instances but in almost every case
to which it was applied, for the theory was palpably incom
plete. Though could speak of the frequencies of spectral
it

lines, it had nothing to say about such things as their relative

brightness. Yet Certainly some
were bright and others
lines

dim. Bohr needed some way of calculating their brightness, and

with luck this could solve his other problem by assigning zero
brightness to the unwanted lines. By 1918 he had found a
makeshift device having its origins in his original work of

1913. In typical fashion he simply added another rule to his

theory, one an embarrassing mixture of classical and
this

quantum concepts which he called the correspondence prin

ciple. It will be described in a later chapter. Like most of
Bohr's ideas, it accomplished its
purpose surprisingly well.
Among other things, it
successfully aborted almost all the un
wanted spectral lines, and it proved an indispensable guiding
principle in later, more tentative explorations.
The long list of achievements of the Bohr theory is an

imposing tribute to the greatness of its founder. With a frame

work of the most elementary
sort, and using comparatively

simple mathematical machinery, the theory went far beyond

its immediate aims to
yield results transcending all reasonable
expectation. From the beginning it took over the leadership
in the study of spectra, inspired and co-ordinated a multitude
of new atomic experiments, and provided valuable clues for
the analysis and interpretation of their results. Above all, it
established the quantum in its rightful position at the fore
front of fundamental progress in physics, and with every
 THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS 65
advance in knowledge the historical importance of Bohr's
theory in the evolution of scientific thought becomes more
and more apparent.
That a theory capable of such signal achievements should
be destined to be swept aside a mere dozen years after its
inception is but an indication of the stupendous pace of
scientific progress in this particular era. The Bohr theory had
made a dangerous and implacable enemy. It had not only dealt

slightingly with the powerful wave-particle controversy, but

had added insult to injury by attracting attention away from it.

The wave-particle controversy could not forgive so serious an

affront. Rightly considering itself the center of physics, it
could never tolerate a theory which thus usurped its place, and
itsrevenge, though long in maturing, was ultimately swift and
devastating. Had the Bohr theory been able to destroy the
controversy it might have survived to this day. But, beyond
endorsing the photon without vanquishing the wave, it had
sedulously cultivated its own garden and carefully avoided any
constructive action toward ending the warfare between them.
This isolationism was a fundamental weakness in its structure,
which left it a defenseless prey to disharmony and inner con
tradiction.
With the earliest symptoms of the coming dissolution, the
first disquieting failures of theoretical predictions to match
experimental data, conveniently hidden behind the vagueness
of the correspondence principle, the life of the theory was

artificially extended beyond its natural span. But

the seeds of
dissolution lay within the theory itself, and the inevitable har
vest could not long be delayed. Serious discrepancies began to

appear between theory and experiment, which could no longer

be masked by an appeal to the correspondence principle. Some
66 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
indeed had no relation to that principle at all, for they affected
the quantum numbers themselves, the <very sinews of the

theory. Spectroscopic observation showed that these quantum

numbers should often not be whole numbers at all but whole
numbers and a half, something the Bohr theory was unable
to explain. Worse still, where the Bohr theory would indicate
that a quantum number be squared, as 4X4, the spectro-
be multiplied by the next higher
scopic analysists insisted it
number, as 4X 5. The experimenters found they could produce
anomalous Zeeman effects in which the triplets became
intricate clusters of lines defying all the arts of the Bohr theory.
Even the normal spectra of atoms with more than one electron
proved too much for the theory. Soon it became clear that the
tide of success definitely turned and was running strongly
had
against Bohr, as once it had run against Maxwell. By 1924
the Bohr theory was reduced to living precariously from day
to day, continually changing its position in a desperate effort
to shield itself from the increasing blows of adversity, while
all the time only vaguely aware of the identity of the enemy
fundamentally responsible for its plight. And then suddenly
it was gone.

Such was the Bohr theory of the atom. It was bravely con
structed and bravely kept alive in a rapidly changing world.
That it should so soon have been swept aside cannot dim its
glory. In defeat, as in victory, the Bohr theory had greatness,
for its very success had prompted the swift discovery of those
discrepancies which were the ostensible reason for its down
fall, and the newer theories which later took over its high posi

tion could never have survived the uncertain days of their

infancy had not the Bohr theory already explored the wilder
ness and prepared the way for them.
 THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS 6j
Toward the end Bohr theory staged a minor rally.
the
We know the planets spin upon their axes as they travel round
the sun. In 1925, S. Goudsmit and G. E. Uhlenbeck suggested
that electrons do likewise as they go around a nucleus, for if
this idea were hedged about with many artificial restrictions

it would perform remarkable feats, helping to explain the

anomalies of complex spectra and, surprisingly, even account

ing for the fine structure of the hydrogen lines without the
use of relativity. This last was quite a puzzler. Was the fine
structure due to relativity, as Sommerfeld had demonstrated a
decade before, or was it due to the electron spin?
For all its makeshift character, the spin commanded respect,
yet it came too late to have more than a negligible effect on
the fortunes of the Bohr theory that had spawned it. Its effect

on physics, however, was to be anything but negligible. It was

later found that a sort of spin must be ascribed to practically
every type of fundamental particle in the universe. One of

its many services may be told here.

had already been forced to allow each electron

Scientists
three quantum numbers. The spin introduced a fourth. This
was of real interest, for the Austrian theorist Wolfgang Pauli
had long sought a fourth quantum number for reasons of
his own. In his early twenties, Pauli wrote a technical account
of the theory of relativity which contained more than Einstein
himself knew about the details of the theory, on Einstein's
own, enthusiastic admission. Later, Pauli did important work
in quantum physics, and during his researches hit upon a
curious fact which, though obviously of the deepest signifi

cance, could not be fitted into Bohr's theory except as yet

another special rule. This rule, for which he received the Nobel
prize in 1945? is simplicity itself to state. It says that no two
68 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
electrons may have the same set of four quantum numbers.
It is as if the Bohr atom were a large city where electrons live
in separate apartments. Each apartment has a different address,
one quantum number indicating the street, another the house,
a third the floor, and the fourth the apartment These four

quantum numbers the complete address of each

are, then,

apartment, and Pauli's principle is a regulation against over

crowding. Indeed, it is technically referred to as the exclusion
principle. Because of it
only one electron at a time may inhabit
an apartment, another electron being forbidden entry until
the first moves out When Pauli discovered this rule, the elec
tron still had only three quantum numbers, and he had had
to attach a fourth to it arbitrarily. The discovery of the
spin
showed how all four numbers could naturally belong to the
electron. With the exclusion principle it was at last possible
to explain the physical basis of the periodic table of the ele
ments discovered by the Russian chemist Mendeleev and
refinedby Moseley. Hitherto, in physical theory, whenever
anything was constrained in any way, force could always be
assumed as an explanation. In the Pauli principle there could
be no question of ordinary forces. Here were influences of a
quite new type. It was as if the electrons were politely told they
might not enter and meekly obeyed; somewhat as if, instead of
using the police force to prevent overcrowding, one should
hang out a sign saying MEASLES or MUMPS.
ThePauli principle is basic in all modern theoretical inves

tigations. It applies to other particles than electrons, and is

known to be linked with tremendous effects within the nucleus.
Its validity is the essential reason why chemistry is what it is.

In nature, for the particles to which it applies, no exception

to it has ever been found; in science, no complete explanation.

 THE ATOM OF BOHR KNEELS 69

Thoughdiscovered in the reign of Bohr, the spin of the

electron and the Pauli principle belong to a later epoch. They
were unable to stem the adverse tide, and the Bohr theory
is now memory. But Bohr will not pass from our tale. Like
a

Einstein, he has another part to play in the strange story of the

quantum.
And now the time has come to lower the curtain on Act
I.As Marcellus would have put it, something was rotten in the

state of the theory from Denmark.

 CHAPTER VII

INTERMEZZO
AUTHOR'S WARNING TO THE
READER

So FAR, our story has preserved some semblance of

at least,

orderliness. We
have seen the stately rise of classical physics,
culminating in Hertz's complete vindication of Maxwell's
theory; the beginning of the revolution instigated by Planck;
itsominous spread under the leadership of Einstein; and the
unprecedented stalemate to which it degenerated. Meanwhile
we have followed the fortunes of the Bohr theory of the atom
from its meteoric rise to its swift decline, dragging science
down with, it into chaotic uncertainty.

however, all this has seemed to be the opposite of

If,

progress, if it has seemed to be more a headlong succession

of

patchworks and contradictory theories built upon shifting

quicksands than a serious and continued advance in our
understanding of nature, if it has seemed to destroy forever all

faith in the sagacity and rationality of scientists, and in all

reliance on a scientific method leading to such gross contradic

tions, then indeed will the events to come seem at times utterly
grotesque and fanciful. For now the pace suddenly quickens.
Not the atom but the theory of the atom is about to explode.
70
 WARNING TO THE READER Jl

What happens next is so fast and furious that for a time all

a boiling maelstrom of
continuity is lost and physics becomes
outlandish ideas in which only the keenest minds can dis

tinguish the gold from the dross.

Professional physicists, swept

off their feet the swift currents, were carried they knew
by
not where, and it was years before the survivors recovered

sufficiently to see, with the beginnings of perspective, that what

had so overwhelmed their science had been the convulsive
birth pangs of a new and greater era.

you have read thus far, there is no dignified way

If of escape

left to you. You have paid your fare, and climbed to the highest

peak of the roller-coaster. You have therefore let yourself in for

the inevitable consequences. It is no use trying to back out

You had warning in the preface of what to expect, and if con
templation of the heights there described
now makes you giddy
and apprehensive, I cannot accept responsibility. The going
will be rough, but I can promise you excitement aplenty. So

hold tight to your seat and hope for the best. We are about to
off into vertiginous space.
push
 CHAPTER VIIJ

ACT II

THE EXPLOITS OF THE

REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE

As BOHR well knew, not all the early successes of his

theory
could hide its insufficiencies, for he had poured the new wine
of the quantum into bottles that were old. Because it was a
heady wine, men did not resistit, but drinking deep strode

forth to conquer realms where once they had feared to tread.

Far they went on their
path of conquest, reckless of their
resources. And when at last the bottles
broke, they found
themselves deep in alien land, confused,
leaderless, and with
out inspiration.
The confusion was vividly expressed by the German
phys
Max Born .Toward the end of 1924 he completed a book
icist

on atomic theory.
Though all he had to tell was contained
within it, he called it Volume I. should he call it
Now, why
Volume I when there was nothing to be
put into Volume II?
Because he was so sure the Bohr was doomed and
theory
some new system must arise to take
entirely its
place he
proposed Volume II to this as yet unborn theory-
to devote

provided he was still alive when it appeared!

It did
appear, and he did write his Volume II much
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 73

sooner than he expected. Not only was a large portion of the

new theory to originate within the year right under his nose,
and not only was he to be a significant contributor to its growth
and interpretation, but even as he was yet engaged in writing
his Volume I the first shot was fired in the wild rioting that
heralded the new age of physics.
Itwas to Prince Louis de Broglie, member of an old noble
French family, that the honor fell of ushering in the revolu
tion. His work had its he had published as early
roots in ideas

as 1922, and his fundamental manuscript was submitted to the

scientific press in December of 1923, almost a year before
the appearance of Bom's Volume I. But de Broglie's work was
then unrecognized. Nor was it to form the basis of Born's
Volume II. What went into Volume II must wait till a later
is about to become
chapter. For, as we have warned, the story
complex.
While scientists were still struggling ahead under the leader
ship of the ailing Bohr theory, de Broglie chose to rummage
among the ideas of Einstein's theory of relativity. His
quietly
but in the
primary interest was with light rather than matter,
course of his reflections he had had the idea of endowing the

photon with intrinsic mass. Though the concept of a photon

possessing such mass is not now accepted,

it led de Broglie to

a discovery of the first magnitude, for such a photon has kin

ship with a particle of matter and its mathematical develop

ment suggested important parallels.
In view of the accumulation of evidence, argued de Broglie,
it would be stupid to pretend there are no photons in light. Nor

can one deny that there is also a wave. The two must coexist.

Moreover, in relativity light and matter are linked together, for

both appear therein as forms of energy. Bearing these things in
74 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
mind, we can make a little chain of relations which carries
curious implications. According to relativity, mass is one of the
embodiments of energy. According to Planck's rule, energy is
li times frequency. Here, then, is our chain:
Particles of matter have mass.
Mass is
energy.
Energy implies frequency.
Frequency implies pulsation.
So, catching our breath for a moment, we conclude that

particles have pulsation.

Let us proceed:
Pulsating particles are suspiciously like photons.
Photons are related to light waves.
Therefore matter should be related to "matter waves/'
Or, to put it briefly, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander.
But risky to convict on such slender suspicion alone.
it is

Assuming that a rhythmically pulsating material corpuscle is

accompanied by a wave simply because it pulsates would be

like assuming that a
rhythmically breathing Marine corporal
was accompanied by a Wave when perhaps he was think only
ing of one. De Broglie must have grounds more relative than
this.

Relativity can play queer tricks, and de Broglie found in it

many suggestive connections between particles and waves.

To follow one of his lines of reasoning we must know one
particular fact about the theory of relativity, which we shall
mention when the time comes. Let us forget for the moment
about waves and concentrate on pulsating particles. Surpris
ingly enough, we can determine their exact rate of pulsation.
It comes right out of our chain of relations. know the We
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 75
mass. Multiply by the square of the speed of light and, ac

cording to Einstein's law, it becomes the energy. Divide this

energy by Planck's constant and lo! it becomes the frequency.
For all its fanciful quality, our chain of relations was a precise
one mathematically. From it we have created a picture of a

particle with a definite rate of pulsation.

Concentrate now on the pure pulsation. If we write down
the usual mathematical expression for such a pulsation we can

interpret it in two ways: either as a bottled-up heartbeat or else

as a spread-out pulsation. This gave de Broglie some assurance

that there would be no mathematical contradiction if he used

both interpretations at once. Thus he assumed that a particle
at rest not only possessed a localized heartbeat but also was

accompanied by a widespread pulsation forever in step with

itand extending over all the universe. This pulsation was as
ifa whole ocean were rising and falling like the floor of some
vast elevator; there were no waves in the ordinary sense, just
a steady rise and fall. Is Undoubtedly! But no
this fantastic?

more so than the Planck-Einstein photon, or the Bohr atom,

or a host of other things already met and to come. (Please
do not look over the side of the roller-coaster now. It is so

high up. You really must try to get used to the new sensations
in physics.)

So, a particle at rest is now to be regarded as immersed in

a widespread pulsation which is
everywhere in step simultane
ously.
Did we say simultaneously? Relativity will not like that.
The first thing relativity ever did in its life was to attack the
meaning of the word. It will prick up its ears. It will launch
forth upon an impassioned platform speech, insisting that

simultaneity is relative. "Just you start moving that pulsating

76 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
particle of yours/' it "and then see how your simul
will say,

taneity goes all haywire! Don't say I didn't tell you!"

Wehad better explain about poor old relativity. It really
does feel this simultaneity business strongly. That was how it

began undermining the concept of simultaneity. If one

person saw two things far apart happen at the same time,
that did not mean, according to relativity, that another
per
son would agree they happened at the same time too. In fact,
ifthe two things were far apart, and if one of the men was

moving relative to the other, then the two men would def
initely have to disagree. Out of this fundamental discovery
Einstein developed the whole of his theory of relativity, with
all its paradoxical consequences,
including the result that no
signals of any sort could travel faster than light. In the old
days, if a pulsation was everywhere in step simultaneously it
was everywhere in step simultaneously, and no nonsense. But
under relativity, as soon as either the particle or the scientist
begins to move, the whole scheme of simultaneity becomes
warped. In 1905 Einstein, like Hamlet so long before him,
had cried to the world:
"
"The time is out of joint . .

and perturbed physicists, grumbling as they stirred from their

comfort and complacency, had continued in garbled form:
"
. . , O cursed spite,
That ever [he] was born to set it right!"
De
Broglie knewthe idiosyncrasies of relativity. Einstein
had given precise mathematical formulas for the warping of
simultaneity. De Broglie could now
apply them to his pulsa
tions and find out what happened when the particle moved.
And what happened was they turned into waves.
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 77

Perhaps we can see in a general way how this came about.

To do so we have to keep in mind that, according to relativity,
motion warps simultaneity. Naturally, merely to say that
motion warps simultaneity is not to explain the inner niceties
of the theory of relativity, nor even to make the notion of

warped simultaneity pleasant or easy to accept.

itself at all

Our purpose, though, is to try to see how the pulsations turn

into waves. Let us therefore take the warped simultaneity on
trust and see by what method it accomplishes the conversion.
Imagine a series of corks A, B, C, D, E floating at equal
intervals on the heaving "elevator floor" ocean. Here is how

they will appear at various times:

(a) Now (b) Later (c) YetLater (d) Later still (e)Evenlater
than that

They move up and down in step, of course, always keeping

level with one another. But suppose we were so shortsighted

that we had to get right up close to a cork before we could

see it
clearly. Then we could no longer take an over-all view
of the situation. We would have to snatch a fleeting glance
at A, rush on to look at B, hasten to C, then to D, and finally
to E, while the ocean was heaving up and down. What
all

sort of impression would we have of the disposition of the

corks? We would see A as in diagram (a), B as in (b), C as

in (c), and so on. We would imagine the corks something

like this:
78 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
We would, in fact, picture the ocean surface as having a

wavy shape.
This waviness comes, of course, from our not observing the
five corks simultaneously. But what about relativity? Does it

not say that, if I am moving

past the corks and you are not,
my idea of simultaneous observation will not agree with yours?
It says, in fact, that you will think my simultaneous, over-all

observations were performed by some shortsighted messenger

rushing from cork to cork with incredible speed. The warp

ing of time will induce a warping of shape so that what you
regard as the smooth surface of the ocean will appear to me
to be ruffled; covered by waves. And it turns out that these
waves will actually travel over the surface.

Travel is indeed the word, for they move much faster than
light.
Did we say faster than light? Relativity will not like that
Now what? Oh. That is not so bad. Relativity objects only
if actual energy is transmitted faster than light. Science had

long known about waves moving faster than light which

could not transmit energy that fast. They were called phase
waves. They are quite all
right
But energy was nevertheless being transported, for the
particle itself was now moving, and mass is energy. How did
this link up with the phase waves? De Broglie discovered the
connection.
If we take many trains of de Broglie waves, of slightly
different speeds, they will add and subtract their effects in
the manner of our old millionaire friends. Let us start them
off in one direction, all one particular place.
being in step at
There will initially be an enormous wave at that place. But
it will not remain there. De Broglie proved it would move
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 79
along at a dignified pace, much slower than light.
In fact,
this towering, majestic composite wave would move with
the speed of the particle. That was the strange link between
the slow-moving particle and the incredibly speedy wave.
De Broglie found other intimate connections between
particles and accompanying waves. For instance, the
their

great French mathematician P. de Fermat had long ago re

duced the laws of geometrical optics to the single all-embrac

ing rule that a ray of light takes the path requiring the least
time. Also, the laws of dynamics had been reduced to the

single rule that any material system moves so as to use the

least amount of a certain technical entity called action. On
the one hand is a
principle of least time; on the other, a
principle of least action.
Now Planck's constant h happens to be a unit of this entity
action. It is called, in fact, the quantum of action. De Broglie
discovered that it acted as a
bridge between wave and particle,
the principle of least time for his matter waves being mathe

matically the same thing as the principle of least action for

his particles.
How de Broglie's idea also gave a simple and striking pic
ture of Bohr's rule for picking out the permitted orbits will
be recounted in a later chapter.
Now, the professional physicist is a busy man. It is all he
can do to keep abreast of the legitimate developments in his
own special field. He is
wary of cranks with worthless ideas
designed to solve the universe. And there are many such.
What was he, then, to make of de Broglie's suggestion? It

was a pure speculation and quite fantastic for all its glib
plausibility. It had no stunning triumph comparable to that
which established Bohr's theory overnight: the recipe for
8o THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the mysterious constant. Where was the experimental proof?
To be de Broglie had been quite specific as to his
sure,
waves, predicting that their wavelength must be equal to Ii
divided by the mass and the speed of the particle. But was it

likely that matter waves, they existed, could have evaded

if

the experimenter all these years? It was an interesting specu

lation, but surely nothing more. It was very pretty, and very
subtle, amusing, and even striking; and elegant, and ingenious,
and most astounding too. But was it physics? Where was
the experimental proof?
If there was one man in all the world who
might have
anticipated de Broglie's discovery, that man was Einstein.
For de Broglie's idea was the complement of his own idea of
the photon and sprang from his own theory of relativity.
Einstein had shown that light,long thought to be a wave,
was like a particle. De Broglie had brought the argument
round by suggesting that matter, long thought to
full circle

consist of particles, must be accompanied by waves and thus

partake of their nature. Thus it was that when Einstein came

across de Broglie's work he perceived at once its
possible im
portance and placed behind it the weight of his far from

negligible reputation. But still, where was the experimental

proof?
In the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in New York
City,
C. J. Davisson had been conducting a series of experiments
ever since 1921. What they had to do with
telephones I do
not know. But they did have to do with the bouncing of a
stream of electrons off a lump of metal. In April of
1925 came
an accident. Davisson, now aided by Germer, was bouncing
electrons off a lump of nickel 1 in a high vacuum. While the
1 1doubt that this is the missing link with telephones!
[Postscript to a footnote,
1959: This jest is a casualty of time. I leave it in as a nostalgic reminder of better
days when phone calls cost
5^,]
 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 8l

lump of nickel was very hot, a flask of liquid air exploded in

the laboratory, wrecked the apparatus, broke the vacuum,
and let air rush in to ruin the carefully prepared surface of
the nickel. Theonly practical method of cleaning the surface
involved prolonged heating. Fortunately, Davisson and
Germer, undaunted by the setback, repaired the damage, re
stored the surface of the nickel, and continued with their

experiment.
Unknown to Davisson and Germer, the heat treatment had
wrought a vast change in their nickel, fusing it into large

crystals where before it had consisted of myriad small ones.

Though the internal structure had thus been dramatically

altered, there was no surface indication to betray the meta

morphosis.
Davisson and Germer continued their interrupted experi
ment all unaware of the little game the gods of chance were
so benevolently playing with them. With amazement they
beheld the first of their new results. For here before their
eyes were the typical patterns so long known to science as
the diffraction patterns of X rays. But there had been no X
rays only electrons. The
experiments had been started years
before de Broglie announced his conclusions, and but for the
accident of the exploded flask the experimenters would surely
never have made their startling discovery. Now, Davisson was
destined to receive the Nobel prize in 1937, and de Broglie
before him in 1929. For these apparent X-ray diffraction pat
terns were the first direct experimental confirmation of de

Broglie's theory. They showed that electrons behave like

waves. And they showed more than They showed that

this.

electrons behave like the very waves de Broglie had predicted,

For measurements proved that the wavelengths were just
82 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
those which de Broglie had foretold.Thus was the confirma
tion placed upon a precise, quantitative basis. Here indeed
was the inescapable experimental proof.
But what a curious situation for those irreconcilable feud-
ists, the wave and the particle. And what a magnificent open

ing for the wave. Let us recall the primary armament of the
wave, the armament on which it placed its main reliance, and
which even the photon had had to concede was invincible:
anything exhibiting interference must be a wave the photon
itself had admitted it, however reluctantly. All this time the

photon had been glibly boasting it was a particle, just like

any other particle an electron, for instance. And

just like
now the electron, that ultimate particle par excellence, was
found to be behaving like a wave.
One wonders what the particle might have thought had
it been able to foresee one of the outcomes of all this. The
ability of a microscope to disclose fine detail depends on the
smallness of the wavelength of light used. Therefore the most

powerful microscopes employed ultraviolet light Since the

wavelength of fast-moving electrons is thousands of times
smaller than that of ultraviolet light, they gave promise of

revealing far greater detail, a promise later amply fulfilled with

the advent of the electron microscope.
After all the years of slow retreat the wave was able to
launch the perfect counterattack: "So you say you're a particle,
do you? Why, you don't even know what a particle is, you
and your wonderful new ideas. What about your pal the
electron? You said he was a particle. And look at him now.
If you ask us, we think he's a wave. And we think you are
too. In fact, we've been suspecting
it all along, but you've been

talking so almighty loud you almost began to get us con-

 THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCE 83

fused." And, feeling much wave

better after this outburst, the
could sit back and enjoy its new-found happiness. But then
the wave would begin to reflect as light is prone to do. Was
it really such a perfect counterattack? It had not won the

war. It had not really attacked the photon in a vital part at all.

It had merely extended the field of battlefrom the theory of

light to the theory of matter as well. Of course, everyone had
always supposed that matter belonged safely in the camp of
the photon, and it was staggering to find it now in the fore
front of the battle. But the citadel of the photon remained
unvanquished. The wave could still not conquer the photo
electric effect. Nor could it conquer the cloud chamber tracks
of the electron. Indeed, it had been a futile counterattack

after In bringing the electron into the battle the wave

all.

had added the electron tracks to the armament of the particle.

In claiming for itself the wavelike qualities of the electron
it had driven the electron's particle-like qualities into the

camp of the photon, there to set up combined headquarters

for all particles. The civilwar was now more desperate than
ever, with almost all of fundamental physics inescapably in

volved.
Events were moving fast, however. Already diplomatic
negotiations were under way in other quarters which,
within
a year, were to resolve the long-standing particle-wave contro

versy to the reasonable satisfaction of

both parties.
But now we must go back in time to the days when de
Broglie's theory was yet an unproved hypothesis struggling
for recognition. De Broglie was living in a hectic age. By the

time his ideas had been vindicated by Davisson and Gerrner

they were already known to be physically not wholly tenable.

 CHAPTER IX

LAUNDRY LISTS ARE

DISCARDED

WITH de Broglie's idea awaiting recognition, Bohr's tottering

theory still claimed the attention of physicists. Lacking a
more definite guiding principle, men continued to use it in
their calculations, calculations whose sole result seemed now
to be to discredit it all the more.
Fortunate it was that de Broglie's idea paused awhile in the
background. For otherwise two young researchers, the Dutch
man H. A. Kramers and the German W.
Heisenberg, might
not have made a certain investigation based on the Bohr
theory. This calculation came squarely up against the inade
quacies of the Bohr correspondence principle, and gave to
Heisenberg the germ of a noble and profound idea. Had the
Bohr theory no more to its credit than this, that it revealed
to Heisenberg the secret of its own weakness, and thus of
the innermost weakness of all previous physics, it would still
go down in history as a transcendental influence in the evolu

tion of modern science.

In the days before Hitler there had gathered at the Uni
versity of Gottingen, Germany, a brilliant and progressive
group of men forming one of the chief glories of German
84
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 85
science and mathematics, a group now scattered over the
face of the earth. Here Max Born was a professor, and here
Werner Heisenberg, a youngster in his early twenties, was a
junior member of the faculty. Heisenberg's great discovery,
when it came, was forbiddingly strange, far more so than the
simultaneous pulsations of de Broglie. But Born, with keen
discernment, could see in it the foundation of the new theory
he had so confidently predicted in his Volume I. The initial
idea came in 1925. Throwing all his resources into its develop

ment, and enlisting the aid of his colleague P. Jordan, Born

was rewarded by being able to publish his Volume II, with
Jordan, in 1930.
Like many another great idea, Heisenberg's is essentially
simple. To show how it grew out of previous theories, how
ever, we shall approach it circumspectly via the correspon
dence principle of Bohr, thus following its historic develop
ment. Thecorrespondence principle will force us still further
back into a branch of mathematics known as Fourier analysis.

And this, in turn, will lead us to enter the unexpected realm

of music.
Be the limpid tone of a flute or the rich sonority of an
it

orchestra, the fragile song of a distant nightingale or the

awe-inspiring thunder of an atomic bomb, the unpretentious

groove of a phonograph record will capture it and freeze it
into a single wavy spiral. How does the simple groove per
form such magic?
We can but say there is that about the nature of our ears
and the wave character of sound which permits the most
complicated noise thus to be recorded as a single wavy groove,
and to be reproduced in all its finest detail through the
trembling of a needle point which follows the groove's ripples.
86 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Here is what the sound of an oboe looks like when cap
tured by the groove of a phonograph record:

I. Oboe1

And here is the appearance of a clarinet:

1
II. Clarinet

When oboe and clarinet sound together the groove looks like

this:

III. Oboe and Clarinet Together

Since sound is due to a wave motion, shape III is the net

I and II interfering with each
other in the
result of shapes
millionaire manner. Thus knowing I and II, it is a simple

III. But it is a far different

problem to dis-
thing to create
cern^in III the shapes of I and II which make it up. Though

as you will, you cannot unscramble the

you may look as long
oboe from the clarinet
But play the record on the phonograph, and your ear will
know at once what instruments are being played, what notes
their relative loudness one to the
they are playing, and what
1 After D. C.
Miller, The Science of Musical Sounds,
New York, The
Macmillan Co.
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 87

other, and will even detect the extraneous noise of the needle
scratching against the walls of the groove.
This is a veritable miracle of analysis! No sooner do we
hear the record played than the whole complex analysis is

which us
completed. That intricate process effectively tells
that III is I and II is completed by the ear instantaneously.

And this is but a comparatively simple illustration. Think of

the stupendous feats of analysis we perform every instant of
our lives without so much as a thought. The complex jumble
of air pulsations reaching our ears is automatically and effort

lessly sorted out into constituents

whose meanings are fa
miliar. Amid the bustle and turmoil of traffic and the clamor
of the crowd, we may yet discern the ticking of a watch and
the sighing of the breeze. While engrossed in the majestic

unfolding of a symphony, and delighting in the intricate inter

play of instrument with instrument, we can still detect the
rustle of our neighbor's program. These are incredible feats
grown commonplace, dulled by repetition.
The mathematician, in his own way, though not with any
thing like this consummate ease, can perform comparable
feats of analysis. He does not analyze a rhythmic pulsation
into so much trumpet, and so much violin, and so much
clarinet His problems usually do not deal with music. He

prefers, too, to use those simplest and purest types

of oscilla

tions,the sine waves, whose sound has the gentle sweetness

of the flute and whose shape has the chaste rhythm of a

ripple on still waters.

Sine Wave
88 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Only a sine wave a single frequency. All other rhythmic
lias

waves may be decomposed into constituent sine waves of

different frequencies. This, which the French scientist J.

Fourier had asserted over a hundred years ago, is the basis of

what we call Fourier analysis. It can do things of which the
ear is incapable. It can take
the tone of a violin and find
what are the pure sine tones that compose it And when these
as by striking a number of
pure tones are sounded together,
to give the tone of the
tuning forks, they do indeed combine
violin. The lowest frequency determines the pitch of the note.
The called harmonics, give the character
higher frequencies,
istictimbre. The frequencies of the harmonics are not hap

hazard, but are a whole number of times the lowest frequency.

Thus, the lowest frequency is one hundred per second, the
if

frequencies of the harmonics will

be two hundred per second,
three hundred, four hundred, and so on, though not all these

possible harmonics
need be actually present in the tone,
Fourier analysis was the mathematical tool used by Bohr

principle. The rhythm

in his of the motion
correspondence
of a planet around the sun, when subjected to Fourier analysis,
will yield a number of different pure frequencies. The same
would be true for an electron traveling around the nucleus
of an atom by Bohr. Now, we
in one of the orbits permitted
must be clear about one thing. These frequencies have noth
ing to do with the frequencies arising from the quantum
jumps from orbit to orbit They are quite different things.

According to Bohr's theory, no one ever sees the frequencies

in the individual orbits themselves. One sees only the fre

quencies corresponding to the energy jumps from one orbit to

another. The two arise from different realms of physics in
fact, for the former are classical and the latter quantum.
But Bohr felt he could make something out of this
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 89
namely, his correspondence the distances
principle. Though
between permitted orbits grow larger and larger as we recede
from the nucleus, the differences of their energies get smallei
and Suppose an electron jumps from one orbit to
smaller.

another, both orbits being large. Measured as distance, the

jump is tremendous. But measured in energy it is practically

nil, and the energy jumps that are important, for it is
it is

they that produce the light we actually see. For large orbits,
then, with the energy jumps almost smoothed out, should
not quantum mechanics somehow merge with classical me
chanics,and might there not therefore be some connection
between the quantum jump frequencies and the classical orbital
frequencies? You may justifiably ask why there should be,
but it was Bohr's own theory and he could do what he liked
with it. Besides, he had
actually already noticed such a con
nection back in 1913 when he first set up his theory. In
1918,
under the pressure of necessity, he pushed his connection
beyond legitimate range, applying it to large energy jumps
its

and by his audacity

managing to obtain the working rules
for calculating intensities and the like for lack of which his

theory was becoming seriously embarrassed. The trouble was

that the classical frequencies no longer matched the
quantum
frequencies when the energy jumps were large an obvious
point which was nevertheless to prove of crucial significance,
as we shall see. But Bohr
managed in spite of this to set up a
sort of correspondence between them
through which he
could take the classical results for such things as intensities
and foist them on theallegedly corresponding quantum fre
quencies. This, in brief, was Bohr's celebrated correspondence
principle. It was a most ingenious trick, and it really did work
to a surprising extent. But no one was at all deceived
by it.
It was a stopgap pure and simple. It was not really precise,
go THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
even when expressed mathematically, and while some experi
ments would demand that it mean one thing, others would
insist that it mean something else. Always its mixed parent
age part quantum, part classical was a source of grave
embarrassment And pathetic clinging to the irrelevant
its

and discredited classical theory was indeed a confession of

failure, or so it seemed at the time,

It is here that Heisenberg came in. The motion
of a particle
can be specified by two sets of quantities denoted by the let
ters p and These are no strangers to us.
q.
have seen them We
before in the f rule for selecting Bohr's orbits. The q's denote
the position of the particle, and the p's its momentum, that
For the wave
velocity multiplied by its mass.
is, its example,
of the de waves is h divided by p (cf. page 80).
length Broglie
According to Fourier, these p's and q's could be analyzed
into their constituent pure sine waves, and according to the

correspondence principle these should have relevance for the

Bohr atom. But, in his work with Kramers, Heisenberg had
found necessary to tabulate the frequencies connected with
it

the p's and q's, and this tabulation gave him a wonderful hint.
For it was a square table.
This may not seem like a significant thing. But wait and see

where it led Heisenberg and his followers.

Let us go back to the p's and the q's which describe the
electron's motion. Having analyzed them into their con
stituent sine waves, we can make out a sort of laundry list of
what is contained in them in the way of frequencies. Thus
we shall say that in such and such a q there is first of all so
much that is constant, then so much of this frequency, so
much of that frequency, and so much of the other, beginning
with the basic frequency and going right down the never-
ending list of harmonics:
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED

Laundry Mark: q Laundry Mark: Smith

This an elegant arrangement (otherwise commercial

is

laundries would not use it). With it we can see at once the
exact constitution of each q and p, and mathematicians are
always happy when they have arranged their data in some such
way as this.

But Heisenberg was not satisfied. As he so clearly realized,

this might be a good system for classical mechanics, but it

was certainly wrong for the quantum, for the relations be

tween the Fourier frequencies do not correspond to those
between the frequencies of atomic spectra.
The startingpoint of Heisenberg's reconstruction of
physics was the observation that the frequencies in the Balmer-
Ritz ladders cannot be written down naturally in a sort of
list.
laundry
Every maker of road maps knows the reason why. Here is

a small portion of a road map, done somewhat in the style

of the map of the ocean in The Hunting

of the Snark, though
with somewhat more shows part of Route U.S. 1.
detail. It

Five towns are marked on the route, and the distances be

tween them indicated by numbers. Though these five towns
 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM

TRfiNTON PHILADELPHIA

Road Map: Route U.S. 1

lieon a single road, the natural way to make a mileage table

for them is like this:

MILEAGE TABLE

As a map, this portion of U.S. 1 is

only a line, but as a
mileage table it is Sometimes only the half of such
a square.
a table below the diagonal is shown, but that is an unessential

point. What important is that it is not written out as a

is

single column in the manner of the laundry list.

Why does the mapmaker insist on a square or a triangle?
Is itthat the shape appeals to his aesthetic sense? Is it, per

haps, that the square and triangle have deep occult signifi
cance in astrology and numerology? Of course, these might

possibly be secondary considerations, but the primary reason

is that the data to be tabulated cry out for such a form of
tabulation. It is the data that determine the tabulation to be
used. Who would ever think of making out a square laundry
list?

Or take, for instance, data on the number of gas stations

along the various stretches of U.S. 1. We could include this

 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 93
in a square table just like the mileage table, even combining
itwith the mileage table, to give both mileage and gasoline
data at once. More, we can actually force a square tabulation
as against the formerly possible triangular tabulation by list

ing the number of gas stations on the right-hand side of the

road only, something like this:

MILEAGE-GAS STATION TABLE

From map data tabulator to physicist, in the present in

stance, is only a step. The physicist wishes to tabulate data
concerning the frequencies contained in the Balmer-Ritz
type of ladder. To make the analogy complete, let us
therefore
draw the frequency ladder for hydrogen as a road map:

RUNG RUNGS
3 -4 56 etc.

Road Map: The Balmer Ladder

94 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
The from rung to rung correspond to the dis
distances
tances from town to town, and the amplitudes of the various

frequencies may be tabulated as were the numbers of gas

stations above. While the motorist may wish to go from
Trenton to Baltimore, the electron may wish to jump from
the third rung to the fifth or from the tenth to the eighth.
The main difference between the two cases is that there are
now an infinite number of places on the map instead of only
five. But this makes it all the more imperative to use a square
tabulation.

Now, argued Heisenberg, all that we know for certain about

atoms are such things as their respective
trademarks, that is,
the particular frequencies and intensities, etc., of the light
which they give off. No one has ever seen the electron orbits.
They are the purest fiction. We must forever put away such
childish things, for they serve only to mislead us.
Austerity
must be the watchword for a theory come of age.
What, then, is left? With what shall we build our theory?
With what construct a truer universe?
We must build it only out of the things weactually know:
definite things such as the existence within atoms of Balmer-
Ritz frequency ladders.A quantity like p, formerly mass times
velocity, must now be made an endless square tabulation. So
too must q, which tells a particle's
position. All our atomic
quantities, in fact, must be so represented.
This was a most stupendous
undertaking. Look at what it
must mean. For one thing, there was to be no facile inser
tion of particular frequencies
right from the start. Though
the rungs of the ladder
might be labeled first rung, second
rung, third rung, and so on, no definite frequencies were to
be assigned to them beforehand. The itself must
theory
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 95

mathematically generate the correct frequencies and intensi

ties for each particular situation. That was the stern require

ment Heisenberg had in mind. At least it was specific. But

what of the basic intangibility that bedeviled ttte whole
Heisenbergian scheme? In the pre-Heisenberg era, though
?

p s and q's could, if

necessary, be analyzed into Fourier laun
dry lists, these lists could always be reconstituted into the p's
?
and q s from which they had been obtained. But now there
was no telling what the p's and q's might be. Only their
square tabulations were to be known. These and these alone
were the p's and q's, and not all the king's horses or all the
king's men could put them back together again. With such
grotesque p's and q's to represent the momenta of particles
and their positions in space, what manner of universe was
about to emerge? In it space and motion would certainly not
be what they were. Yet Balmer and Ritz could not be denied.
And Heisenberg was bold, for his age was twenty-three.
So Heisenberg renounced the Fourier laundry lists. For
him a p or q could no longer be something familiar like this:
96 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Instead, it must be strange and square like this:

A would have exactly the same

different quantity, say p,

frequencies, but different amplitudes. Thus, if

q corresponded
to a table of gas stations, p would
correspond to a similar table
of some other data, say *

eating places, for the same route.

 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 97

Heisenberg reconciled himself to carrying around his p's

and q's thus broken up into little pieces, rattling in their
square coffins like the bones of a skeleton as, in a sense, they
were to prove to be.
Anyone less valiant would have recoiled dismayed. Could
such unwieldy filing cabinets, such unholy monstrosities, be
the building bricks of the universe? Was it with these that
one could reconstruct Nature Nature, who had always
shown herself ultimately simple?

Heisenberg had before him the unanswerable logic of

experiment stripped to bare essentials. He must follow it
wherever it should lead. If he now found himself cast off
from the friendly shores of familiar mathematics, he was at
and if he would not turn back he had
least a voluntary exile,
no other choice than to steer for the distant horizon. Ahead
of him
lay darkness, with never a star to guide his great ad
venture. Only from the fast-receding shore, where flickered
the beacons kindled by men like Bohr, came a
glimmer faint

by which he might set his course. He had

gone forth renounc
ing the warmth and comfort of the mainland, yet it was the
mainland that served to light him on his way. For good or ill,
he could not escape its influence. It was his native land, a

part of his scientific heritage, never to be wholly forsaken or

forgotten. The new world he sought must be fashioned in
its image and lie in the direction it had pointed.
From the older p's and q's, penetrating equations of great
power had been built to carry the exploration forward. There
was much in these equations that was true. Could Heisenberg
perhaps preserve their outward form, but build them out of
his new, unwieldy tabulations?
In the old equations, the p's and q's were multiplied to

gether. To re-create the form of these equations Heisenberg

98 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
must discover how to multiply his square tabulations cor

respondingly. If lie could but solve this crucial problem he

would be able to set up the very equations of the older
theories; equations already powerful, which would now be
charged with a strange new element of unexplored potency.
How can one possibly "multiply" square tabulations to
gether, though?
Well, in the older theories, when one multiplied p's and
q's together, did one not by implication multiply together
their corresponding laundry lists? Thus suppose one made a
Fourier analysis of p, and another of q, and finally one of the

quantity p X q. Could not the laundry list of the last be re

garded as the result of "multiplying" together the laundry
lists of the original p and q? Not only is this not fantastic, it

is a concept much used by mathematicians. The rule one

obtains for multiplying laundry lists together is perhaps a
But if it is curious rules we are going to worry
little curious.

about, what of the well-known rule we all use so glibly when

merely adding simple fractions in arithmetic?
Just look, for instance, at what we must do to add A and
f. First we must
multiply the 13 by the 7 to obtain a new
denominator 91. So far it has been fairly straightforward, even
though we may be surprised to find ourselves multiplying in
the process of performing an addition. The next step is more

complicated. To find the numerator we must go through the

rather elaborate ritual of multiplying the 2
by the 7, and the 3
by the 1
3,
and then adding the resulting 14 and 39 to obtain 53.
Placing the numerator over the denominator, we finally have
the answer, ff. Surely if we can stomach so complicated a
rule for merely adding fractions in arithmetic, we can hardly
afford to be squeamish at a curious rule for multiplying laun-
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 99

dry lists together in higher mathematics, or one to multiply

Heisenberg's square tabulations in quantum physics.
Actually Heisenberg devised a rather natural rule, closely
related to the rule for multiplying Fourier laundry lists. A
simple illustration will suffice to show how the routine goes.
Instead of the enormous tabulations of Heisenberg, let us
use small ones having only four pigeonholes, and let us write
in them only the amplitudes. Thus, let us pretend our p and
q are as follows:

The result of the multiplication pxq must fit into the same
sort of filing cabinet:

pxq-

What shall go into the various pigeonholes? Well, suppose,

we p by the 3 in q. That would give us
multiplied the 6 in
an answer But where should we put it? The 6 refers to a
18.

jump from rung 2 to rung i, and the 3 to a jump from rung

i to rung 2. So the 6x3, or 18, will refer to a jump from

rung 2 to rung i and back again to rung 2. That is, it begins

and ends in rung 2. It belongs, therefore, in the bottom right
pigeonhole. What else will go in that pigeonhole? To find

out, we look for all other possible double "jumps/' the first
in p and the second in q, whose net result is a "jump" from
1OO THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
rung 2 to rung 2. There is the 8x7, since that is a "jump"
from rung 2 to rung 2 followed by a similar "jump." But
there are no others. So altogether in that pigeonhole we file

away 18 and a total of 74.

56, that is,

What shall we put in the second pigeonhole on the top

row? It must be something referring to a jump from rung i
to rung 2. The 2X3 will belong there, since the 2 belongs
to rung i only and the 3 belongs to a jump from rung i to

rung 2. In this pigeonhole will also go the 4X7. So in all

we have 6 plus 28, or 34, for that pigeonhole.

Proceeding in this way we readily find:

pxq.

Just for the fun of it, let us twist the p and q around and

form the product qxp. It is a routine, of course, since we

have already worked out pxq. But it is good practice. Here
are our q and p, the same as before:

What will go in the top left

pigeonhole? The 1X2 and the
3
x6 of course, giving a total of 20.
But what is this? We got 22 before. Surely there is some
mistake. Let us check it over. No, it is
certainly 20. How
about the previous 22? Perhaps that was in error. No, that
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 1O1

too was correct; 2X1 and 4X5 certainly give 22. Let us try
another pigeonhole, the one at the top right. Here we shall
have the 1X4 and the 3x8, or 28 in all. Again it does not
match the previous result. What a terrible situation! It can
mean only one thing:

Heisenberg's rule of multiplication makes pXq different

from qxp.

Surely this result was a mockery of Heisenberg's highest

hopes. Aman less resolute, a man less deeply inspired, might
have abandoned his quest on making this grotesque discovery.
By now the lone voyager was tiring and longing for news
of the mainland. It had been difficult traveling alone the
uncharted seas of tomorrow. He hastened to make an end
of his present labors, and call on the aid of more experienced
navigators. First, though, he must take soundings to test out
the depth of his discovery. Hastily he made some preliminary
calculations to see what manner of results might be obtained
from it and found an unmistakable portent of success.
Scientists had long realized, from a variety of experimental

results, that an oscillating particle such as Planck had en

visaged could never be robbed of all its energy and thus be

brought to rest. Half a quantum of energy must be forever
imprisoned within it Hitherto no theoretical explanation had
been given for this residual energy. It was an arbitrary fact
of nature that remained outside the basic theoretical struc
ture of physics. Now Heisenberg, with his hasty calculations,
found it was an automatic consequence of his new theory,
and found too that the energy changes must occur in whole
quanta just as before. This was his portent of success. This
was the token evidence that his intuition had been correct.
102 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
In 1932 he was to receive the Nobel prize. It was now July
of 1925.

Heisenberg returned to relate his scientific adventure. We

may imagine him explaining to his eager hearers how strange
his ideas had seemed even and when he came to
to himself;

tell of his rule for multiplying square tabulations and how

pxq was not the same as qxp he may well have wondered
how they would receive the news.
By one of those extraordinary scientific parallels which
seem almost to be a part of some design, there had been a
similar development more than half a century before. As
Born pointed out to Heisenberg, in 1858 the English mathe
matician A. Cayley, investigating certain aspects of geometry,
had invented a new and curious calculus, the calculus of
matrices. These matrices were square tables of numbers obey
ing certain mathematical laws. When Heisenberg constructed
his square tables and devised his special rules for handling
them he was unwittingly rediscovering this matrix calculus.
That such concepts should ultimately find their way into
atomic physics in this particular manner was hitherto un
dreamed of, and revolutionary in the extreme.
This was by no means the only instance in history, nor
the last in our story, where the mathematicians, with their

uncanny instinct, had anticipated the future mathematical

needs of science. Outside our story, the most famous antici
pation of this sort was the tensor calculus of the Italian
geometer M. M. G. Ricci which, when the time came, fur
nished Einstein with just the tool he needed for the develop
ment of his general relativity theory of gravitation.

Although Heisenberg had nurtured his calculus within

atomic theory, it was not yet a theory of the atom. In one
 LAUNDRY LISTS ARE DISCARDED 103
sense it was more, being a new philosophy for science,
far

but this was found out only later. Meanwhile it was little
more than a calculus and a suggestion as to its uses. Out of
itBorn and Jordan undertook to create a new theory of the
atom, and, more than that, a new science of mechanics
matrix mechanics. times q was not the same as q times p,
If p
then Born and Jordan must somehow discover what was the
difference between them. The new matrix ideas were incom

patible with the Bohr theory. But where else could Born and
Jordan turn for inspiration? No other atomic theory was
available. The correspondence principle had served to bridge
the gulf between the Bohr atom and the classical mechanics
of Newton. It must now be made to bring these two within
reach of the matrices.The connection was the slenderest, but
none the less suggestive. In it Born and Jordan found the
needed clue, and from the old fpdq=nh, with much ex
traneous assumption, they finally extracted the following
momentous equation:
h
pxq-qxp-
2nv i

What equation asserts is even more startling than the

this

initial discovery that p times q and q times p were different.

It states that their difference is equal to Planck's constant

h divided by twice JT times the square root of minus one. The

square root of minus one is not an arithmetical number at
all. Mathematicians sometimes an imaginary number
call it

because no "real" number when multiplied by itself can give

the result minus one; two minuses give a plus.
That such a formula should have any connection with that
world of strict experiment which is the world of physics is
104 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
in itself difficult enough to believe. That it was to be the
deep foundation of the new physics, and that it should ac
tually probe more profoundly than anything before toward
the very core of science and metaphysics is as incredible as
must once have seemed the doctrine that the earth is round.
It was now September of 1925. More remained to be done
before a new mechanics of the atom was created. Bora and

Jordan had already made a tentative advance toward fusing

the new ideas with those of Newton's classical mechanics.
Now Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan were to pool their very
considerable abilities in a determined attack on this recondite

problem. By November they had made sufficient progress to

warrant publication of their researches.
But by now another youngster had entered the field; an
Englishman named Dirac. Practically the same age as Heisen
berg, he was able to do with ease and grace what the com
bined talents of Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan could ac
complish only piecemeal and with considerable labor. When
these three were pursuing their joint research, Dirac attacked
the problem independently with a new idea that lightly
brushed aside the formidable difficulties being encountered
by Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan. And when, in January of

1926, Pauli at last succeeded in proving the crucial fact that

Heisenberg's new theory would correctly yield the Balmer
ladder of hydrogen, it was the same Dirac who announced a
highly abstract generalization of the Heisenberg theory, and
applied it to obtain a somewhat simpler derivation of the
Balmer frequencies.
But so important a man as Dirac should not be introduced
at the tail end of a chapter on Heisenberg. His place is in a

chapter of his own.

 CHAPTER X

THE ASCETICISM OF PAUL

PAUL ADRIEN MAURICE DIRAC tried to become an electrical

turned
engineer but, fearing he might not have the aptitude,
his attention to the abstract physics he found more interest

ing. Whether he would have made a successful electrical

engineer despite his misgivings fortunately an academic

is

thirties he was to be elected, ap

question, for in his early
propriately, to that professorship at Cambridge University
which had once been held by the great Isaac Newton himself.
Though Dirac merits an individual chapter, his chapter
must be brief out of proportion to his subsequent impor
all

tance, a mere prelude to his later appearances in our story.

For if Heisenberg's concept was so abstruse as to seem almost
devoid of pictorial significance, the contribution of Dirac in
the fall and winter of 1925 was the quintessence of abstrac
tion, impossible to visualize, apparently, outside its mathe
matical context. But that was because it was then still a

fledgling theory. Later we

shall see that, for all its abstraction,

which the passage of time was to increase rather than diminish,

it could be readily and significantly visualized. With this

promise of clarity to come, let us here take note,

however
105
1O6 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Dirac was already thinking in
sketchily, of the sort of ideas
those early days. Though our outline must be sketchy, it may
at least indicate the peculiarly astringent flavor of Dirac's

early discoveries.
The announcement of Heisenberg's theory struck im
mediate fire in the mind of Dirac. Independently of the re
searches of Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan even then under
way, he undertook to create out of Heisenberg's idea a new
theory of mechanics. If x times y was not the same as y times
x, then Dirac must somehow discover what was the difference
between them, and using the indispensable correspondence
principle he sought an analogue in the classical mechanics.
In the theory there existed certain mathematical
classical

quantities, denoted by the symbol [x,y], which, having been

discovered by the Frenchman Poisson, were known as Poisson
brackets. Dirac, to his intense joy, discovered a relationship
of extraordinary simplicity: calculate the value of the Poisson
bracket [x,y] according to the classical theory, multiply by
Planck's constant and the square root of minus one, and
divide by twice rr. Then the result will be the proper value to

assign to the differencebetween x times y and y times x.

Does this
perhaps seem a rather arid discovery? Dirac once
said the most exciting moment of his life was the moment of
its revelation. In one swift,
dazzling leap, Dirac had sur
mounted the innumerable obstacles and difficulties
impeding
Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan in their efforts to fashion the
new matrix mechanics in the image of the classical mechanics,
and actually published his results a little before they could
publish their equivalent, though less elegant, discoveries.
Dirac's initial discovery led him further, a
along path of
deep abstraction. Contemplating Heisenberg's theory, he
 THE ASCETICISM OF PAUL 107
now realized that its emphasis was misplaced, that it hid the
forest with the trees. Although the huge square tabulations

had been Heisenberg's chief inspiration, Dirac pointed out

in January of 1926 that they were really incidental; they had
no place in the central core of the theory but were outgrowths
of something more fundamental. Stripping away the scaffold
ing which Heisenberg, and Born and Jordan had mistaken for
the building, he fixed his gaze upon the strong, slender edifice
beneath. As the Curies extracted a minute speck of radium
from a mountain of ore, so did Dirac distill from Heisenberg's
enormous square tabulations their ultimate essence, their one
essential concept, that x times y may differ from y times x.

Science must henceforth be prepared to deal with two dif

ferent types of "numbers/' said Dirac. Along with the ordi

nary numbers it must use what he termed "q numbers" defy

ing the ordinary rule of multiplication that x times y is equal
to y times x. The p's and q's of the classical mechanics, which

classicallywere ordinary numbers, must now be regarded as

q numbers, and the new science of quantum mechanics, as
distinguished from matrix mechanics, must be created out of
them.
But without the square tabulations is there much left of the
theory? Has Dirac really gone beyond Heisenberg? Does it
not seem rather that he has not gone so far? Let us bear with
him just a little longer.
The p's and q's of classical mechanics, then, are to be re
garded as q numbers. So are the energy and the time, and all
other such dynamical quantities which Heisenberg had con
ceived to be vast square tabulations. What else? Why, in a

sense, nothing else! That was Dirac's great discovery. The

classical mechanics could be made over into quantum me-
1O8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
chanics by this one device, by means of the Poisson brackets.
For the Poisson brackets were powerful entities in the clas
basic classical equa
sical theory,capable of representing the
tions in simple form. To create the new quantum mechanics,
one could write these equations of the classical theory ab
the Poisson brackets
solutely unaltered, and merely reinterpret
according to Dirac's earlier prescription.
Matrices? They were secondary. By a simple operation
there could be generated from Dime's equations the identical

square tabulations with which Heisenberg

had first explored
the new world that science was entering. The new mechanics
youthful radicalism, was shown to
of the atom, for all its be
a legitimate and fitting heir to the great and honorable tra

dition of classical mechanics.

Bohr had devised his correspondence principle in desperate
appeal to the classical theory for aid. Heisenberg and Dirac
had found its deeper significance. This was its culmination
a profound and abiding relationship between classical and

quantum mechanics.
 CHAPTER XI

ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED

OUR story is far from told. Even as physicists were frantically

exploring the untold riches hidden within the Heisenberg
theory, Einstein's forthright commendation of de Broglie's
ideas was revealed as a major factor in the evolution of physics.

For, toward the end of 1925, Einstein's words of praise

brought the still-unconfirmed ideas of de Broglie to the atten
tion of the Viennese physicist Erwin Schrodinger, at the
famous University of Zurich in Switzerland.
The effect was galvanic. Within a few short months
Schrodinger produced singlehanded a successful theory of the
atom, only remotely related to the idea of de Broglie and
from the theories of Heisenberg and Dirac. Nor
utterly distinct
was there anything strange about the mathematical methods of
the new So familiar were they, in fact, that even in his
theory.
first announcement Schrodinger was able to carry through the
solution of the basic problem of deriving the frequencies of
the normal hydrogen atom, the problem that had so sorely
taxed the skills of the Heisenberg group. The solution was sent
to the publishers in January of 1926 the month in which
Pauli and Dirac had independently sent in their own solutions

109
11O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
of this selfsame problem. No extraordinary astrological skill was
needed to descry in this a portent of boisterous happenings in
1
the world of physics.

Schrodinger adopted a curious method of announcing his

theory to the world. He neither explained how it grew in his
mind, nor indicated a complete logical sequence of ideas. He
merely reminded his readers that a certain well-known mathe
matical process yields series of numbers which might be used
as quantum numbers, abruptly wrote down wave
a so-called

equation now known as the Schrodinger equation and

proceeded forthwith to extract from it a magnificent solution
of the crucial hydrogen problem. This caused a startled outcry
from the world of physics. Scientists are not interested in such
They want to know how and why the
displays of legerdemain.
tricks Not enough to present them with a fait accompli.
work.

They want to know what lies behind it. Impressed by the dis
tress of his fellow physicists,Schrodinger disclosed the secret
of his sorcery, explaining in his second article how his theory
was a natural extension of the ideas of de Broglie, and of the
classical mechanics of Newton as developed by that outstand
ing Irish genius William Rowan Hamilton.
It is high time indeed that the name of Hamilton should be

brought into this chronicle of events. For,

though he died in
1865, his work was a dominating influence not only in the
theory of Schrodinger, but also in the theory of Heisenberg
before that; and before that, in the theory of Bohr; and even
before that, in the theory of Planck. It was he, for
instance,
1
Doyou like coincidences? Schrodinger and Pauli both came from Vienna.
The former was born in 1887 and the latter in
1900. Where is the coincidence
in that? Why,
1887 was the date of the experiment by Hertz, and 1900 that
of the discovery by Planck. Add to this the Bohr-Balmer coincidence and we
have quite a trilogy.
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED 111

who showed the importance of the p's and q's in classical

first

mechanics. Without his researches the quantum theory of

today would have been seriously delayed. And had he lived
to learn of the revival of the wave-particle conflict he would

certainly have anticipated the modern developments so close

had he actually come to them himself.
The keynote of Schrodinger's first article was the existence
of simple quantum numbers hidden amid the complexities of
atomic spectra. Bohr had simply injected these quantum num
bers into his theory from the outside; they are such things as
the n of the /
formula. Schrodinger wished to avoid such an
artifice. A good mathematical theory of the atom, he felt,
must use a mathematical method generating quantum numbers
in a natural manner from within itself. Hunt the method, then,
and letthe physical meaning take care of itself.
It was more than five hundred years before the Christian

era that theGreek philosopher Pythagoras discovered a remark

able relationship between music and number. If a plucked

string gives forth the note C, a similar string of half the length
will sound the C an octave above. A string one-third the

original length will give the G above that; a quarter the length,
C above that; a fifth the length, E above that, and so on. So
delighted and inflamed was Pythagoras by his discovery that
he decided there and then that numbers, wonderful whole
numbers, must be the key to the universe; only to have his high
hopes dashed to the ground by his other great discovery, the
well-known theorem about the hypotenuse. For this theorem
showed that numbers such as the square root of two,
existed,
which defied rational expression in terms of the whole numbers.
Nowadays we know that the original string was sounding all
the different tones at once. Usually the lowest alone was loud,
 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the others merely adding color, or timbre, to the tone.
They
were the harmonics we have
already encountered. Thus a
vibrating string actually contains within itself sequences of
numbers such as
Schrodinger sought.
Now, a violin string is not free to vibrate in any manner it
may wish. Since its ends are secured, it may vibrate only in such
a way that its ends do not move. This is, of course, an obvious
remark. But it is also a cogent one. For it is just this fact which
limits the vibrations and introduces the sequences of whole
numbers. The string can vibrate as a whole like this:

or in two parts like this:

or in three parts like this:

or in four, or five, or or any other whole number of

six,
equal
parts. But it cannot vibrate in two and a half
parts like this:

for then one end at most could remain fixed. Thus it is the
only
obvious remark that the ends must remain fixed
which is the
crucial remark that brings in the
sequence of whole numbers i,
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED
2, 3,
. . .; and brings them in in the most natural manner
possible, as evidenced byis remark at first
the fact that the
seemed so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning.
Here, surely, is the strongest possible hint Do we need
further urging before rushing to apply this principle to the
atom? De Broglie has already told us there are waves there
for us to use. Never mind this fellow Heisenberg. Who knows
whether his theory is
any better than Bohr's, or
really
even as good. Here is a simply wonderful idea begging to be

applied.
But wait. It is one thing to have a wonderful idea; quite an
other to see how to carry it through.
What? We want further assurance? We are still timid? We
still hesitate to take the plunge even after all this?Broglie De
has yet another inducement for us, an almost irresistible One.
Consider the evidence of a slender steel ring. When such a
ring is struck it vibrates musically. We cannot say it does so
because its ends are fixed. But, being circular, its vibrations are
just as surely limited, and in much the same manner, for it is

as if it had two ends that were joined together. It can vibrate

as a whole, or in two parts, or four, or six, but not in two and
a half. It can vibrate like this:
114 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
But it cannot vibrate like this:

for here the wave after circling the ring doesnot join up with
Since a wavelength is
itself. the distance from A to B in the

diagram, there must always be a whole number of wavelengths

in the ring.Does this not remind us of something? Something
about a length going an exact number of times around a circle?
Why, yes, of course! The Bohr orbit condition. The strange
business of the trolley segments that might not be broken
up
but must fit the orbit exactly. It always had seemed arbitrary
and artificiaL If we nowcalculate the de Broglie wavelength of
the wave accompanying an electron in a Bohr orbit we find a
truly fascinating result the wavelength comes out to be
precisely the special length of the track segment for the orbit.
That makes the whole picture clear. It is the steel
ring all over
de Broglie had actually pointed out in
again, as 1924. Almost
the atom is beginning to make sense.
But where was Schrodinger to start? De had had
Broglie
the idea of waves
accompanying electrons for some time with
out being able to construct a
theory of the atom. Perhaps that
was because he was thinking in terms of There was
relativity.
some highly work by Hamilton, done long before
suggestive
relativity, which seemed to fit in somehow with all this. Per-
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED 115

haps by leaving out the relativity one could progress faster.

Clearly, what was needed was a wave equation. The whole
history of wave motion pointed to this. It had long been known
that the vibrations of strings and organ pipes, of kettledrums,
jellies,
and light waves, were governed by wave equations of
similar types. It was known too that a wave equation would
generate sequences of numbers as soon as extra mathematical
conditions were imposed. And these were natural conditions.

They mathematical language, that the ends of the

said, in

string were stationary, that the rim of the parchment of the

kettledrum was secured, and reasonable, pictorial things like
that.

Schrodinger decided to create an atomic -theory out of such

ideas. Concealing the secret of his manipulations, he made a
few mathematical passes, uttered a judicious selection of
mathematical invocations and incantations, such as Hamilton's
Partial Differential Equation, Minimal Integrals, and Quad
ratic Forms in Phase Space, and
magically produced, as if from
a
nowhere, full-grown wave equation having remarkable powers.
It was not a wave equation
applied to a string, nor yet one
applied to a membrane, but one applied to an essence filling a
mathematical fiction of a space of a sort well known to
mathematicians. The essence was represented by the Greek
letter psi, ^.

Schrodinger's ^-essence if we pause here to try to think of

its
meaning we are lost was free to vibrate as it pleased with
one proviso. It was, mathematically, fastened down at the
uttermost bounds of the fictional space. It was this which was
to bring in the quantum numbers.

Now, of course, one would expect the story to go on to tell

that when Schrodinger applied his wave equation to the
prob-
Il6 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
lem of the hydrogen atom he triumphantly found that the
the frequencies in
frequencies of his ^-essence were precisely
that atom's trademark, the frequencies in its spectrum.
But this was not the case. Schrodinger's triumph was of a
somewhat embarrassing sort. The
frequencies of the ^-essence
turned out to be those which belonged to the rungs of the
Balmer ladder. Since only the differences of these frequencies

appeared in the spectrum, this posed a pretty problem. Gone

were the former electrons and their orbits. They had been
swallowed up by the new ^-essence, a vibrant smear of electron
surrounding the nucleus. Without electron jumps, how explain
the differences of the frequencies?

Schrodinger had a plausible explanation, as plausibility went

in atomic physics. Was there not a similar thing in music?
When two notes are not quite in tune, is there not a beat
note?
If one note vibrates a hundred times a second and another a

hundred and one, and both begin in step, they will be dia
metrically out of step a half second later, for one will have
performed fifty complete vibrations and the other fifty and a
half. As with the millionaires, their effects will then be nulli

fied.But half a second later they are back in step again reinforc
ing each other, and combine to give their maximum effect.
This rhythmic alternation from cancellation, through rein
forcement, to cancellation again continues at the rate of once
per second the difference of the parent frequencies. The dif
is born of the
ference frequency marriage of the two original
frequencies even in physics marriage begets differences.
The new frequency is called the beat frequency and may be
plainly heard as a beat or throb when two people whistle
almost the same note. The squeals and howls in radios result
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED IIJ
from beat frequencies. The
beat has even been exploited com
mercially by organ builders, who create certain tremolo effects
with two pipes kept purposely out of tune so that the beat will

produce the desired throbbing.

It was now
Schrodinger's turn to exploit the beat frequency.
His atom vibrated with frequencies which
belonged to the
rungs of the Balmer ladder. The frequencies required, being
their differences, were none other than the various beat fre
quencies. Now, the ^-essence was an essence of smeared-out
electron, and a vibrant electron was known to
give off light,
even though Bohr had not hesitated to negate this to suit his
special purpose. Let it be dogmatically asserted, then, that the
beat frequencies of the ^-essence were converted into
light and
we have at once the explanation of the atom's trademark, espe
cially if we ignore the many objections one might raise.

Schrodinger himself later offered a somewhat different picture,

but it need not concern us here.

The importantthing was the emergence of the required fre

quencies from the mathematical calculations. If the physical
picture that went with these calculations was still somewhat
obscure, the same could surely be said of the theories of Heisen-
berg and Dirac, and even of that of Bohr. Enough that the
answers were correct The door into the unknown had been

wedged open a tiny crack. Science could now apply pressure

and swarm through to the other side, and time would take
care of the present obscurities. The way ahead was now well
indicated.
Too well indicated, in fact.The problem of the Balmer
ladder, which once had seemed insoluble, had now been solved
in at least three different ways. Faced by the profusion and

peculiar interrelations of the spectral frequencies, Bohr had

Il8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
conceived of electrons jumping from orbit to orbit. Heisen-

berg had attacked the problem by replacing laundry lists with

square tabulations. Now Schrodinger had found a third inter
pretation. For him it had meant neither electron jumps nor
square tabulations, but the beats of a vibrating electrical
essence $.
Is it possible to have too much success? Physicists were
sorelytempted to think so. Where in 1912, little more than a
dozen years before, there had been no competent theory of
the hydrogen atom at all, now, in January of 1926, there were
as many as four, if we count those of Dirac and Heisenberg as
distinct. Had they all some hint of a family likeness it
betrayed
might have been less perplexing, but what possible resemblance
could one detect between the Bohr orbits, the Heisenberg
tabulations, and the Schrodinger ^-essence? Here was too

bewildering a profusion.
What were physicists to think, where should they turn,
that turbulent January? Bohr's theory, wise and experienced,
could point to many victories in the past, but now it was old
and suffered severe disabilities. The more youthful theories,

relatively untried, could point to fewer triumphs, but already

they gave promise of outdoing the theory of Bohr, for they

proved immune to the ills that afflicted the Bohr quantum
numbers, nor had they yet suffered any defeats. Matrices and
waves were running neck and neck, with neither able to show
a decisive advantage. Heisenberg's early triumph with the

1925 was to be duplicated by

oscillating particles in July of

Schrodinger in February of 1926. Dirac had shown that Heisen-

berg's theory was of noble birth. But, even as the race was on,
Schrodinger revealed that his theory too was a thoroughbred,
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED
directly descended from de Broglie and Hamilton. Here is the
far from dishonorable secret of its birth:
Newton's mechanics was built on his three laws of motion.
But beneath these laws lay a deep foundation of numerous
fundamental concepts which, though once revolutionary, came
to be so unthinkingly taken for granted that Einstein's rela

tivity amendments to them

seemed highly unnatural.
at first

These underlying concepts, the Newtonian philosophy of space

and time and matter, were essential preliminary assumptions
without which the laws of motion could not be formulated, noi
mathematics take hold to convert them into equations. When
Lagrange and Hamilton made their great contributions to the
development of Newtonian mechanics they did not call its
philosophy into question, for in those days it was not fashion
able to tamper with fundamentals; the aim was rather to

develop them to their mathematical utmost in the sure belief

they would then explain the universe.
Newton's equations of motion told the way in which bodies
moved. A stone thrown in the air presents a simple enough
problem, but it is fatally easy to cite more complex examples.
Suppose we took odds and ends of machinery from a junk pile,
joined them together with springs and elastic, and heaved the
whole wobbly mass into the air with a sudden, vicious twist.
Newton's laws would still apply, in theory, but the ensuing
motions would be far too intricate for mathematical comfort.
Though various methods were discovered for reducing the
mathematical complexity of such problems, it was not till a
hundred years after Newton
that the great French mathe
matician J. L. Lagrange achieved a really notable simplification;
but when the simplification came it was notable indeed.
One aspect of it especially claims our attention. The heap
12O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
of junk we threw many motions going
into the air has so
on at once that next to impossible to see what is hap
it is

pening. By a simple mathematical trick, however, we may

remove this complication. We
cannot completely destroy it,
mind, but we can diminish it and put it where it is less obtru
sive. The
trick is to invent a fictional space having so
many
dimensions that the whole complex motion of the junk heap
may be indicated by the tortuous movement of a single indica
tor point within it
Let us not shrink from such a fanciful conception. We our
selves habituallyemploy fictional spaces in our everyday lives,
for what is a hospital chart of a patient's temperature but the
trace of an indicator point in a fictional space
having two
dimensions? Most of the times we draw a graph we use a
fictional space. Here in dynamics, to be sure, the fictional space
hasmany dimensions, but that is the whole secret of the trick.
The complexity is now hidden away among the numerous
dimensions of the space, and the bewildering motion of the
junk heap is reduced to the easily imagined motion of a single
point. True, the point moves in a complicated space, but the

concept of a moving point is far

simpler than the motion of
the flying junk heap it represents. And
being far easier to think
about, it stimulates further discovery.
The further discovery was made Hamilton, a man of
by
superlative intellectual gifts. Hamilton it was who, even
before Cayley and his matrices, and in a different
connection,
discovered that there are nonarithmetical
quantities such that
x times y need not be the same as times x. Hamilton it
y was,
too, who made over the fundamental equations of
dynamics
into the simple form,
involving the p's and q's, which was to
be the basis of all subsequent theoretical researches in atomic
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED 121

physics, and was to supply those researches with their central

mathematical concept, an expression for energy now known as
the Hamiltonian function. At thirteen years of age Hamilton
had mastered thirteen languages. At twenty-two he was already,
a professor. And in 1834, at the age of twenty-eight, he had
transformed the science of mechanics in the manner now to be
told, and thereby all but anticipated Schrodinger.
However contorted the path of the indicator point in its
fictional space, Hamilton knew he could bend a fictional light

ray to fit it, for a light ray does not have to travel a straight
line. A simple prism will bend it, or a lens, or even heated air.

Almost any lack of uniformity where it travels will make it

deviate. The hotter near the sand than higher up,

desert air is

and this inhomogeneity, bending the rays of light, causes

mirages. What
motorist has not observed on a hot dry road a

fleeting shimmer as of cool, rippling water? This too is a mirage,

ephemeral witness to the light ray's curvature.
By choosing the right sort of inhomogeneity, Hamilton
could duplicate the path of the indicator point with his ray of

light and thus forge a link between the sciences of light rays
and dynamics. This being so, it must logically follow that these
two different sciences are mathematically identical. Hamilton
succeeded in proving this in rigorous mathematical detail, all,
of course, in terms of the fictional space. But does that not of
itself bear witness to the f ruitfulness of introducing that space?
Could one have imagined the optical connection in terms of
the flying junk heap? (An optical connection with that would
be quite painful.)
Hamilton did more than duplicate the path of the indicator
point with a ray of light. A light ray corresponds more or less
to the path of a particle of light. Hamilton went further than
122 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the ray or particle by introducing part of the concept of the
wave, that part of it which controlled the path of the ray. Thus
Hamilton had already reduced the whole science of dynamics
to the study of waves of light, but waves of light lacking the
crucial millionaire property, the property of interference. Now,
in the science of optics, rays are quite adequate for investigat

ing the simpler properties of optical instruments, but when

minute effects are to be explained interference of waves must
be invoked. How if the same were true of classical mechanics?
Just as rays of light sufficed for calculating a pair of prism
binoculars, Newton's dynamics was quite adequate for large-
scale phenomena, but broke down for systems of atomic
dimensions. How if the truth should be that Newton's was a

"ray" dynamics, while what was needed for the minute dimen
sions of the atom was a wave dynamics? It was an alluring
possibility.
it had
Something very like already been indicated by de
Broglie. De
Broglie had been thinking of the actual space
and time of relativity. But here, long existent and already
highly developed, was an optical dynamics in a fictional space,
which lacked but one small ingredient. Schrodinger, realizing
the technical working with relativity, saw the great
difficulty of

possibilities in Hamilton's optical ideas. Taking Hamilton's

incomplete waves, he endowed them with the property they

lacked, the power of interference. Now they were true waves,

yielding the same rays as before for large-scale phenomena, but

capable of exhibiting entirely new properties when applied in
the realm of the atom.
How natural a step this was can be seen from the history of
optics, for optics too had begun as a science of rays only to find
need for wave properties when faced with more refined optical
 ELECTRONS ARE SMEARED 123

phenomena. How successful a step it was is attested by the

history of the dazzling months that followed Schrodinger' s
initial announcement.
Very early, the Schrodinger theory was a strong competitor
of the Heisenberg theory as to results, and bade fair to out

strip
it in general
popularity. It avoided the formidable tech
nical difficulties of Heisenberg's theory. It offered a comfort

ing picture of atomic processes. Its noble lineage could match

that discovered by Dirac, and its warm, pictorial character
carried appeal. It could produce its results with comparative
ease, speaking the mathematical language of the ordinary
theoretical physicist. It did not require him to delve into
unfamiliar mathematics, nor to invent special methods for each
new problem. By yet another of those uncanny anticipations
which threaten to mar the artistry of this story, its mathe
matical methods were already prepared for it, and neatly
packaged awaiting its arrival. Two eminent German mathe
maticians, R. Courant and D. Hilbert, not physicists, but
leaders of the Gottingen group of mathematicians, had written
a book called Methods of Mathematical Physics. This book, in

compact, convenient form, contained practically every mathe

matical method, trick, device, and special detail required for
the development of the Schrodinger theory, not to mention
much that was applicable to the theory of Heisenberg. The
date of its publication was 1924.
 CHAPTER XII

UNIFICATION

A PRETTY piece of juggling science does here! The Bohr theory

has fallen apart in its hands. But, for the moment, it contrives
to save the act by tossing into the air, in quick succession, the
two pairs of theories of de Broglie, Heisenberg, Dirac, and
Schrodinger. Now it juggles more merrily than ever. Science
was surely not meant to play the juggler. Yet here are four
dazzling theories in the air at once, and so far none has fallen
to the earth.
Four theories, in fact, very much in the air, and so far none
has really come down to earth.
But science will not continue long like this. Its internal
sickness is at a crisis. The fateful moment has come. Turmoil
and ferment have reached their distressing climax. No further
theories are destined to arise to confound confusion more. For
ailing science has fashioned for itself potent new physics.
Gentle healing will soothe its troubled frame, and bring it

strength far greater than before. Wave and particle will be

reconciled. Divergent theories will come together, and with
their meeting will come new
understanding. This has all been
the agony of travail out of which will be born a greater, and
more humble, science.

124
 UNIFICATION 125

Already a certain order apparent. Clearly the theories of

is

de Broglie and Schrodinger are similar, as too are those of

Heisenberg and Dirac. Thus there are only two main lines of
But these are so unlike that any hope
progress. of a rapproche
ment must seem vain.
Yet something suspect about this dissimilarity. Neither
is

theory has established a clear-cut advantage over the other.

Indeed, each 'seems to ape the other's triumphs. There is, too,
the mystery of their heredity. Each boasts of its exalted lineage,

claiming to be the only natural heir of classical mechanics. Yet

one is descended from mechanics and the other more from
optics. But did not Hamilton himself link optics with
mechanics in the classical theory? Why, then, should not the
two new theories be brothers, maybe twins, beneath their
surface differences? Their seemingly divergent origins may
well be one. It is not natural that two such plausible offshoots
of classical mechanics, neither one able to out achieve the

other, should be so distinct as their outward appearances

pretend. It is not natural that two really different theories

should long wage war over the same group of facts.
But what of the wave and particle? Are they not warring
still?

Perhaps there is a hidden unity beneath our story. Perhaps

this battle of the theories is
nothing new. Let us examine it a
little more closely. The ideas of Heisenberg and Dirac stem
from the particle dynamics of Hamilton, those of Schrodinger
from Hamilton's wave dynamics. This Heisenberg-Schrodinger
controversy may thus be but an extension or reflection of the
ancient strife between particle and wave. Wherever we turn,
that battle intrudes as a central feature of science. But Hamil
ton himself now holds out promise that the two may be recon-
126 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ciled. Perhaps in bringing the theories of Schrodinger and
Heisenberg together in common birth he brings them together
too with the wave and particle.
As early as March of 1926, a brief three months after the

appearance of his theory, Schrodinger took a decisive step

toward unity. Once again the secret lies with Hamilton, whose
creation of optical dynamics was more than the pointing up
of an analogy. The ordinary dynamics required many equations
of motion. But Hamilton could write a single equation to

govern his pseudo waves, just as a single wave equation governs

genuine waves. Thus Hamilton could now reduce the whole
science of classical dynamics to a single equation,
truly a
momentous and monumental achievement.
Schrodinger had endowed Hamilton's pseudo waves with
the power of interference. Surely, then, there must be some
connection between Hamilton's equation and the wave
equa
tion of Schrodinger.

Yes, to be sure, there was a vague sort of connection. Enough

of a connection to still further
inquiry. But one day there
flashed a far deeper
upon Schrodinger relationship, a relation
ship that was enormously exciting. He found he could con
vert the first
equation into the second by a superbly simple
mathematical trick. Wherever p occurred in Hamilton's
equa
tion must be replaced by a certain mathematical
it
entity called
an "operator/' Never mind what the
precise operator was.
The important thing was that the step from classical to
quan
tum mechanics could be made by an
replacing p by operator.
You want to see the operator? It really is not You necessary.
want to see if it is
pretty, like that Bohr orbit thing? Yes, it is

pretty. Take a look;

 UNIFICATION
h

i dq

There is that h again, and that square root of minus one, and
that 2n. They certainly stick together.
In mathematics an operator is not a number but a command.
is an order to perform some
It particular mathematical opera
For example, "multiply by 2" is an operator, so is "add 3."
tion.

The mathematician would write these operators more com

pactly, but he would still mean these same commands. When
two operators are intended to be applied in succession they are
said to be multiplied together. This agrees with our ordinary
ideas in the cases of such operators as "multiply by 2" and

"multiply by 3," for applying these in succession is the same

as multiplyingby their product, 6. Let us give here a simple
illustration of thepotency of operators. Since the operation
of multiplying by minus one reverses the sign of a mathematical
quantity, may be aptly regarded as corresponding to the
it

military command "about-face/" What command, then, would

correspond to multiplication by that so-called imaginary quan
tity, the square root of minus one? Nothing very mysterious, as
ithappens. In fact, it is something quite prosaic, for it must
be a command which on being fulfilled twice results in an
about-face; that is, the command "right turn/' or else the com
mand "left turn/' Even the ambiguity is appropriate, for it is
wellknown that a square root has an ambiguous sign. This
particular representation of the square root of minus one is

widely used in mathematics. Simple though it may seem

indeed, because of very simplicity it has exerted a pro
its

found influence on the course of mathematical thought.

There is a significant property of operators which comes in
128 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
most aptly at this point. Suppose we apply the operators "mul
tiply by 2" and "add 3" in succession to the number i. Multiply
by 2 and we get 2. Add three and we get 5. But now let us apply
them in the opposite order. Add 3 to i and we get 4.
Multiply
by 2 and we get 8 which is not the same answer as before.
This, of course, is of the utmost
importance. If p and q are
operators, then p times q and q times p need not be equal.
Schrodinger's discovery goes even further than this. When the
difference between his operator p times q and his operator q
times p is calculated, and it is a calculation a beginner in the
calculus could perform, the result, for whatever the
thing
operated on, turns out to be always the same precisely the
quantity found in the Heisenberg theory. What Schrodinger
has done to make
Dirac's discovery all over
again, but in
is

terms of waves instead of particles.

Clearly it was the identical
discovery, underneath. But it was even more than that. It
demonstrated that the whole Dirac
theory of q numbers was
implicit in the Schrodinger theory of waves.
So much for Dirac and his q numbers. But what of Heisen
berg and his matrices? Schrodinger had by no means finished
yet. By a none too intricate mathematical process,
making
liberal use of his <A, he showed how the
p's and q's and similar
quantities in his theory could be dissected, and their bones
laid bare and
neatly displayed for all to see. And whenthey
were properly arranged these bones filled vast tabula
square
tions; they were precisely the
Heisenberg matrices.
Now Heisenberg's theory too was contained in Schro-
dinger's. We could even have guessed as much as soon as
Dirac's theory was swallowed
up by it, for Dirac himself had
shown that Heisenberg's matrices were latent in his
q numbers.
How vastly changed is the picture of theoretical
physics but
 UNIFICATION
three short months after its tangled hour of crisis. Schrodinger's
theory, with its familiar picture of waves, far easier to manipu
late mathematically than the theories of Heisenberg and Dirac,
has now completely gobbled up its rivals. Those theories were
its skeleton, so to speak. No wonder the Schrodinger theory
was easier to visualize. Who would now want to go back to the
matrices or the q numbers? They were but fossils, evidences
of the intermediary stages in the evolution of the quantum.
Now the theory at last is
fully revealed. Schrodinger is the
victor, and all is well. Here is the ideal place to end the chapter.
An era of tumult has ended. Peace is at last at hand.
But no! The story of the quantum is not so simple as this.

The last paragraph is

sadly mistaken. It is
premature in its

jubilation. The
chapter must go on.
There a different aspect of the situation. Was not Schro-
is

dinger's discovery almost as much a vindication of Dirac's

theory as of his own? True, Schrodinger possessed the which ^
Dirac lacked. But Dirac had insisted all along that the great
square tabulations of Heisenberg were only secondary, and
Schrodinger had found the strongest possible corroboration
since his operators in no wise resembled the Heisenberg
matrices. When clothed with the flesh and blood of his ^ they
were revealed as quite simple, familiar operators of the calculus.
Only after quite detailed mathematical dissection could Schro
dinger lay bare their Heisenbergian skeletons. Schrodinger's
theory Heisenberg's, but in so doing it
may have gobbled up
had but vindicated the early intuition of Dirac. Soon it was to
be Dirac's turn.
The months following Schrodinger's discovery teem with
activity. The new ideas leap swiftly
from triumph to triumph.
From all sides come reports of brilliant conquests, by wave and
13 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
matrix and q number. The complexities of the Zeeman effect
are quickly vanquished. The details of the Stark effect are

explained in all their intricacy.

By June, Heisenberg has found
a brilliant explanation of hitherto
baffling features of the
spectrum of helium utterly beyond the powers of the old Bohr
theory. Simultaneously Born announces a profound discovery,
at last revealing the true meaning of Schrodinger's V- Even

Heisenberg begins to use the ^'s.

In August, Dirac grafted a V on the bones of his
q number
theory, the q numbers proving ideally suited to receive the
graft. To flex the new-found muscles of his theory, he showed
how Schrodinger's sophisticated extraction of the Heisenberg
matrices could now be performed in a really
simple fashion.
Not content with this small exercise, he followed up Heisen-
berg's ideas on the helium spectrum to give what remains to
this day the nearest we have come to an explanation of the
mysterious principle of Pauli which prevents electron over
crowding.
But all this was a preliminary trial of strength. The idea was
destined to grow enormously in power.
By December, Dirac
had made over his q numbers and their borrowed ^ into what
the most comprehensive and catholic formulation of the
is still

rules of this new game of

quantum mechanics the theoretical
physicists had
discovered. Jordan discovered the rules inde

pendently about the same time.

To appreciate what was accomplished, let us consider the
rules of that far more ancient game, chess. Twenty-five cents
will buy a booklet expounding the rules of chess with the
utmost lucidity; and the rules of checkers,
halma, and domi
noes, and of an enormous number of incomprehensible card
games for good measure.
 UNIFICATION
Everything about the rules of chess is told; the names of
the pieces, how each one moves, such refinements as how to
take a pawn en passant, and, with luck, even the simpler stan
dard openings and end games. It is
lucidity itself. What more
could one want?
is not
All truly perfect. Something has been put into the
rules which does not belong to chess. The rules as given are
adulterated. They are written in English. Naturally, that is

no valid ground for demanding one's quarter back. But in

principle it is a serious fault. What, after all, has chess to do

with the English language, specifically? Is it not played all over
the world? Is there a different chess in France? The Chinese

play it, and so do the Russians. Show your twenty-five cent

booklet to a native Chinese or Russian and the chances are he
will be unimpressed with its much-vaunted lucidity. Most likely
he will give you tit by thrusting under your nose a neat
for tat

booklet of his own, in which the rules of chess are exquisitely

described in limpid Chinese or in Russian of crystal clarity.
To the average American, the rules of chess written in
Russian will seem to have nothing in common with the same
rules written in Chinese. But let him see a Russian and a
Chinese play an actual game and the connection becomes
1
immediately obvious. Though the rules of chess look different
in different languages, the game is as universal and as free from
the trammels of language as music or toothache. Theoretically,
the universal way to describe chess is to procure a board and
set of men and proceed to demonstrate by means of sign
1
Unfortunately, the truth must be told, the Chinese game is slightly
if

different from But the Chinese language has such a picturesque appear
ours.

ance, let us not permit a mere fact to spoil our analogy. Facts may be stubborn
things, as a certain Ulyanov once so trenchantly remarked, but surely they are
not so stubborn as that.
132 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
language. How else could one who was not a gifted lin

guist explain chess to a polyglot group of emigrants on Ellis

Island?
With any universal idea, the most natural method of descrip
tion is often the most primitive and unsophisticated. Let a
man be marooned on no matter what strange shore and, unless
he has the misfortune to be eaten before he has the chance, he
will always be able to convey to the natives that he is hungry

or thirsty, or lacks sleep, or that he has a stomach-ache which

is mild, or medium, or
frightful. And all this with a precision
and clarity of nuance such as the most experienced novelist
finds hard to match in words. His signs can be rendered into

any spoken language under the sun, producing different sounds

in different languages. But beneath the confusion of tongues,
thishunger, or thirst, or sleepiness, or particular degree of
stomach-ache will remain, especially for the victim, the prime
reality,
Dirac discovered what was the prime reality beneath the
new quantum mechanics; the basic
confusion of theories in the
rules of the new game the physicists were playing. And he
expressed them in the mathematical equivalent of sign lan
guage, primitive in form but amazingly precise in expression.
Though these rules were extracted from the theories of Heisen-
berg and Schrodinger, they showed little trace of their origin.
The q numbers were there, for Dirac had divined correctly
from the start. So too was a ^, but it was a far cry from the
original ^ of Schrodinger. What became of that will be told in
a moment
Finding the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics in
mathematical sign language was only part of Dirac's achieve
ment. He also showed how to translate the rules into
any
 UNIFICATION
mathematical language capable of expressing them; of which,
for instance, arithmeticwould not be one, any more than the
language of the Australian aborigines would suffice for telling
the story of the quantum. When Dirac wrote out the rules in
one of these mathematical languages let us call it mathe
matical Chinese they became simply the theory of Heisen-
berg, with a ^ added. When, however, he wrote them in what
we may call mathematical Russian, they became precisely the
theory of Schrodinger. Dirac even constructed a universal
"dictionary" for translating from any one mathematical lan
guage to any other. When he wrote out the special dictionary
linking mathematical Russian with mathematical Chinese, that
is,linking Schrodinger's theory with Heisenberg's, he found it
consisted of none other than the ^'s of
Schrodinger.
Such was the magnificent scope of Dime's amalgamation.
Schrodinger's theory had started the feast by gobbling up
Heisenberg's and thinking it had gobbled up Dime's. Now
Dirac's theory had gobbled
up everything, and those, strange
bedfellows Schrodinger and Dirac were to share the Nobel

prize in 1933. Instead of becoming fatter and more slovenly,

quantum mechanics had become successively more svelteand
elegant. With Dirac's work, the main structural scheme of
quantum mechanics was now established.
But what did it all really mean? What sort of mental" picture
could one form of For
it?
eloquence and incomparable
all its

achievement, it still remained somehow remote, obscure, and

unfriendly.
Even while the above events were unfolding,
Heisenberg was
piercing the mists that still swirled about their theoretical
foundations, and Bohr was soon to bring further
enlighten
ment. What strange new realms of physics were thus revealed
134 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
will be told in following chapters. Let us not pause for explana

tions here. This a chapter telling of unification. And although

is

the prime unification of them all has now been told, there is
an urgency and momentum of events which sweeps us for
ward. There will be time enough for understanding. Let us

pursue unification yet a while.

So far the new quantum theory had busied itself with matter,

leaving light to fend for itself as best light's best

it could. And
was little better now than it had been under Planck and
Einstein and Bohr. The theory of matter had burst suddenly
into full flower but its consort, the theory of light, had lagged
behind. Like a youth at puberty, it an awk
had remained in

ward half-quantum adolescence, and

state of half-classical,

the slight, wavy down of photon which adorned its smooth,

classical features deceived no one into thinking it had attained

full quantumhood.
In the feverish atmosphere then prevailing, growth was rapid.
In February of 1927 Dirac brought to the photon a swift

maturity even more speedy than that "which had so recently

come to the particle.
Let us imagine a box lined with mirrors, top, bottom, and all
around. Any light waves unfortunate enough to be trapped
within it must spend their days in one mad, headlong rush
back and forth in all directions, battering themselves repeat
edly against the mirror walls only to be remorselessly and
inevitably reflected back at every encounter.
Light waves will do curious things under such harsh condi
tions, as the English physicist James Jeans had discovered back
in 1905 in an investigation connected with the violet catas
trophe. Like madmen pretending to be Napoleon, light waves
trapped in their mirrored cell will pretend to be a collection
 UNIFICATION 135
of oscillating particles; for Jeans showed that Maxwell's equa
tions for light in a reflecting box can be so cunningly mal
treated that, instead of looking like the usual wave equations,

they will take on a remarkable resemblance to the ordinary

mechanical equations of such oscillators an infinite number
of them, in fact.
It was on this discovery of Jeans that Dirac built his theory
of light and its interaction with matter. Jeanshad twisted Max
well's wave equations into equations having p's and q's just
as if they had been taken right out of Hamilton's mechanics.
Here was a splendid opportunity. Clamping his own quantum
ideas of q numbers on these p's and q's, Dirac converted this
into a quantum theory of photons having far-reaching implica
tions. Though the process may sound simple when stated
baldly like this, it was an operation bristling with difficulties

and demanding considerable virtuosity. New entities had to be

introduced which, unlike such simple things as p's and q's, had
no counterpart in the classical mechanics. New ideas of all
sorts, both mathematical and physical, had to be kept on hand
to plug the many leaks which threatened to bring the theory to
grief. Not all the leaks were stopped by any means, yet, so

long as he did not drive it too hard or too far, Dirac was able
to keep the theory afloat
Overnight Dirac had brought the laggard theory of light into
the domain of the new quantum mechanics to be a worthy

companion to the theory of matter. History had repeated itself.

Here was the pattern of a decade before all over again. In 1917
ithad been Einstein who brought the theory of the interplay
of matter and radiation into line with the newly propounded
Bohr theory. Now Dirac had performed a corresponding service
for the new quantum mechanics. Of the general importance of
136 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Dirac's theory of light in the quantum mechanical scheme, and
the significant developments to which it has given rise, it would
take us too far afield to tell. But there is one item which holds

special interest as a crowning unification. For Dirac could now

derive, with all the elaborate machinery of quantum mechanics
and at last as an integral part of it, something which had
hitherto remained outside: the various ideas Einstein intro
duced on general grounds ten years before, and the original
empirical radiation formula of Max Planck which had started
the whole thing off.
With Planck's immortal formula turning up for the third
time, a veritable rock in a boiling sea, its form untouched by
the passage of turbulent years, the quantum has now traveled
full circle. Here is the place to terminate the
chapter. Or is its
momentum even now not fully spent?
There are still loose ends to be gathered together. What
has been happening to de Broglie's waves all this time? What
about relativity? And then, too, what of the spin of the elec
tron, and that relativity formula of Sommerfeld's for the fine
structure which got lost in the recent storm? How have all
these fared?
One more amalgamation remains to be told, which knits all
these together.
Where de Broglie had used relativistic waves in ordinary
space and time, Schrodinger had used nonrelativistic waves in
a fictional space. The extraordinary success of Schrodinger's
theory soon made it seem that de Broglie's day was done. But
without relativity or spin Sommerf eld's formula could not be
resuscitated. Attempts of course were made to
replace Schro-
dinger's waves by relativistic waves, but Sommerfeld's formula
refused to show itself
except in garbled form. Something was
 UNIFICATION
wrong with the theory. In this particular instance it was not
even as good as Bohr's fighting words by now.
Another puzzle had appeared meanwhile. If an electron
was a wave, as Schrodinger said, how could one fit in the
spin? This problem was attacked by Pauli, and independently
by the English physicist C. G. Darwin, grandson of the
Charles Darwin of Natural Selection. Pauli, following the

Heisenberg tradition, sought to duplicate the effect of a spin

by introducing special matrices, while Darwin, who felt more
at home with Schrodinger's ideas, introduced a modified
form of electron wave. By now it will occasion no surprise
that the two theories were "Russian-Chinese" counterparts,
as was shown by Jordan. When
artificially combined with

relativity, the new ideas brought Sommerfeld's formula back

into the world of physics, except for a small discrepancy. But

they suffered from a much more significant discrepancy than

this, for they gave for a certain quantity exactly twice the
value itwas known to have from experiment.
It was at this point that Dirac, in 1928, took command of
the situation by going right back to de Broglie and relativity,
and leaving the spin to take care of itself. For Dirac, with his
deep insight into the foundations of quantum mechanics,
had noticed that de Broglie's simple wave equation must be
regarded quantum mechanically as a two-ply affair. So cun
ningly did the two parts fit together, and so firmly were they
bonded one to the other, that no one had hitherto suspected
the duplex character. With great mathematical dexterity,
Dirac pried the two parts asunder, and lo! each part was
equipped with built-in matrices built-in matrices exactly
representing the electron spin. He demonstrated that either
part alone was a sufficient wave equation for the electron and
 138 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
showed that his new equation not only brought back the
Sommerfeld formula intact into quantum physics but even
improved on it It also removed the discrepancy of the value
twice as large as it ought to be. It showed that the spin of the
electron was but a natural reflection of relativity, thus resolv

ing the apparent conflict of relativity and spin as to responsi

bility for the fine structure. On the mathematical side, it
introduced new quantities in the theory of relativity leading
to a new calculus called, in honor of the
spin, the spinor
calculus. It
superseded the equation of Schrodinger for a
single electron, it led to certain significant developments
which will be told in a later chapter, and all in all it showed
what wonderful results were to be obtained from a successful
marriage of those two outstanding rebels of modern physics
the quantum theory and the theory of relativity.
Yet this successful alliance was more a marriage of con
venience than a true union. For all its tantalizing brilliance,
marked a profound penetration into the unknown,
for all that it

itdid not bring relativity and quantum mechanics

intimately
together. Between the two there remained an element of in
compatibility that seemed to cramp the activities of both so
that, for instance, no proper way was found of applying the
new equation to an atom having two or more electrons.
Many problems arose in connection with it, problems made
all the more acute by the dazzling had achieved.
success it

One of these problems,

having to do with negative energies,
is
particularly fascinating. But it belongs to a later part of our
story, for we have allowed the momentum of our tale to carry
us farther than it should. By 1928 the quantum mechanical
revolution was already over. Brave ideas and
magnificent dis
coveries continued to arise, but the
revolutionary rioting had
 UNIFICATION 139
subsided and quantum mechanics was already enthroned as
ruler and leader of atomic science. Our story must now go

back again in time to plunge once more into the thick of

battle.
 CHAPTER XIII

THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT

"
Macbeth: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."
(Macbeth, Act V, Scene V)
Polonius: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."
(Hamlet, Act II, Scene II)

MACBETH OR POLONIUS, the question. Our tale has

that is

lacked nothing of sound and fury, or madness. Readers may

even say it was told by an idiot Yet there is method in it. It
is not empty of meaning.
Understanding came late to the new quantum theory. Men
carried the quantum forward to commanding heights without

knowing what it signified. They worked aware that momen

tous events were abroad, but with as little foreknowledge of
the meaning of their discoveries as a caterpillar might have
of its
destiny to become a butterfly. They had already scored
spectacular triumphs when the first inklings of understanding
began to appear.

Perhaps it is natural that understanding should be so

long
delayed, for the new concepts were strange and hard to accept.
140
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 141

They would have been rejected had they lacked their im

pressive array of corroborative evidence, an array that was
well-nigh overwhelming. It was the unparalleled harmony

between theory and experiment that forced the new ideas

upon a none too willing science.
Early guesses, hopes, and mental pictures were to be dis
carded. What could have been more plausible than de Broglie's
resolution of the wave-particle difficulty? He had the idea that
his waves were an adjunct to the particle, not a substitute for
it; that one could never have a particle without its attendant

seeing-eye wave to guide it; way ahead and

to spy out the

nudge the hesitant particle along the one path which would
require the least action. What could offer greater promise
of solving the wave-particle mystery than such a wave-plus-

particle concept as this? But it was not to survive. The mystery

was to prove of greater subtlety.
Heisenberg had hoped to play by playing the ostrich.
safe

He had rejected all mental images and offered no unproved

pictures of what might be going
on within the atom, for it
was such pictures, he felt, that had caused the Bohr theory's
downfall. Dirac, too, began by renouncing pictorial imagery.
He rushed heart and soul into his q number theory, seemingly
undismayed that something might be lacking in the way of
warmth and human good-fellowship.
Schrodinger snatched the de Broglie waves from their play
ground in space and time, removing them to the remoteness
of fictional space and abandoning their former playmate, the

particle. His electron was

now smeared out, and lacked
location even in fictional space. Let us tell a little incident in
this connection. Noting the sorrow of his wave for its lost
location
playmate, Schrodinger tried to give
it by piling up
142 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
many small waves into one huge localized wave. He even
proved mathematically that this "wave packet" was a good
substitute for the particle, that it would not fall apart, but
would move exactly as a particle would have according to
classical mechanics. Unfortunately for this attempt to console
the wave for its lack of location, it
proved that, by was later

a singular coincidence, Schrodinger had worked with the

one type problem where a wave packet would behave in
of
this convenient manner. In almost all other instances the
wave packet would fall
apart. It would seem, therefore, that
Schrodinger's idea for locating the electron was incorrect
But there is more to this than at present meets the eye, and
we shall return to it later.

Many months after he introduced his theory, months

during which he had been applying it with phenomenal
successand even gobbling up rival theories, Schrodinger at
ventured on an interpretation of his ^. It was to measure
last

how thickly the electron was spread out, much as one might
measure the uneven thickness of butter spread on bread. He
gave a specific mathematical formula for it. The interpreta
tion was quickly superseded. The actual formula "survives.
In June of 1926 Born suggested that the electron was not
smeared out after all, but that ^ is a measure of the probabil

ity of the electron's being in any particular

place. We find a

young American physicist discussing this concept. His name

was J.
R. Oppenheimer.
No sooner do we half reconcile ourselves to waves of a
smeared-out electron than we are asked to replace them by
waves of probability. How many more of these fanciful ideas
must we hear before we get to the right one? And, at this
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 143
rate, how are we going to recognize the right one when we
do come to it, if ever?
We have just come
Schrodinger's waves are waves of
to it!

probability. That, at least, is the accepted interpretation to

this day, and there is nothing to indicate it is likely soon to be

superseded. Indeed, it is quite fundamental for the inter

pretation of quantum mechanics, and is sustained by the
Even so it is a curious con
strongest corroborative evidence.
cept. Born must have found compelling reasons for adopting
it. What can have induced him to abandon
Schrodinger's
idea of a smeared-out electron?
He was led to new
interpretation by considering what
his

happens when, for instance, an electron nearly collides with

a nucleus. If we treat the electron as a ^ wave we find that
the $ is
splattered all over the place by the collision.
No great harm seems to have been done so far, though,
Why should. it not be splattered?
There is harm enough. The
being a wave, can of course
^,
be splattered with perfect propriety. But what does that mean
in terms of electrons? Does it mean the electron has been
shattered into little pieces? Experiment is clear on that point.
Electrons are not shattered in this way. They are deflected if

they pass close to a nucleus. Yes, But they remain whole

electrons. Yet Schrodinger's idea would imply that an electron
could never survive a collision whole. It was an impossible
situation for the smeared-out electron. The only way out
seemed to be to regard the ^ as not so much describing the

particular behavior of an individual electron as telling what

the electron was liable to do on the average in very many
collisions.

This is a difficult idea. Maybe we had better hurry on to

144 THE ST ORY OF THE QUANTUAI
other ideas which make this new interpretation feel more
reasonable. the probability
Until these other ideas came,
waves, and almost everything else connected with the inter
pretation of the new quantum mechanics, brought acute
mental discomfort to all but a fortunate handful of physicists,
and even those fortunate few, in the very forefront of the
march of progress, breathed more easily when these other ideas
appeared. Weowe our understanding of the everyday mean
ing of the new quantum mechanics, and our ability to form
consistent mental pictures of what goes on, in the first instance
to the genius of Heisenberg; Heisenberg who began by re

nouncing all seductive mental images and hid them from his
eyes lest they lead him astray. And we shall soon see how
sound had been his instinct, for the new ideas revealed that
any pictures he might have formed beforehand would surely
have been grossly misleading.
Like everyone else who knew what was
going on in theo
retical physics, Heisenberg was puzzled and disquieted
by the
contrast between the clarity of the achievements of the new
mathematical equations and the obscurities and uncertainties
of their basic interpretation.
Once upon a time a baldheaded man asked a small boy
whether he would not like to be bald too and have no hair to
comb. With the quick apprehension of boyhood, the youngster
replied, "Oh, no! That would make twice as much face to
wash/' That boy was well acquainted with the fundamental

principle of natural perversity so familiar to all who wish to

eat their cake and have it.
Heisenberg was to discover a com
parable perversity in the realm of physics. He began by asking
himself some fundamental questions. It was all
very well to
say that p times q being different from q times p explained
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 145
atomic phenomena; but it did not explain why p times g
could not be equal to q times p. Of course, ifwe accepted p
and q as operators we could see why they would be able to
behave but that was mathematics, it was still not an
like that,

explanation. What about physics? What about experiment?

After all, p and q were not just mathematical symbols. They
were supposed to represent physical things: p was momentum,
and q was position. What did the inequality of p times q and
q times p mean in terms of actual position and momentum?
What did it mean in terms of experiment?

That was the clue. What did it mean in terms of experi

ment? In 1927 Heisenberg found the answer, deducing it
mathematically from the sign-language rules of quantum
mechanics and clarifying it by many vivid physical illustra
tions. Dirac, independently, about this time, realized what
was the true state of affairs, and Bohr was quick to grasp the

deeper significance of the new ideas. Following Heisenberg

and Bohr, let us see how graphically these ideas may be
described. How does one make an experiment to measure p
and q for some particle, say an electron?
That is easy. We simply look at it and note its position and
its
velocity. The position is
q. And
the velocity multiplied by
the mass of the electron, which latter we know from other

experiments, is How do we find its position? Just by looking

p.
at it, of course. How do we find its velocity? By looking twice,
of course. We clock the electron much as we would a runner
in a race. We look at at the start and again after an interval
it

of time, and note the change in position. What is all the

fuss? It is all clear and aboveboard. It is a thoroughly routine

procedure. Astronomers have been noting positions and

velocities for centuries. Why not talk to them? They can
146 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
tell how to go about with almost unbelievable precision.
it

Yes, it has been done for centuries and centuries, but with

planets, and
and nebulae, and asteroids, and satellites,
stars,
and meteorites; and in mundane affairs, with trains, and- air
planes, and swimmers, and race horses, and shellfire, and
hurtling stones. But what about electrons? Electrons are
small. They They are exceedingly small. To
are very small.
make the measurements we must be able to look at them.
How are we going to see them?
Well, there is
always the possibility of using a microscope.
But a microscope will not be anywhere near powerful
enough.
Wecould imagine one powerful enough. What is the
point of all this?

Even we use a hypothetical microscope of simply phenom

if

enal power we still have to look at the electron.

Naturally!
But looking at it implies shining a light on it.

Certainly! Of course! Everyone realizes that. one is No

going to object Let's get down to business.
Weare getting down to business. There is a well-known
rule about microscopes. Their powers are limited by the size
of the light waves used. They cannot distinguish details
smaller than a wavelength. do the most powerful optical
Why
microscopes use ultraviolet light, if not for that? are Why
electron microscopes so much more if not for the
powerful,
fact that the de Broglie of
wavelength fast-moving electrons
is so much smaller?
a
It's
hypothetical microscope, anyway. Why not use
hypothetical light with it? Use X
rays if necessary, or y rays
from radium, or of even
light shorter wavelength. Use what-
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 147
ever light is
necessary, no matter how small its wavelength.
It is all hypothetical. It does not cost us anything.
All right. We willuse light of extremely small wavelength.
But there is a well-known rule about light. The shorter the

wavelength, the higher the frequency. And as Planck and

Einstein discovered, the higher the frequency the larger the

energy of the photon.

So we're using photons now. Is that really fair? were We
merely talking about a microscope. No need to confuse the
issueby bringing in photons.
But we must bring in photons if we want to think about
the quantum theory. That is the fundamental point which
was overlooked in all previous speculations of this sort. We
know that light is somehow atomic, that each frequency
comes in bundles of definite energy. How
can we ignore so
fundamental a fact if we want to understand the quantum?
And what is all this commotion coming from our microscope
now? The electron apparently doesn't like the new turn of
events. It having a rough time of it.
is We
are not leaving it
in peace any more. We
are not just looking at it, we are

hurling enormous boulders of energy at it and it is being

badly knocked about. What sort of a scientific experiment is
this? It is certainly far from delicate. Suppose we do manage
to see the electron and note its
position? It is an empty
victory. The very fact that we see it means we have scored
a direct hit with a photon. The electron is a very light particle,
unable to withstand a particle of light. It is badly jolted by
the impact. In observing the electron's position we give it a

jolt which alters its velocity.

We
defeat our own object We
cannot use gentler photons, for the less their energy the less
their frequency and the greater their wavelength, and thus
148 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the less the power of the microscope. A spirit of perversity is

in the air.
But why not make the best of it by observing the original
position, and then the velocity after the jolt
of the initial

observation?
That does not help at all. How do we measure the velocity?
We have to use a mental stop watch and make two successive
observations of position to see how the electron, moved. The
second observation would cause a second jolt. The velocity
we so carefully calculated from our observations would not be
the present velocity of the electron; the second jolt would have
altered it at the very moment we completed our observations
of it. We can know the past velocity, but not the present
or future. The spirit of perversity is becoming positively ob
trusive.

This is nonsense. It's ridiculous. It cannot be like that.

There must be some way out. Why not take note of the jolt
on the photon itself? Then we can calculate what jolt it must
have given the election, just as we could for a collision of
billiard balls.

Very ingenious, and very sound. But unfortunately there is

another little rule about microscopes, as Bohr pointed out.

The wavelength isn't the only thing. The diameter of the

objective lens is
important too. For good resolution the
diameter must be large. And if the diameter is
large, how
can we the direction in which the photon bounced off
tell

the electron? It might have gone through any part of the

large lens we have to use to get the needed resolving power.

Lenses are funny things. They bring all rays from the electron
to the same focus. We
cannot tell the direction of the ray by
looking at the image of the electron. The principle of perver-
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 149

sity is at work again. The larger the lens the better the resolving
power, true; but also the greater the uncertainty as to the
direction of the photon and thus as to the jolt it gave the
electron. We
cannot find the data needed for the suggested
billiard ball calculation after The situation is as bad
all. as

ever. When we observe the position we ruin our chances of

finding the velocity.

There's still a chance. What's sauce for the goose is sauce
for the gander. We
brought in the photons under protest
Now let us make them help us out of the hole they've put
us in. Why can't we find the direction of the photon by
measuring the gave the microscope?
jolt it
How do we measure the jolt on the microscope? We must
observe how the microscope moves. How can we observe
that? By looking at
it. That means shining
light That on it.

means bombarding it with photons. And they have to be

photons of enormous energy because we are trying to measure
an infinitesimal jump. This is where we came in. It is the
same trouble all over again. Each time we try to bolster a
previous observation with another, we cause a new jolt which
makes the new information out of date. The principle of
perversity is rampant and exultant. The more we strive to
determine the electron's position the more we spoil our
possible knowledge of its velocity; and all because of Planck's
quantum h. This, more or less, is Heisenberg's justly cele
brated principle of indeterminacy. According to this principle,
we must simply reconcile ourselves to the fact that we cannot
determine both the position and the velocity of a particle
with exactitude, even in imagination. Now the quantum is
here,we cannot know both q and p simultaneously. When
we measure q we disturb p. It can be shown by other hy-
150 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
pothetical experiments that when we measure p we
disturb q.
And the whole trouble is that there is no way of determining
the precise amount of the disturbance. If we are content to
know the position approximately rather than precisely, we
may also know the momentum to some extent. It is only when
we insist on knowing either the position or the momentum
exactly that all vestige of information about
the other is de
in the position
stroyed. Heisenberg found that the uncertainty
and the uncertainty in the momentum, if
multiplied together,
at the best could not give a value less than h; there is Planck's
constant again, the villain of the piece.
Contrast this with the prequantum situation. There too one
had to use light of small wavelength, and there too light
exerted pressure. But the intensity of the light could be made
as weak as one wished and the pressure thus reduced without
limit; and with it the disturbance of the electron. In the

quantum view, reducing the intensity does not reduce the

individual jolts of the photons, it merely makes them less

frequent No observation can be made until a photon actually

bounces the electron. Since reducing the intensity does
off

not reduce the energy of an individual photon, the jolt

cannot be ignored. And the jolt itself remains essentially
indeterminate.
Here is one of the significant characteristics of the new
physics. There is more, and worse, to come. We have not
even explained yet how this is linked to the fact that p times q
and q times p are different. But let us examine for a moment
what we have already found.
First we must realize that all this pictorial discussion of

imaginary experiments is little more than general, even loose

talk designed to make us feel more comfortable about the
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT
meaning of the quantum theory. There are no microscopes
so incredibly powerful as those we have imagined. We
have
not even been entirely consistent, for though we regarded the
electron as a particle we ended by showing that if it was a

particle it was certainly a queer one. The true justification of

such imaginings is the success of the quantum theory itself,
for thesemental experiments are but an interpretation of its
basic rules.
We have come to a new concept of the particle. Whatever
a particle may be, it is no longer what we used to think it was.
The old particle could have position and velocity both. The
new one can have position, or it can have velocity, or it can
have a rather fuzzy position together with a rather fuzzy
velocity, but it cannot have both together with precision. In
our imaginary experiments, we thought of the electron as an
old-fashioned particle, only to discover that we could not
observe all its alleged attributes. But now we must renounce
the old idea. The spirit of perversity will baffle us so long as
we try to retain it. If the old attributes may not be observed,
even in theory, we conclude that they do not really exist. We
begin to envision a new type of "particle" very different from
the classical idea. It cannot be regarded as a minute lump

moving in a definite way. It can be regarded as a minute

lump, or else as moving in a definite way, but not as both at
once. Naturally, the wave-particle puzzle now takes on new
significance. We
shall discuss it further later.

Meanwhile there is another aspect of the present situation

to be considered, for science has suddenly become more
humble. In the good old days it could boldly predict the
future. But what of now? To predict the future we must
know the present, and the present is not knowable, for in
152 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
trying to know it we inevitably alter it. If we know the airfield

from which an airplane starts, and also its speed and direction,
we can predict where it will be in the immediate future. But
if we can know only the particular airfield, or else only the
direction and speed of the plane, but not both together, then

prediction becomes mere guesswork. That was the situation

with the electron. Science had suffered a drastic and funda
mental change without at first perceiving it. It went all the
way from Planck to Heisenberg before realizing fully what
had occurred; before realizing that the whole structure of
thought had been transformed. Its proudest boast, its
scientific

most cherished illusion had been taken away from it. It had
suddenly grown old and wise. It had at last realized it never
had possessed the ability to predict the detailed future.
Yet science still predicts the future; and with more success
than ever, thanks to the quantum. We shall clearly have to
return to this matter too.
Still another item. What of the Bohr orbits? If we
placed
a Bohr atom under our hypothetical microscope, what would
we observe? Would we be able to follow an electron around
an orbit? Or even around a part of an orbit? Not at all. The
very act of observation would give the electron such a jolt
as would knock it from its orbit into some other permitted

orbit; and in some instances would even eject it from the atom
altogether. Thus, even if we permit ourselves to talk as though
orbits really existed, we see that they are certainly not theo
retically observable in the old sense. How sure had been
Heisenberg's instinct, which led him to reject the orbits
right from the start!
One final item and we may continue with our story. Just
as momentum and position are paired, so too are
energy and
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 153
time, as Hamilton well knew. But notice now what a tremen
dous thing it was when Planck linked energy to
frequency.
We cannot measure frequency in an instant have to wait We
a little while, to watch an oscillation or two, at the least. Thus
if
energy is akin to frequency, we may not measure energy in
an instant but must spend a little time in doing so.
Compare
this with what Heisenberg discovered about momentum and

position and we have a perfect parallel. If we know the

momentum we cannot know the exact location in space, if
we know the energy we cannot know the exact location in
time.
The parallel is indeed perfect But there is a special interest
for us in this relationship of time and energy, for no hy
pothetical microscope is needed to discover it See how
obvious it had been all
along had we but the wit and courage
to recognize it. There it was, crying out for recognition, as
soon Planck gave birth to the quantum; a
as
discovery of
tremendous proportions simply begging to be discovered.
Anyone might have walked off with incredible scientific
glory
by merely pointing it out vigorously except that no one
would have taken him seriously before 1925 or thereabouts,
a momentous quarter century late. Who knows but that there
are similar things today, just as obvious,
staring us in the face,
their message disregarded because men lack the
requisite
daring and gallantry. For daring and gallantry are needed in
science as in battle.
Let us return to our story, where much still awaits clari
fication. Can we explain the p times q business physically?
How is related to Heisenberg's
it
microscope?
For this we must go back to the
sign-language rules of
quantum mechanics, for those rules
actually implied Heisen-
154 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
berg's discovery. It has not escaped the reader that, for all the
talk in the previous chapter, the rules of Dirac were left with
out formal statement. The time was not then ripe. But with
Heisenberg having prepared the way for us, we may now
inspect a few of their details, enough to see how admirably
they encompass Heisenberg's revolutionary discovery.
According to Dirac, an electron, or atom, or nebula, or
automobile, or any other dynamical system may have various
possible states of motion. He represented each particular
state by the symbol ^ which, as we mentioned, was not the
same as the <A of Schrodinger. Let us fix our attention on the
electron Heisenberg was subjecting to such pummeling. To
observe its position we perform a certain experimental opera
tion on Somehow we have to
it. state this fact in mathematical
sign language, so we denote the physical operation by a
mathematical operator q. Since, as we now know, the physical
operation usually disturbs the physical motion of the system,
we make the mathematical operator mirror its effect by alter

ing the V on which it operates; we

say that q times $ is usually
different from ^. What could be more direct than that? It is

an exact replica of the corresponding physical situation in

mathematical sign language.
In everyday life there are many instances of operations
having different effects when performed in different orders.
For instance, if we denote the operation of eating one's cake
by p and that of having one's cake by q, then q may be fol
lowed by p, but not vice versa. If we denote by p the
operation
of washing one's hair, and by q the
operation of doing some
thing with it, then again, as every woman knows, p may follow
q but q may not so easily follow p. If p denotes the
operation
(in either sense) of having a baby, and q that of getting mar-
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 155
ried, then q followed by p is considered different from p
followed by q. In all such cases we would say that p times q
and q times p were different It is much the same in quantum
mechanics.

Suppose we could find the exact position of Heisenberg's

electron, say that for which q has the value 3. Then we could

replace the operator q by the number 3 and say that q times $

was equal to 3 times ^. Similarly, if we knew that the momen
tum had the value 5 we could say that p times $ was equal to 5
times ^. This is all
very primitive. A mathematical savage
could understand it. But such things are rules of the new
quantum mechanics.
What does mean, for Heisenberg's electron, that p times
it

q is not the same as q times p? We

are at last in a position to
answer. It is a simple exercise in mathematical sign language,
somewhat simpler than simple arithmetic; which only goes
to show what tremendous things are hidden beneath these
innocent-looking rules.
Let us for the moment pretend we found q had the definite
value 3 and p the definite value 5, irrespective of which
measurement was made first. Then p times q times ^ would
have to be 5 times
3 times <A, or 15 times <A, while q times p
times ir would be 3 times 5 times <A, or also 15 times $ the
same as before. And this is obviously a contradiction. The
result cannot be the same as before, for the former is
p times
q times <A and the latter is q times p times <A, and we know that
p times q is not the same as q times p. To put it in a nutshell,
p and q cannot both have exact numerical values, such as 5 and
3, simply because 3 times 5 and 5 times 3 are equal while
such is not the case for p and q. The contradiction means, of
course, that the initial assumption was false. Thus the inequal-
156 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ity of times q and q times p means that the order in which
p
the observations are made affects their results. This
implies
that the observation of one disturbs the observation of the

other, which is what Heisenberg and Bohr demonstrated with

their hypothetical
microscope.
Now
the fun really begins. All this was but an introduction
to the main revolution in scientific
thought brought about
by the new quantum mechanics. There is more to Heisenberg's
discovery than the mere inability to know position and velocity
simultaneously, and more too to the rules of quantum me
chanics, correspondingly. Credulity will at first be strained
to the breaking point. But there is no out The evidence isway
overwhelming. And after a while one becomes reconciled to
the new ideas, however bizarre, and recognizes their probable
legitimacy.
But us go into this thing with our
let
eyes open. Let us
taste beforehand the flavor of what is to come. The situation

is much as if a child had long been asking us an age-old

question, seeking to learn the truth.
"Daddy," she says, "which came first, the chicken or the
egg?"
even desperately, we have been
Steadfastly, refusing to
commit ourselves. But our questioner is insistent. The truth
alone will satisfy her.
Nothing less. At long last we gather
up courage and issue our solemn pronouncement on the
subject:
"Yes!"
So it is here.

"Daddy, is it a wave or a particle?"

"Yes."

"Daddy, is the electron here or is it there?"

 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 157
"Yes/'

"Daddy, do scientists really know what they are talking

about?"
"Yes!"
The way has already been prepared. We
already know from
Heisenberg's principle that a particle is no
longer what it used
to be. We
are about to find out that it is even less like its
old self than we think even now. Because the word "particle"
, is now ambiguous, and contaminated by its classical associa
tions, we shall talk rather of an electron though what we say
is applicable to a photon, an atom, or any other "particle."
The word "electron/' however, is itself somewhat contami
nated. We usually think of it as a particle of the older sort,

and we must realize that this is a major reason why everything

will seem strange and paradoxical. Despite all paradox, how

ever, we must always keep before us the realization that we

are talking of the world, and not of idle theories spun out of

gossamer. We
are talking of what you and I are made of, and
the trees and the stones, the stars and the atomic bombs,
radio waves and viruses, and cabbages and kings; and, for
all we know, we are talking of the material basis of love and
hate, and patriotism and treachery, and religious ecstasy. Be
hind all our quaint ideas about p's and q's and their inde-
terminacies lies a world of harsh reality in proved relation
to them.

Bearing mind, how would we feel to be told

all this in

that an electron can be in two places at once, or can be

going in two directions at the same time; and more

than two?
We shall soon learn, for something closely akin to this must
now be swallowed, just as it had to be by physicists not so

many years ago. It can all

be made into a consistent scheme
158 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
in the end, however, and on the way can be related to

analogous things already familiar to us.

First, then, let us get the worst over. After that we may
see how to make the best of it, and in so doing reach a

position so comfortable that we would hesitate to retreat

from it to the older point of view with its inability to account
for some of the outstanding basic experiments.
An electron might be moving straight upwards at five thou
sand feet per second. That would be a legitimate state of
motion and could be denoted by ^. An electron might be
moving to the right at eight hundred feet per second. That
also would be a state of motion, representable by a different $.
Now we must remember that Dirac's sign-language rules were
distilled from the successful theories of Heisenberg and

Schrodinger. One of these rules, perhaps the most important,

is the rule of
superposition. We have not mentioned it before.
It tells us we could have a state of motion
consisting of a
combination of the two states above, so much of the first and
so much of the second. This is
something utterly radical. It
does not mean a classical motion intermediate between the
two, as simultaneous motions north and east combine clas
sically to form a single northeasterly motion. It does not mean
anything so convenient and snug as that. It means both
motions at once.
For the time being we can console ourselves with the
thought that we are dealing with probabilities, but this con
solation, though correct, will not last long without modifica
tion. Let us try it, even so, for it is an
important part of the
new physics.
Suppose we start with an electron moving upward at five
thousand feet per second. If we observe its
position we
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 159

operate on its ^ with q. The mathematics then shows that

the new state, q times a combination state consisting not
^, is

of just two but of an infinite number of pure motions all

going on at once. To see what this may mean physically, let

us look through Heisenberg's microscope. In observing the

position of the electron we have made an indeterminate

change in its velocity. All we can now know about its motion,
therefore, is
probably such and such a motion, or
that it is

with less likelihood another motion, or another, or another,

through an infinite list of possibilities. Though we can make
a catalogue of the possible motions and even determine
all

their relative likelihoods, we cannot fix the exact motion

without making a further observation and that would not
help, because it alters the motion and renders out of date
the information it itself yields. In this sense, then, the elec
tron is in several states of motion at once; in the sense that

it is one particular one, but that we do not and

really in
cannot know which. Remember, things are not going to
remain quite so simple as this. But this is a good stepping-
stone to deeper waters. Let us rest on it a while and look
around for familiar landmarks, and everyday analogies.
We find a somewhat similar situation in heredity. To
take a simple instance, let a black fowl and a white fowl
mate and produce a chicken. Before the egg is hatched we
do not know its color. But it is possible to say that the
chicken is in some sort of combination state of color, being

twenty-five per cent black, ^nd twenty-five per cent white, and
fifty per cent that gray, bluish type known as Andalusian.
What does this mean? Not that the chicken is somehow
all these at once. It is
only one of them. But, lacking the
complete information, we must content ourselves with the
l6o THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
hundred chickens came from such parentage^
probabilities. If a
we would expect, from past experience, that about twenty-five
of them would be black, twenty-five white, and fifty An-
dalusian. A particular chicken is one particular color. When
it emerges from its egg we can determine which color it is.

This, however, increases our information. It corresponds to

an observation, and alters the state from a combination state
to one pertaining to a particular color.
This idea that a combination state represents a lack of
information may be illustrated by the hunting of a submarine
without benefit of radar or other instruments of detection.
An aviator observing a submarine just as
it
completes the act
of submerging, knows its
position, but not how it is moving.

Therefore, for him, the submarine is in a combination state

comprising all possible motions away from the point of sub
mersion.
Wecan push this last analogy further. The submarine, in

submerging, has merged itself with the waves in a double

sense. It has become a Schrodinger wave packet.
When Schrodinger formed his electron waves into a wave
packet he managed to give the electron location. But the wave
packet would not stay together. It spread out and flattened.
Why? Because, according to Heisenberg's principle, as soon
as Schrodinger gave his electron location he lost information
as to its motion. This all ties in with Born's idea that the

Schrodinger waves are waves of probability. For where was

the electron a few moments after it was located if its motion
was unknown? In a sense, it was nowhere in particular. It
might be almost anywhere, though most likely somewhere
in the vicinity of the
original position. Its position was now
little more than a
rapidly spreading probability. Its probability
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT l6l

wave packet was spreading. As time went on, the ignorance

of its position increased. Its wave packet spread further.
It is the same with the submarine. When it is observed in

the act of submerging its wave packet is at its peak. If the

plane reaches the spot quickly it can drop depth charges with
a good chance of success. But should the plane delay, its
chances of scoring a hit become less and less, for as time

goes on the '"position" of the submarine spreads out as an

ever-widening circular region of probability, just as the ripples
on the surface of the ocean spread out from its point of
submersion. The submarine's wave packet, originally at its

peak, spreads rapidly apart as precious time speeds on.

Weshall return to the wave packets. We
have not done
with them yet But there are other aspects and analogies to
consider; such as the tossing of a coin. When we flip a coin,
it is neither heads nor tails until it actually lands. While it

is in the air it is twirling rapidly. But now suppose we could

have no knowledge at all of what occurs between the tossing
and the final landing. Suppose the world were so constituted
that no observation of the intermediate motion was possible.

Suppose some pigheaded principle of perversity prevented any

such observation. What sort of theory would we form of the
flipping of a coin?
Surely one thing would strike us at once as of outstanding
importance: the coin could be only heads or tails, and nothing
else. There were only two possible results to an observation.
And we would soon find there was no way of telling before
hand which result would turn up. If we decided to confess our
ignorance on this score in the language of the new physics
we would say that the state of the coin was a combination
of heads and tails. Since a long series of observations would
l62 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
show came down heads about as frequently as
that the coins

they came down tails, we would say that in the combination

state the coin had a per cent probability of being in the
fifty
heads position and a fifty per cent probability of being in the
tails position. As soon as the coin came to rest on the table, of

course, we would know quite definitely which it was: either

heads or tails. The state would be changed from a combination

to a pure state, and would be changed by the very act of

it

observation; all of which we could express in mathematical

sign language.
Suppose we were of a visual turn of mind. Then we would
try to imagine what was going on in pictorial terms. would We
try to imagine some intermediate mechanism or process. If we
were really clever we might even imagine the coin could be
That would be a satisfactory picture, and certainly
twirling.
would not contradict any of the known effects which the
principle of perversity permitted our observing. The only
trouble would be that we had no way of observing the actual

twirling But we could bolster our confidence with a

itself.

little quantum theory. For we could note that energy was

imparted to the coin to make it twirl. Energy is allied to
frequency, and the frequency could well be the rate at which
the coin was turning, the greater the energy the higher being
the rate of turning.
With this picture in mind we would suddenly have a flash
of inspiration. did we never find actual evidence of the
Why
twirling? Obviously, because the only mode of observation
permitted us was to let the coin come to rest on the table. The
act of observation thus gave the coin an undetermined jolt
The motion of the coin was perfectly free; we ourselves were
responsible for making it appear to have only two possible
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 163

positions. It was letting the coin fall on the table that forced
to be either heads or tails and
it
nothing in between. If we
had continue falling it would have continued twirling
let it

though, of course, the principle of perversity would then not

let us observe it at all.

Soon, however, we would come to realize that all this was

only a mental picture designed to make us feel comfortable.
It left out the one thing above all others which must be
retained. It left out the very principle of perversity itself. The
twirling was not observable. For all we know, it did not really
take place. If did take place, the principle of perversity
it

effectively prevented our seeing it. If the principle of perversity

was anything more than a coincidence, and its malign per
sistence would certainly indicate it was something far more
potent and fundamental, then we must be wary of introducing
the twirling motion it persisted in hiding from us, for perhaps
there was no such motion after all.
Though we could explain
why the jolt of observation would always mask the twirling,
that did not mean
the twirling actually existed. To argue like
that would be like asserting there was maybe a lovely design
in red and green on the coin, but unfortunately it so happened
we were red-green color blind. Until some experimental way
around the principle of perversity was discovered, the twirling
would not be a reliable object of scientific thought We
must
play safe or we might be misled. We already have a perfectly
adequate theory which covers all the observed facts. Why
should we wish to go further? We must return to the austere
point of view, and not attempt to picture a twirling motion
or any other such intermediate mechanism. must go We
back to our idea of the coin being in two states of position
164 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
at once, part heads and part tails, and of the state being
changed by the observation.
Naturally we part with our mental picture of a twirling
coin with considerable reluctance and regret. It was such fun
while it lasted.
Perhaps we retain a lingering hope that it is

not gone forever. Who knows but that some great scientific
advance may some day make the twirling visible for all to
see? But
until that hypothetical day, all this is whimsey per
haps even dangerous whimsey. For the joke is that we really
do not know whether the coin was twirling at all. If perversity
prevented our observing it, why could it not also prevent the
twirling itself? Our sign-language theory would still apply,
twirling or no twirling, for it was based only on known results.
Our picture of a twirling coin, however, is
obviously a pure
conjecture.
Do we stillwish to cling to the twirling? Do we think
there is no other possible explanation that would make sense?
Does it seem that we have been splitting philosophical hairs
to pretend the twirling might be illusory? Then let us think
of a commonplace occurrence with which we can hardly
fail to be familiar.When we get a busy signal from a pay
and our is returned, do we
telephone nickel really think there
was a twirling all the time the coin was in the box? could We
make quite an ingenious theory connecting the twirling with
the ringing sound we heard through the receiver. It would
account nicely for the fact that the ringing ceased when the
coin reappeared. It would be wrong, nevertheless. Why, for
all we know, it was not even our own nickel that was returned.

It would not be hard

to imagine within the phone a reservoir
of nickels from which one was dropped when the receiver
was replaced. We have to be careful about jumping to con-
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 165
elusions. Though theymay seem perfectly obvious they may
Bone the less be wrong. The twirling was pure conjecture
after all.

We must look on Heisenberg's

principle of indeterminacy
in this light. that that principle makes the particle seem
For all

a genuine old-fashioned particle by placing the full blame for

its idiosyncrasies upon the unavoidable clumsiness of the

experimenter, it does not validate the old idea of a particle.

On the contrary, the fact that the clumsiness is unavoidable
and indeterminate points up the ubiquity and power of that
spirit of perversity which dogs our attempts to observe the full
attributes of the particle, old-fashioned particle it really be,
if

and casts grave doubt on its old-fashioned pretensions. Much

mental confusion can arise from not heeding this.
The time has now come to leave our comfortable stepping
stone. The final straw must now be gently added. When we
say we have an electron in a combination state, going both
north and east simultaneously, we would like this to be a simple
confession of ignorance. We would like it to mean that the
electron is really going due north, or else due east, but all we
know for certain is that there is such and such a probability
of doing the former and such and such a probability of its
its

doing the latter. We

know these probabilities from having
performed the identical experiment many times before. But
no matter how carefully we work, the experiments do not yield
an unequivocal answer; only the two probabilities. A single
electron, we would performing only one of these
like to say, is

two possible motions, there being, however, no way of telling

which one without performing another, different experiment
and thus changing the state.

Alas, it will not do. We have to spoil it all. We cannot

l66 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
maintain our convenient fiction against the pressure of ex
perimental facts, for there is still the wave-particle battle to
be resolved.
Let us look once more at the basic armaments of the wave
and particle. Do we wish to prove the electron a particle? All
right. We let it strike a fluorescent screen and observe its

tiny scintillation; or we watch its slender track in a cloud

chamber; or we let it fall on a photographic plate and note the

small spot that appears on development. Behold, we have a

particle.
Do we wish to prove the electron a wave? All right We
set up a screen with two pinholes in it close together, we

let electrons stream through them from a single source, and

we point with pride, not unmixed with smug self-satisfaction,

to the characteristic interference pattern on the photographic

platebeyond the screen. Behold, we have a wave.

To add to the interest, let us combine two demonstrations
so that at the same time we prove the electron a wave we also
prove it a particle. That will give us something really worth
thinking about. All we need to do is send electrons from a
single source through two pinholes in a screen- and allow
them to fall on a on the other side. Then
scintillation screen

the scintillations show we have particles while the interference

patterns show we have waves; a quite fantastic situation.
But something begins to excite our suspicions. The waves
seem to come from crowds of electrons rather than from
individual ones. Don't let the crowds of electrons confuse us.
Let us watch carefully what one single electron does. If it

ultimately produces a scintillation it is

surely a particle. How
can it then also be a wave? Because it
produced an inter
ference pattern? What interference pattern? One solitary
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT l6j
scintillation is not an interference pattern. The interference

pattern is
produced by a vast crowd of scintillations. It is an
effect pertaining to the multitude. The individual scintillations

pile up in some places and not in others, that is all When

artillery lays down a barrage pattern, the pattern is not dis
cernible in a single shell burst, but
only in a group of them.
We could easily lay down a barrage that would give the

appearance of an interference pattern; yet it would not mean

the shell was a wave. When breezes blow over a field of wheat
we have seen the speeding waves course over its surface.
all

Yet the wheat is not a wave. At last we have solved the prob
lem of wave and particle. The electron is after all a particle,
and the photon. It looks like a wave only
so is when observed
in enormous crowds.
But this will not do. We are only misleading ourselves. We
are still
trying to escape the inexorable conclusion. Already
we are heading in the wrong direction, and we are in
danger
of making the fatal blunder of underestimating the subtlety
of our problem. It is not of so naive a sort as this, else it would
have been solved long before. True, the interference pattern
is manifest when we have a crowd of electrons. But there

must be some cause of the interference pattern even so. And

this cause must lie within each single electron. The
pattern
is not
just a crowd effect. The crowd is merely what makes it

easy to see.Somehow the pattern is latent in each individual

electron. If we fire our artillery shells one after the other,
instead of many at a time, we can still produce the same

pattern of shell craters as before. That is because a human

agency directs the firing. If we send our electrons out less and
less frequently and take note of their individual scintillations,
falling one at a time, we also find them still conforming to
 l68 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the proper interference pattern, but this is much harder
to understand than the artillery pattern, for there is no
obvious external agency directing the electron gunfire accord

ing to a preconceived pattern. Though each individual scin

tillation seems to fall at random, there is a subtle architecture
in this randomness, for the scintillations
gradually build up to
the characteristic pattern of interference.
How does the electron do it? Which hole in the screen did
any particular electron go through? The interference pattern
is a two-hole
pattern, quite different from a one-hole pattern.
There is no possible escape. The grim conclusion is unavoid
able. Whether we like it or not, if a single electron somehow
contains within itself the two-hole interference pattern, that
single electron must have passed through both holes; and
after passing through both holes it must have interfered with
itself/ That is the
revolutionary and well-nigh intolerable con
clusion which experiment forces
upon us.
Is it too much to swallow? Is it incredible? Is it against
common sense? Perhaps. Yet it is based on the strongest
scientific evidence.

Wait! We will fool it. We will make it confess its own

falsity. We will place a recording device at each hole in the
screen. Then if we send out one single electron from our
source and passes through the screen we must surely detect
it

it
going through one or the other hole and not through both,
for we know we never observe a fraction of an electron. That

way we prove definitely it went through only one of the

will

holes, andeven name which one it went

will
through. are We
not ones to be so easily fooled with
impossible theories. We
are not children, believing in tales. of all such
fairy Enough
nonsense.
Yes, it is true that we can discover in this way which hole
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 169
the electron went through, and can even show that it went
through one hole only and not both. But that would be an
entirely different experiment. It would not contradict what we
said above, for we would no longer be passing electrons through
a screen with two simple holes in it The spirit of perversity is
always on the job. It never sleeps. Let us watch it at its
fascinating work here. Suppose we find that the electron went
through the lower hole. Since the recording instrument at that
hole was affected by the electron, the electron must have been
affectedby the instrument, the precise effect on the electron
being indeterminate. What hope is there of obtaining an inter
ference pattern with a crowd of electrons if each electron is
affected differently and arbitrarily as
goes through the screen?
it

If we cannot now produce a two-hole interference pattern,

what need is there now to claim that each electron went

through both holes? The whole situation is vastly different
from before. In closing one door of our trap we have had to
open another. The very device that shows that no single elec
tron went through both holes at once itself destroys the two-
hole interference pattern, thereby letting the electron escape
the trap.
Or look from another point of view. When both
at this
holes are unencumbered, any electrons which traverse the
screen must be in a combination state of motion, going through
both holes at once. The two motions interfere with each other
to produce the interference patterns. What happens when we
introduce our recording devices? Any electron which now
traverses the screen is fixed in a pure state of motion, passing
either through one hole or else through the other. We may no
longer expect a two-hole interference pattern, for we have
made an additional observation and thus altered the state of
motion so that it no longer pertains to two holes.
 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
and discouraging? Does the idea of an
Is all this difficult

electron in several places at once or with several states of

motion at once give us pause? Does it revolt our sensibilities?
We have been too particular. We
have leaned too heavily on
the particle image. Let us not imagine that scientists
accepted
these new ideas with cries of joy. They
fought them and
resisted them as much as they could, inventing all sorts of
traps and alternative hypotheses in vain
attempts to escape
them. But the glaring paradoxes were there as early as
1905
in the case of light, and even earlier, and no one had the

courage or wit to resolve them until the advent of the new

quantum mechanics. The new ideas are so difficult to
accept
we still instinctively strive to
because picture them in terms of
the old-fashioned particle, despite Heisenberg's
indeterminacy
principle. We
still shrink from
visualizing an electron as some
thing which having motion may have no position, and having
position may have no such thing as motion or rest. still We
try to blame the clumsiness of the innocent experimenter for
this fundamental characteristic of the electron, or the
photon.
We have not abandoned our former in all
steppingstone
this, but rather have made it a base for further advance. We
may look on a combination state of motion as a confes
still

sion of our ignorance as to the

precise outcome of an observa
and may still regard it as listing various
probabilities. The
tion,
interference patterns, embodiments of these
probabilities, are
still discernible
only as crowd effects. It is the mental
picture
that has changed. We
have learned at last the sheer
impos
sibility of visualizing atomic processes except in terms of the
most grotesque images. We
have seen what fantastic
shapes
our mental images must take if
they would spy on that which
the principle of
indeterminacy veils.
 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT
It was Bohr who realized these things most surely and
profoundly.
He it was who finally resolved the wave-particle
conflict, and first delineated with fundamental clarity an out
line of the puzzling new era in science. He it was who saw that
the wave and particle were but two aspects of the same thing.

They were not enemies. Their whole battle had been a sham.
Their persistent warfare had been one long fraud, a superb
example of the power of classical propaganda. If the wave
collared a piece of territory, the particle never really disputed

it, but opened up a new region of

its own. If the wave

explained interference, the particle took no serious counterac

tion but consoled itself with staking a claim to the photo
never contested by the wave. It had been
electric effect, a claim

the most polite type of pseudo warfare imaginable, but done

up with such bellicose classical trumpetings as to give the false

impression of terrible battle. What happened, for example,
when we placed indicating devices at the holes in the screen?
Did they force the wave and particle into genuine battle? Not
at all The particle politely found a way for the wave to

escape the trap without embarrassment.

When scientists at last suspected the true nature of these
antics they devised sterner, more devilish tricks to make the
wave and particle join battle. But Bohr and others were able to

prove in detail that the gentle spirit of perversity,

Heisenberg's
principle of indeterminacy, was ever alert to prevent even the
of strife. If we try to regard the wave and particle
beginning
as two distinct entities, we must think of them not as implaca
ble feudists but as professional wrestlers putting on a show.
But they are really not distinct. They are alternative, partial
images of the selfsame thing.
This complementary aspect of particle and wave is a central
172 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
feature of the new physics. It is inescapable; part of the very
fabric of quantum mechanics. The
sign-language rules require
it, and Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle offers a pictorial

justification. Some pages back we pretended that the Schro-

dinger wave packets were no more than a superficial analogy

of the mixed states of Dirac. It was Bohr, primarily, who
revealed that they are far more than an analogy. They are, in

fact, an exact counterpart, but expressed in the language of

waves rather than in that of particles. From them one may
readily extract the indeterminacy relation of momentum and
position, or of energy and time. Indeed, we have already indi
cated as much, for, having discussed the indeterminacy of
momentum and position from the particle aspect, did we not
play fair by inferring the indeterminacy of energy and time
from the point of view of the wave? Just as the theories of
Schrodinger and Heisenberg merge into the single theory of
Dirac, so do the wave and particle merge into a single self-
consistent whole; an entity for which Eddington aptly proposed
the name "wavicle."

There was a little girl and she had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good, she was very very good
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Like the little girl with the curl, the electron sometimes
shows one side of its nature and sometimes the other. It is still

an electron for all that, and a perfectly normal and healthy one.
It would not be an electron did it not
display a well-rounded
personality, being sometimes like a wave and sometimes like
a particle. If red light shines on the pages of this book, the

paper appears bright red; but if we change over to blue light,

 THE STRANGE DENOUEMENT 173

the bright red changes to blue. There Is no contradiction here.

The early redness of the paper does not contradict Its later
blueness, any more than the varied colors of the sunset con

tradict the brilliance of high noon. It is our manner of observa

tion that has changed, And
the very change from red light to
blue prevents our continuing to observe the paper as red.
Whether we find the electron in Its wave or its particle aspect

depends similarly, and without contradiction, on the way we

observe It.
Just as we can make with the curl very
the little girl

or make her
very good by letting her show off and scintillate,
bad and horrid by interference, a change so great we would
hardly recognize her as the same child, so too can
we put the
electron into a particle mood by letting It scintillate or into a

wave mood by seeking interference. Through It all, whether

wave or particle, it remains an electron. like the photon, it
remains a wavicle.
is the electron here or is It there?"
"Daddy,
"Yes/'

"Daddy, Is it a wave or a particle?"

"Yes."
How honest we were with our little questioner, after all!

To see if she has learned the lesson we may ask her a question
in return:

"Is a mermaid a woman or a fish?"

She should have no difficulty deciding on the appropriate
answer.
 CHAPTER XIV

THE NEW LANDSCAPE OF SCIENCE

LET us now gather the loose threads of our thoughts and see
what pattern they form when knit together.
We seem to glimpse an eerie shadow world lying beneath
our world of space and time; a weird and cryptic world which
somehow rules us. Its laws seem mathematically precise, and
events appear to unfold with strict causality.
its

To pry into the secrets of this world we make experiments.

But experiments are a clumsy instrument, afflicted with a fatal
indeterminacy which destroys causality. And because our
*

mental images are formed thus clumsily, we may not hope to

fashion mental pictures in space and time of what
transpires
within this deeper world. Abstract mathematics alone
may try
to paint its likeness.

With indeterminacy corrupting experiment and dissolving

causality, all seems lost We
must wonder how there can be a
rational science. We must wonder how there can be any
thing at all but chaos. But though the detailed workings of the
indeterminacy lie hidden from us, we find therein an astound
ing uniformity. Despite the inescapable indeterminacy of
experiment, we find a definite, authentic residue of exactitude
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 175
and determinacy. Compared with the detailed determinacy
claimed by classical science, it is a meager residue indeed. But
it is precious exactitude none the less, on which to build a
science of natural law.
The very nature of the exactitude seems a paradox, for it is
an exactitude of probabilities; an exactitude, indeed, of wave-
like, interfering probabilities. But potent
probabilities are

things only they are applied to large numbers. Let us see

if

what strong reliance may be placed upon them.

When we toss a coin, the result may not be predicted, for
it is a matter of chance. Yet it is not entirely undetermined.
We know it must be one of only two possibilities. And, more
important even than that, if we toss ten thousand coins we
know we may safely predict that about half will come down
heads. Of course we might be wrong once in a very long
while. Of course we are taking a small risk in making such a

prediction. But let us face the issue squarely, for we really

place far more confidence in the certainty of probabilities than
we sometimes like to admit to ourselves when thinking of them
abstractly. If someone offered to pay two dollars every time a
coin turned up heads provided we paid one dollar for every
tails, would we really hesitate to accept his offer? If we did
hesitate, it would not be because we mistrusted the probabili
ties. On the contrary, it would be because we trusted them so
well we smelled fraud in an offer too attractive to be honest.
Roulette casinos rely on probabilities for their gambling prof
its, trusting to chance that, in the long run, zero or double

zero willcome up as frequently as any other number and thus

guarantee them a steady percentage of the total transactions.
Now and again the luck runs against them and they go broke
for the evening. But that is because chance is still capricious
176 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
when only a few hundred spins are made. Insurance companies
also rely on probabilities, but deal with far larger numbers. One

does not hear of their ever going broke. They make a hand
some living out of chance, for when precise probabilities can
be found, chance, in the long run, becomes practical certainty.
Even classical science built an elaborate and brilliantly suc
cessful theory of gases upon the seeming quicksands of prob
ability.
In the new world of the atom we find both precise proba
and enormous numbers, probabilities that follow exact
bilities

mathematical laws, and vast, incredible numbers compared

with which the multitude of persons carrying insurance is as
nothing. Scientists have determined the weight of a single
electron. Would a million much as a feather,
electrons weigh as
do you think? A million is not large enough. Nor even a billion.
Well, surely a million billion then. No. Not even a billion
billion electrons would outweigh the feather. Nor yet a million
billion billion. Not till we have a billion billion billion can we

talk of their weight in such everyday terms. Quantum

mechanics having discovered precise and wonderful laws gov
erning the probabilities, it is with numbers such as these that
science overcomes its handicap of basic indeterminacy. It is

by this that science boldly predicts. Though now hum

means
bly confessing itself powerless to foretell the exact behavior
of individual electrons, or photons, or other fundamental

entities, ityet can tell with enormous confidence how such

great multitudes of them must behave precisely.
But for all this mass precision, we are only human if, on
firsthearing of the breakdown of determinacy in fundamental
science, we look back longingly to the good old classical days,
when waves were waves and particles particles, when the work-
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 177

ings of nature could be readily visualized, and the future was

predictable in every individual detail, at least in theory. But
the good old days were not such happy days as nostalgic, rose-
tinted retrospect would make them seem. Too many contradic
tions flourished unresolved. Too many well-attested facts played
havoc with their pretensions. Those were but days of scientific
childhood. There is no going back to them as they were.
Nor may we stop with the world we have just described, if
we are to round outour story faithfully. To stifle nostalgia, we

pictured world of causal law lying beneath our world of space

a
and time. While important scientists seem to feel that such
a world should exist, many others, pointing out that it is not
demonstrable, regard it therefore as a bit of
homely mysticism
added more for the sake of comfort than of cold logic.
It is decide where science ends and mysticism
difficult to

begins. As soon as we begin to make even the most elementary

theories we are open to the charge of indulging in metaphysics.
Yet theories, however provisional, are the very lifeblood of
scientific progress. We simply cannot escape metaphysics,
though we can perhaps overindulge, as well as have too little.
Nor is it
good metaphysics from
feasible always to distinguish

bad, for the "bad" may lead to progress where the "good"
would tend to stifle it. When Columbus made his historic
voyage he believed he was on his westward way to Japan. Even
when he reached land he thought it was part of Asia; nor did
he live to learn otherwise. Would Columbus have embarked
upon his hazardous journey had he known what was the true
westward distance of Japan? Quantum mechanics itself came
partly from the queer hunches of such men as Maxwell and
Bohr and de Broglie. In talking of the meaning of quantum
mechanics, physicists indulge in more or less mysticism accord-
178 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ing to their individual tastes. Just as different artists instinc
tively paint different likenesses of the same model, so do
scientists allow their different personalities to color their inter

pretations of quantum mechanics. Our story would not be

complete did we not tell of the austere conception of quantum
mechanics hinted at above, and also in our parable of the coin
and the principle of perversity, for it is a view held by many
physicists.
These physicists are satisfied with the sign-language rules,
the extraordinary precision of the probabilities, and the strange,
wavelike laws which they obey. They realize the impossibility
of following the detailed workings of an indeterminacy through
which such bountiful precision and law so unaccountably seep.
They recall such incidents as the vain attempts to build models
of the ether, and their own former naive beliefs regarding
momentum and position, now so rudely shattered. And, recall
ing them, they are properly cautious. They point to such
things as the sign-language rules, or the probabilities and the
exquisite mathematical laws in multidimensional fictional space
which govern them and which have so eminently proved them
selves in the acid test of experiment And they say that these
are all we may hope and reasonably expect to know; that

science, which deals with experiments, should not probe too

deeply beneath those experiments for such things as cannot be

demonstrated even in theory.
The great mathematician John von Neumann, who accom
plished the Herculean labor of cleaning up the mathematical
foundations of the quantum theory, has even proved mathe

matically that the quantum theory is a complete system in

needing no secret aid from a deeper, hidden world, and
itself,

offering no evidence whatsoever that such a world exists. Let

 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 179
us then be content to accept the world as it presents itself
to us through our experiments, however strange it may seem.
This and this alone is the image of the world of science. After

castigating the classical theorists for their unwarranted assump

however seemingly innocent, would it not be foolish and
tions,

foolhardy to invent that hidden world of exact causality of

which we once thought so fondly, a world which by its very
nature must lie
beyond the reach of our experiments? Or,
indeed, to invent anything else which cannot be demonstrated,
such as the detailed occurrences under the Heisenberg micro

scope and all other pieces of comforting imagery wherein we

picture a wavicle as an old-fashioned particle preliminary to
proving it not one?
All that talk of exactitude somehow seeping through the
indeterminacy was only so much talk. We must cleanse our
minds of previous pictorial notions and start afresh, taking the
laws ofquantum mechanics themselves as the basis and the
complete outline of modern physics, the full delineation of
the quantum world beyond which there is
nothing that may
properly belong to physical science. As for the idea of strict

causality, not only does science, after all these years,

suddenly
find it an unnecessary concept, it even demonstrates that
according to the quantum theory strict causality is funda
mentally and intrinsically undemonstrable. Therefore, strict
causality is no longer a legitimate scientific concept, and must
be cast out from the official domain of present-day As
science.
Dirac has written, "The only object of theoretical physics is to
calculate results that can be compared with experiment, and it
is
quite unnecessary that any satisfying description of the
7
whole course of the phenomena should be given/ The italics
here are his. One cannot escape the feeling that it might have
l8o THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
been more appropriate to italicize the second part of the state
ment rather than the first!

Here, then, is a more restricted pattern which, paradoxically,

is at once a more cautious and a bolder view of the world of
quantum physics; cautious in not venturing beyond what is

well established, and bold in accepting and being well content

with the result Because it does not indulge too freely in specu
lation it is a proper view of present-day quantum physics, and
it seems to be the sort of view held by the greatest number.
Yet, as we shades of opinion, and it is
said, there are many
sometimes difficult to decide what are the precise views of
particular individuals.
Some men feel that all this is a transitional stage through
which science will ultimately pass to better things and they
hope soon. Others, accepting it with a certain discomfort,
have tried to temper its awkwardness by such devices as the
introduction of new types of logic. Some have suggested that
the observer creates the result of his observation by the act
of observation, somewhat as in the parable of the tossed coin.

Many nonscientists, but few scientists, have seen in the new

ideas the embodiment of free will in the inanimate world, and
have rejoiced. Some, more cautious, have seen merely a revived
possibility of free will in ourselves now that our physical proc
esses are freed from the shackles of strict causality. One could
continue endlessly the list of these speculations, all testifying
to the devastating potency of Planck's quantum of action h, a

quantity so incredibly minute as to seem utterly inconse

quential to the uninitiated.
That some prefer to swallow their quantum mechanics plain
while others gag unless it be strongly seasoned with imagery
and metaphysics is a matter of individual taste behind which
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE l8l

lie certain fundamental facts which may not be disputed; hard,

uncompromising, and at present inescapable facts of experi

ment and bitter experience, agreed upon by all and directly

opposed to the classical way of thinking:
There is
simply no satisfactory way at all of picturing the
fundamental atomic processes of nature in terms of space and
time and causality.
The result
of an experiment on an individual atomic particle

generally cannot be predicted. Only a list of various possible

results may be known beforehand.

Nevertheless, the statistical result of performing the same

individual experiment over and over again an enormous num
ber of times may be predicted with virtual certainty.
For example, though we can show there is absolutely no con
tradiction involved, we cannot visualize how an electron which
is
enough of a wave to pass through two holes in a screen and
interfere with itself can suddenly become enough of a particle
to produce a single scintillation. Neither can we predict where
though we can say it may do so only in certain
it will scintillate,

regions but not in others. Nevertheless when, instead of a

single electron, we send through a rich and abundant stream we

can predict with detailed precision the intricate interference

pattern that will build up, even to the relative brightness of its
various parts.
Our inability to predict the individual result, an inability
which, despite the evidence, the classical view was unable to
tolerate, is not only a fundamental but actually a plausible
characteristic of quantum mechanics. So
long as quantum
mechanics is
accepted as wholly valid, so long must we accept
this inability as intrinsically unavoidable. Should a way ever
be found to overcome this inability, that event would mark the
182 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
end of the reign of quantum mechanics as a fundamental
pattern of nature. A new, and deeper, theory would have to
be found to replace it, and quantum mechanics would have to
be retired, to become a theory emeritus with the revered, if
7

faintly irreverent title "classical/

Now that we are accustomed, a little, to the bizarre new
ideas we may at last look briefly into the quantum mechanical
significance of something which at first sight seems trivial and
inconsequential, namely, that electrons are so similar we can
not tell one from another. This is true also of other atomic
particles, but for simplicity let us talk about electrons, with the
understanding that the discussion is not thereby confined to
them alone.

Imagine, then, an electron on this page and another on the

opposite page. Take a good look at them. You cannot tell
them apart. Now blink your eyes and take another look at
them. They are still there, one on this page and one on that.
But how do you know they did not change places just at the
moment your eyes were closed? You think it most unlikely?
Does it not always rain on just those days when you go out
and leave the windows open? Does it not always happen that
your shoelace breaks on just those days when you are in a
special hurry? Remember these electrons are identical twins
and apt to be mischievous. Surely you know better than to

argue that the electron interchange was unlikely. You cer

tainly could not prove it one way or another.

Perhaps you are still unconvinced. Let us put it a little

differently, then. Suppose the electrons collided and bounced

off one another. Then
you certainly could not tell which one
was which after the collision.
You still think so? You think you could keep your eyes
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 183

glued on them so they could not fool you? But, my dear sir,
that is classical. That is old-fashioned. We
cannot keep a
continual watch in thequantum world. The best we can do is
keep up bombardment
a of photons. And with each impact

the electrons jump we know not how. For all we know they
could be changing places all the time. At the moment of

impact especially the danger of deception is surely enormous.

Let us then agree that we can never be sure of the identity of
each electron.
Now suppose we wish to write down quantum equations for
the two electrons. In the present state of our theories, we are

obliged to deal with them first as individuals, saying that cer

tain mathematical co-ordinates belong tc the first and certain
others to the second. This is dishonest though. It goes beyond

permissible information, for itallows each electron to preserve

its identity, whereas electrons should belong to the nameless
masses. Somehow we must remedy our initial error. Somehow
we must repress the electrons and remove from them their

unwarranted individuality. This reduces to a simple question

of mathematical symmetries. We
must so remold our equations
that interchanging the electrons has no physically detectable
effect on the answers they yield.

Imposing this nonindividuality is a grave mathematical re

striction, strongly influencing the behavior of the electrons. Of

the possible ways of imposing it, two math
are specially simple

ematically, and it happens that just these two are physically of

interest. One of them implies a behavior which is actually

observed in the case of photons, and a particles, and other

atomic particles. The other method of imposing nonindi
viduality turns out to mean that the particles will shun one
184 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
another; in fact, it gives precisely the mysterious exclusion
principle of Pauli.
This is indeed a remarkable result, and an outstanding

triumph for quantum mechanics. It takes on added significance

when we learn that all those atomic particles which do not

obey the Pauli principle are found to behave like the photons
and a particles. It is about as far as anyone has gone toward
an understanding of the deeper significance of the exclusion
principle. Yet it remains a confession of failure, for instead
of having nonindividuality from the start we begin with indi

viduality and then deny it. The Pauli principle lies far deeper
than this. It lies at the very heart of inscrutable Nature. Some
day, perhaps, we shallhave a more profound theory in which
the exclusion principle will find its
rightful place. Meanwhile
we must be content with our present veiled insight.
The mathematical removal of individuality warps our equa
tions and causes extraordinary which cannot be properly
effects

explained in pictorial terms. It may be interpreted as bringing

into being strange forces called exchange forces, but these

though already appearing in other connections in

forces,

quantum mechanics, have no counterpart at all in classical

physics.
We might have suspected some such forces were involved.
It would have been incredibly naive to have believed that so

stringent an ordinance against overcrowding as the exclusion

principle could be imposed without some measure of force,
however well disguised.
so sure that these
Is it
exchange forces cannot be properly
explained in pictorial terms? After all, with force is associated
energy. And with energy is associated frequency according to
Planck's basic quantum law. With
frequency we asso may
ciate some sort of oscillation.
Perhaps, then, if we think not
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 185
of the exchange forces themselves but of the oscillations asso
ciated with them we may be able to picture the mechanism

through which these forces exist. This is a promising idea. But

if it is clarity we seek we be greatly disappointed in it.
shall
It is true there is an oscillation involved here, but what
a fantastic oscillation it is:a rhythmic interchange of the elec
trons' identities. The electrons do not physically change places

by leaping the intervening space. That would be too simple.

Rather, there is a smooth ebb and flow of individuality between
them. For example, if we start with electron A here and elec
tron B onthe opposite page, then later on we would here have
some such mixture as sixty per cent A
and forty per cent B 7
with forty per cent A and sixty per cent B over there. Later still
it would be all B here and all A there, the electrons then

having definitely exchanged identities. The flow would now

reverse, and the strange oscillation continue indefinitely. It is

with such, a pulsation of identity that the exchange forces of

the exclusion principle are associated. There is another type
of exchange which can affect even a single electron, the elec
tron being analogously pictured as oscillating in this curious,
disembodied way between two different positions.
Perhaps it is easier to accept such curious pulsations if we
think of the electrons more as waves than as particles, for then
we can imagine the electron waves becoming tangled up with
each other. Mathematically this can be readily perceived, but
it does not lend itself well to visualization. If we stay with the

particle aspect of the electrons we find ithard to imagine what

a 60 per cent-40 per cent mixture of A and B would look like
if we observed it. We
cannot observe it, though. The act of
observation would so jolt the electrons that we would find
either pure A
or else pure B, but never a combination, the

percentages being just probabilities of finding either one. It

l86 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Is
really our parable of the tossed coin all over again. In mid
air the coin fluctuates rhythmically from pure heads to pure
tails through all intermediate mixtures. When it lands on the
table, which is to say when we observe it, there is a jolt

which yields only heads or tails.

Though we can at least meet

objections, exchange remains
an elusive and difficult concept. It is still a strange and awe-in

spiring thought that you and I are thus rhythmically exchang

ing particles with one another, and with the earth and the
beasts of the earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars,
to the uttermost galaxy.
A
striking instance of the power of exchange is seen in
chemical valence, for it is essentially by means of these mys
terious forces that atoms cling together, their outer electrons
busily shuttling identity and position
back and forth to weave
a bond that knits the atoms into molecules.
Such are the fascinating concepts that emerged from the
quantum mechanical revolution. The days of tumult shook
science to Its deepest foundations. They brought a new charter

to science, and perhaps even cast a new light on the significance

of the scientific method itself. The physics that survived the
revolution was vastly changed, and strangely so, its whole out
look drastically altered. Where once it confidently sought a
clear-cut mechanical model of nature for all to behold, it now
contented with abstract, esoteric forms which may not
itself

be clearly focused by the unmathematical eye of the imagina

tion. Is it as strongly confident as once it seemed to be in

younger days, or has internal upheaval undermined its health

and robbed it of its powers? Has quantum mechanics been an
advance or a retreat?
If it has been a retreat in any sense at all, it has been a
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 187

strategic retreat
from the suffocating determinism of classical

physics,
which channeled and all but surrounded the advancing
forces of science. Whether or not science, later in its
quest,
a deep causality, the determinism of
may once more encounter
the nineteenth century, for all the great discoveries it sired, was

rapidly becoming an impediment to progress. When Planck

discovered the infinitesimal existence of the quantum, it
first

seemed there could be no proper place for it anywhere in the

whole broad domain of physicalscience. Yet in a brief quarter
it thrust itself into every
century, so powerful did it prove,
nook and cranny, its influence growing to such undreamed-of
of science was utterly trans
proportions that the whole aspect
formed. With explosive violence it finally thrust through the
the pent-up forces
restraining walls of determinism, releasing
of scientific progress to pour into the untouched fertile plains
of discovery while still
beyond, there to reap an untold harvest
edifices it had created
retaining the use of those splendid
within the classical domain. The older theories were made

more secure than ever, their triumphs unimpaired and their

failures mitigated, for now their validity was established

wherever the influence of the quantum might momentarily be

neglected. Their failures were
no longer disquieting perplexi
ties which threatened to undermine the whole structure and
toppling down. With proper diagnosis
it the classical
bring
structures could be saved for special purposes, and their very
weaknesses turned to good account as strong corroborations of
the newer ideas; ideas which transcended the old without

destroying their limited effectiveness.

True, the newer theory baffled the untutored imagination,
and was abstract as no physical theory had ever
formidably
been before. But this was a small price to pay for its extraor-
l88 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
dinary accomplishments. Newton's theory too had once
seemed almost incredible, as also had that of Maxwell, and

strange though quantum mechanics might appear, it was

firmly founded on fundamental experiment.

Here at long last
was theory which
a could embrace that primitive, salient fact
of our material universe, that simple, everyday fact on which
the Maxwellian theory so spectacularly foundered, the endur

ing stability of the different elements and of their physical and

chemical properties. Nor was the new theory too rigid in this
regard, but could equally well embrace
the fact of radioactive
transformation. Here at last was a theory which could yield the

precise details of the enormously intricate data

of spectroscopy.
The photoelectric effect and a host of kindred phenomena suc
cumbed to the new ideas, as too did the wavelike interference
effects which formerly seemed to contradict them. With the

aid of relativity, the spin of the electron was incorporated with

remarkable felicity and success. Paulfs exclusion principle
took on a broader significance, and through it the science of

chemistry acquired a new theoretical basis amounting almost

to a new science, theoretical chemistry, capable of solving

problems hitherto beyond the reach of the theorist The theory

magnetism was brilliantly transformed, and stagger
of metallic

ing difficulties in the theory of the flow of electricity through

metals were removed as if by magic thanks to quantum
mechanics, and especially to Paulfs exclusion principle. The
atomic nucleus was to yield up invaluable secrets to the new
quantum physics, as will be told; secrets which could not be
revealed atall to the classical theory, since that theory was too

primitive to comprehend them; secrets so abstruse they may

not even be uttered except in quantum terms. Our understand
ing of the nature of the tremendous forces residing in the
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 109
atomic nucleus, incomplete though it be, would be meager
indeed without the quantum theory to guide our search and
encourage our comprehension in these most intriguing and
mysterious regions of the universe. This is no more than a
glimpse of the unparalleled achievements of quantum me
chanics. The wealth of accomplishment and corroborative
evidence is
simply staggering.
"Daddy, do scientists really know what they are talking
about?"
To an inquiring child one is sometimes driven to regret
still

table extremes. Was our affirmative answer honest in this

particular instance?
Certainly it was honest enough in its context, immediately
following the two other questions. But what of this same ques
tion now, standing alone? Do scientists really know what
they are talking about?
If we allowed the poets and philosophers and priests to
decide, they would assuredly decide, on lofty grounds, against
the physicists quite irrespective of quantum mechanics. But
on sufficiently lofty grounds the poets, philosophers, and priests
themselves may scarcely claim they know whereof they talk,
and in some instances, far from lofty, science has caught both
them and itself in outright error.
True, the universe more than a collection
is of objective

experimental data; more than the complexus of theories,

abstractions, and assumptions devised to hold the data

special
together; more, indeed, than any construct modeled on this
cold objectivity. For there is a deeper, more subjective world,
a world of sensation and emotion, of aesthetic, moral, and

religious values as yet beyond the grasp of objective science.

And towering majestically over all, inscrutable and inescapable,
190 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
is the awful mystery of Existence itself, to confound the mind

with an eternal enigma.

But let us descend from these to more mundane levels, for
then the quantum physicist may make a truly impressive
case; a case, moreover, backed by innumerable interlocking

experiments forming a proof of stupendous cogency. Where

else could one find a proof so overwhelming? How could one
doubt the validity of so victorious a system? Men are hanged on
evidence which, by comparison, must seem small and incon

sequential beyond measure. Surely, then, the quantum physi

cists know whatthey are talking about. Surely their present
theories are proper theories of the workings of the universe.

Surely physical nature cannot be markedly different from what

has at last so painfully been revealed.
And yet, if this is our belief, surely our whole story has been
told in vain. Here, for instance, is a confident utterance of the

year 1889:
"The wave theory of light is from the point of view of human
beings a certainty."
It was no irresponsible visionary who made this bold asser
tion, no fifth-rate incompetent whose views might be lightly
laughed away. It was the very man whose classic experiments,
more than those of any other, established the electrical charac
ter of the waves of light; none other than the
great Heinrich
Hertz himself, whose own seemingly incidental observation
contained the seed from which there later was to spring the
revitalized particle theory.

Did not the classical physicists

point to overwhelming evi
dence in support of their theories, theories which now seem to
us so incomplete and superficial? Did they not generally believe
that physics was near its end, its main problems solved and its
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 101

basis fully revealed, with

sweeping up and polish
only a little
ing left tooccupy succeeding generations? And did they not
believe these things even while
they were aware of such
unsolved puzzles as the violet
catastrophe, and the photo
electric effect, and
radioactive disintegration?
The
experimental proofs of science are not ultimate proofs.
Experiment, that final arbiter of science, has something of the
aspect of an oracle, its precise factual pronouncements couched
in muffled language of
deceptive import. While to Bohr such
a thing as the Balmer ladder meant orbits and
jumps, to
Schrodinger it meant a smeared-out essence of t/>;
neither view
is
accepted at this moment. Even the measurement of the
speed of light in water, that seemingly clear-cut experiment
specifically conceived to decide between wave and particle,

yielded a truth whose import was misconstrued. Science

abounds with similar instances. Each change of theory demon
strates anew the uncertain certainty of experiment. One would
be bold indeed to assert that science at last has reached an

ultimate theory, that the quantum theory as we know it now

will survivewith only superficial alteration. It may be so, but
we are unable to prove it, and certainly precedent would seem
to be against it The quantum physicist does not know whether
he knows what he is
talking about. But this at least he does
know, that his talk, however incorrect it may ultimately prove
to be, is at present immeasurably superior to that of his
classical forebears, and better founded in fact than ever before.
And that is
surely something well worth knowing.
Never had fundamental science seen an era so explosively

triumphant. With such revolutionary concepts as relativity

and the quantum theory developing simultaneously, physics
experienced a turmoil of upheaval and transformation without
192 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
parallel in its history. The majestic motions of the heavens and
the innermost tremblings of the atoms alike came under the

searching scrutiny of the new theories. Man's concepts of time

and space, of matter and radiation, energy, momentum, and
causality, even of science and of the universe itself, all were
transmuted under the electrifying impact of the double revolu
tion. Here in our story we have followed the frenzied fortunes

of the quantum during those fabulous years, from its first

hesitant conception in the minds of gifted men, through

precarious early years of infancy, to a temporary lodgment in

the primitive theory of Bohr, there to prepare for a bewilder

ing and spectacular leap into maturity that was to turn the
orderly landscape of science into a scene of utmost confusion.
Gradually, from the confusion we saw a new landscape emerge,
barely recognizable, serene, and immeasurably extended, and
once more orderly and neat as befits the landscape of science.
The new ideas, when first
they came, were wholly repugnant
whose minds were firmly set in tradi
to the older scientists
tional ways. In those days even the flexible minds of the

younger men found them startling. Yet now the physicists of

the new generation, like infants incomprehensibly enjoying
their cod-liver oil, lap up these quantum ideas with hearty

appetite, untroubled by the misgivings and gnawing doubts

which so sorely plagued their elders. Thus to the already bur
densome list of scientific corroborations and proofs may now
be added this crowning testimony out of the mouths of babes
and sucklings. The quantum has arrived. The tale is told. Let
the final curtain fall.

But ere the curtain falls we of the audience thrust forward,

not yet satisfied. We are not specialists in atomic physics. We
are but plain men who daily go about our appointed tasks, and
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 193
of an evening peer hesitantly over the shoulder of the scientific
theorist to glimpse the enchanted
pageant that passes before
his mind. Is all this business of wavicles and lack of
causality
in space and time which the theorist can now
something accept
with serenity? Can we ourselves ever learn to welcome itwith
any deep feeling of acceptance? When so alien a world has
been revealed to us we cannot but shrink from its vast unfriend
liness. It is a world far removed from our
everyday experience.
It offers no simple comfort. It beckons us without warmth.
We are saddened that science should have taken this curious,

unhappy turn, ever away from the beliefs we most fondly

cherish. Surely, we console ourselves, but a temporary
it is

aberration. Surely science will

someday find the tenuous road
back to normalcy, and ordinary men will once more under
stand its
message, simple and clear, and untroubled by abstract
paradox.
But we must remember that men have always felt thus when
wrong. When
a bold new idea has arisen, be the idea right or
men proclaimed the earth was not flat, did they not
first

propose paradox as devilish and devastating as any we have

a
met in our tale of the quantum? How utterly fantastic must
such a belief at first have appeared to most people; this belief
which now so readily and blindly accepted by children,
is

against the clearest evidence of their immediate senses, that

they are quick to ridicule the solitary crank who still may claim
the earth is flat; their only concern,
any, is for the welfare
if

of the poor people on the other side of this our round earth

who, they so vividly reason, are fated to live out their Jives
walking on their heads. Let us pray that political wisdom and
heaven-sent luck be granted us so that our children's children

may be able as readily to accept the quantum horrors of today

194 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
and laugh at the fears and misgivings of their benighted

ancestors, those poor souls who still believed in old-fashioned

waves and particles, and the necessity for national sovereignty,
and all the other superstitions of an outworn age.
It is not on the basis of our routine feelings that we should
try here to weigh the value and significance of the quantum
revolution. It is rather on the basis of its innate logic.
"What!" you will exclaim. "Its innate logic? Surely that is
the last thing we could grant it We have to concede its over

whelming experimental support. But innate logic, a sort of

aura to compel our belief, experiment or no experiment? No,
that is too much. The new ideas are not innately acceptable,
nor will talking ever make them so. Experiment forced them
on us, but we cannot feel their inevitability. We accept them
only laboriously, after much obstinate struggle. We
shall never
see their deeper meaning as in a flash of revelation. Though
Nature be them, our whole nature
for is against them. Innate
logic? No! Just bitter medicine/'
But yet a possibility. Perhaps there is after all some
there is

innate logic in the quantum theory. Perhaps we may yet see

in it a profoundly simple revelation, by whose light the ideas
of the older science may appear as laughable as the doctrine

that the earth is flat. We have but to remind ourselves that our
ideas of space and time came to us through our everyday experi
ence and were gradually refined by the careful experiment of
the scientist. As experiment became more precise,
space and
time began to assume a new aspect Even the relatively super
ficialexperiment of Michelson and Morley, back in 1887,
ultimately led to the shattering of some of our concepts of
space and time by the theory of relativity. Nowadays, through
the deeper techniques of the modern physicist we find that
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE
space and time as we know them so familiarly, and even space
and time knows them, simply do not fit the more
as relativity

profound pattern of existence revealed by atomic experiment

What, after all, are these mystic entities space and time?
We tend to take them for granted. We imagine space to be so
smooth and precise we can define within such a thing as a
it

point something having no size at all but only a continuing

location. Now, this is all very well in abstract thought Indeed,
it seems almost an unavoidable necessity. Yet if we examine
it in the light of the quantum discoveries, do we not find the

beginning of a doubt? For how would we try to fix such a dis

embodied location in actual physical space as distinct from
the purely mental image of space we have within our minds?
What is the smallest, most delicate instrument we could use
in order to locate it? Certainly not our finger. That could
suffice topoint out a house, or a pebble, or even, with difficulty,
a particular grain of sand. But for a point it is far too gross.
What of the point of a needle, then? Better. But far from
adequate. Look at the needle point under a microscope and the
reason is clear, for it there appears as a pitted, tortured land

scape, shapeless and useless. What then? We must try smaller

and ever smaller, finer and ever finer indicators. But try as we
will we cannot continue indefinitely. The ultimate point will

always elude us. For in the end we shall come to such things as
individual electrons, or nuclei, or photons, and beyond these,
in the present state of science, we cannot go. What has
become, then, of our idea of the location of a point? Has it not
somehow dissolved away amid the swirling wavicles? True, we
have said that we may know the exact position of a wavicle if
we will sacrifice all knowledge of its motion. Yet even here
there happen to be theoretical reasons connected with Comp-
196 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ton's experiment which limit the precision with which this
position may be known. Even supposing the position could be
known with the utmost exactitude, would we then have a point
such as we have
in mind? No. For a point has a continuing

location, while our location would be evanescent would We

still have merely a sort of abstract wavicle rather than an

abstract point. Whether we think of an electron as a wavicle,

or whether we think of it as a particle buffeted by the photons

under* a Heisenberg microscope, we find that the physical

notion of a precise, continuing location escapes us. Though we
have reached the present theoretical limit of refinement we
have not yet found location. Indeed, we seem to be further
from it than when we so hopefully started out Space is not so
simple a concept as we had naively thought
It is much as if we
sought to observe a detail in a newspaper
photograph. We look at the picture more closely but the

tantalizing detail still we bring a magnify

escapes us. Annoyed,
ing glass to bear upon it, and
our eager optimism is shat
lo!

tered. We find ourselves far worse off than before. What

seemed to be an eye has now
away into a meaning
dissolved
less jumble of splotches of black and white. The detail we had

imagined simply was not there. Yet from a distance the picture
stilllooks perfect

Perhaps it is the same with space, and with time too. Instinc

tively we feel they have infinite detail. But when we bring to

bear on them our most refined techniques of observation and

precise measurement we find that the infinite detail we had

imagined has somehow vanished away. It is not space and time
that are basic, but the fundamental particles of matter or

energy themselves. Without these we could not have formed

even the picture we instinctively have of a smooth, un-
 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 197
blemished, faultless, and infinitely detailed space and time.
These electrons and the other fundamental particles, they do
not exist in space and time. It is
space and time that exist
because of them. These particles wavicles, as we must regard
them if we wish to mix in our inappropriate,
anthropomorphic
fancies of space and time these fundamental particles precede
and transcend the concepts of space and time. They are deeper
and more fundamental, more primitive and primordial. It is
out of them in the untold aggregate that we build our
spatial
and temporal concepts, much as out of the multitude of seem
ingly haphazard dots and splotches of the newspaper photo
graph we build in our minds a smooth, unblemished portrait;
much from the swift succession of quite motionless pictures
as

projected on a motion-picture screen we build in our minds the

illusion of smooth, continuous motion.
Perhaps it is this which the quantum theory is striving to
express. Perhaps it is this which makes it seem so paradoxical.
If space and time are not the fundamental stuff of the universe
but merely particular average, statistical effects of crowds of
more fundamental entities lying deeper down, it is no longer
strange that these fundamental entities, when imagined as

existing in space and time, should exhibit such ill-matched

properties as those of wave and particle. There may, after all,
be some innate logic in the paradoxes of quantum physics.
This idea of average effects which do not belong to the
individual nothing new to science. Temperature, so real and
is

definite that we can read it with a

simple thermometer, is
merely a statistical effect of chaotic molecular motions. Nor
are we at all troubled that it should be so. The air
pressure in
our automobile tires is but the statistical effect of a ceaseless

bombardment by tireless air molecules. A single molecule has

198 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
neither temperature nor pressure in any ordinary sense of those
terms. Ordinary temperature and pressure are crowd effects.
When we try to examine them too
by observing an
closely,
individual molecule, they simply vanish away. Take the smooth
flow of water. It too vanishes away when we examine a single
water molecule. It is no more than a potent myth created out
of the myriad motions of water molecules in enormous
numbers.
So too may it well be with space and time themselves,

though this is something far more difficult to imagine even

tentatively. As the individual water molecules lack the every

day qualities of temperature, pressure, and fluidity, as single

letters ofthe alphabet lack the quality of poetry, so perhaps

may the fundamental particles of the universe individually lack

the quality of existing in space and time; the very space and
time which the particles themselves, in the enormous aggregate,
falsely present to us as entities so pre-eminently fundamental
we can hardly conceive of any existence at all without them.
Seehow it all fits in now. The quantum paradoxes are of our
own making, for we have tried to follow the motions of indi
vidual particles through space and time, while all along these
individual particles have no existence in space and time. It is

space and time that exist through the particles. An individual

particle is not in two places at once. It is in no place at all.

Would we feel amazed and upset that a thought could be in

two places at once? A
thought, if we imagine it as something
outside our brain, has no quality of location. If we did wish to
locate it
hypothetically, for any particular reason, we would
expect to transcend the ordinary limitations of space and
it

time.' It is only because we have all along regarded matter as

existing in space and time that we find it so hard to renounce

 THE NEW LANDSCAPE 199
this idea for the individual particles. But once we do renounce
it the paradoxes vanish away and the message of the quantum
suddenly becomes clear: space and time are not fundamental.
Speculation? Certainly. But so is all theorizing. While
nothing so drastic has yet been really incorporated into the
mathematical fabric of quantum mechanics, this may well be
because of the formidable technical and emotional problems
involved. Meanwhile quantum theorists find themselves more
and more strongly thrust toward some such speculation. It
would solve so many problems. But nobody knows how to set
about giving it proper mathematical expression. If something
such as this shall prove to be the true nature of space and time,
then and the quantum theory as they now stand
relativity
would appear to be quite irreconcilable. For relativity, as a field
theory,must look on space and time as basic entities, while
the quantum theory, for all its present technical inability to

emancipate itself from the space-time tyranny, tends very

strongly against that view. Yet there is a deal of truth in both
relativity and the present quantum theory, and neither can
wholly succumb to the other. Where the two theories meet
there is a vital ferment. A process of cross-fertilization is under
way. Out of it
someday will spring a new and far more potent
theory, bearing hereditary traces of its two illustrious ancestors,

which will ultimately fall heir to all their rich possessions and
spread itself to bring their separate domains under a single
rule. What will then survive of our present ideas no one can

say.Already we have seen waves and particles and causality and

space and time all undermined. Let us hasten to bring the
curtain down in a rush lest something really serious should

happen.
 CHAPTER XV

EPILOGUE

THOUGH the curtain has fallen, it must rise once more, for
ours is a living story that will not rest. Two fateful decades
in the affairs of man have passed since the climactic days of
the quantum revolution. Scientists we have met have become
political exiles far from the lands of their birth, symptoms of
a malignant cancer whose baleful remnant lingers even yet.
War again has smeared its crimson stain across the world;
war which the insubstantial equations of Clerk Maxwell
in
furthered radar even as relativity and quantum mechanics aided
the stupendous development of the atomic bomb.
Much has occurred in physical science since the stirring
days of the quantum revolution. But with the enthronement of
quantum mechanics the period of turmoil ended and subse
quent events, though often unexpected, have at least been
relatively orderly. The advent of the new theory meant a tre
mendous release. Obstructions to scientific progress which had
persisted for decades, even centuries,
were swiftly swept aside,
and science leaped forward with renewed impetus. Under its
leadership physics invaded vast new territories. Even the private
preserves of chemistry were encroached upon, while the science
200
 EPILOGUE 2O1

of spectroscopy, which had played so brilliant and decisive a

part in fostering the quantum mechanical revolution, was

overwhelmed,its many
virtually long-standing puzzles yield
ing impressive confirmations of the validity of the new theory.
With spectroscopy thus temporarily bereft of mystery, scien
tific theorists sought out deeper problems even as the stream
of experimental research converged ever more strongly on those

great enigmas, the atomic nucleus and cosmic rays.

Nuclear physics, which will forever be associated with the
name of Rutherford, existed even before the nucleus was
recognized, for observation of the radioactive process estab
lished many important facts now known to pertain to the
nucleus. It was Rutherford who realized that the swift particles

ejected by radioactive substances could probe fof him the

constitution of other atoms. It was Rutherford who, from the
experiments of various physicists with these atomic projectiles,
extracted a nuclear model of the atom the profound effect of
which on physical theory we have here partially traced. And
it was Rutherford who opened up a new vista for nuclear

science in 1919 by his discovery of artificial nuclear transforma

tion. For in that year he proved that, occasionally, when a fast

a particle struck a nitrogen atom, a proton, or hydrogennu

cleus, would be Soon other such artificial disintegra
ejected.
tions were detected, and the chase was on in earnest. Ruther
ford it was who clamored for more powerful atomic projectiles
with which to bombard the nucleus; but for long years man
could not better the projectiles found in nature. Then in the

early nineteen-thirties physicistsbegan to devise highly ingeni

ous machines for powerfully accelerating atomic particles, the
most significant being the cyclotron, for the invention of which
the American physicist E. O. Lawrence received the Nobel
202 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
prize in 1939. With such machines as these to hand, artificial
nuclear transformations became almost a commonplace. Yet
some of the most important nuclear discoveries, of which we
shall tell, were made with the natural projectiles of radioactivity
and the cosmic rays.
With the spectacular advance of nuclear research, quantum
mechanics was faced with a crucial test For quantum me
chanics was born of photons and electrons. Spectroscopy, the

photoelectric effect, and the other regions of its splendid

triumphs lay almost wholly within the domain of the electron
and the photon. Now, with men exploring the unknown realms
of the nucleus, it was to be called upon to pit its strength

against experimental discoveries on a far deeper plane. Here

was the stipreme test of the fledgling powers of the youthful

quantum mechanics. Would this latest theory, sired, nurtured,

and lovingly coddled by the photon and electron, successfully
encompass the new discoveries in these pioneering realms of
scientific exploration, or would it on its first external test in the

harsh world away from home exhibit, like so many theories

before it, serious and perhaps fatal deficiencies? The time had
come for quantum mechanics to stand on its own and find its

rightful place in the rapidly widening world of physical dis

covery. Would that place be high or low, long-lived or

transitory?
It was in the year 1928, early in the life of the new theory,
that J.
R. Oppenheimer noticed a certain mathematical pecu

liarity ofquantum mechanics. Shortly thereafter the theoretical

physicist G. Gainow made use of this peculiarity in a significant
application to the nuclear problem of radioactivity. So early
was it in the life of the new theory, indeed, that the quantum
had not yet outgrown its infantile pranks, for Gamow's dis-
 EPILOGUE 203
covery was made independently, at practically the same time,
by the English and American collaborators R. W. Gurney and
E. U. Condon.
There had long been a baffling discrepancy about radio
activity. It was a discrepancy easy to state and simple to under
stand; and paradoxically its very simplicity made it all the
more baffling, for had it been complex one might have sought
some subtle, intricate loophole, but against so bald and uncom
promising a discrepancy subtlety seemed powerless. Here was
the problem: An atomic nucleus could be conceived as a sort
of volcano within whose crater seethed a restless ocean of
par
ticles.An ordinary nucleus would correspond to an extinct
volcano, a radioactive nucleus to an active one. If a minor
volcanic eruption occurred and a particle was ejected from
the crater, that would correspond to the emission of a particle

by a radioactive nucleus. This was about the only picture of

by no means badly.
a radioactive nucleus available. It worked
But alas it conflicted with experiment If particles came
over the top of the crater, they should outside with con
fall

siderable speed. Measurements showed the particles did not

have the required speed. That was all. A mere discrepancy. But
even commercial banks stand aghast at a discrepancy. If the
nuclear energy books did not balance, then something must
be wrong. There was nothing intricate about the energy

accounting. The discrepancy could not be due to some subtle

falsification. It was as barefaced a
discrepancy as one could
possibly imagine, and in banking circles would surely send
someone to jail. No wonder, then, that in scientific circles it
caused considerable perturbation. For if the measurements

were correct, and no one pretended they were not, the particles
could not possibly have come over the top of the crater. How,
204 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
then, was the Houdini-like escape effected? It looked as if the
convenient volcano picture must be basically incorrect Only
something of a miracle could save it.
It was here that Gamow brought in quantum mechanics to
offer its unique services. Was a miracle needed? Then quantum

mechanics would provide one. But a logical one according

to the curious logic of quantum happenings. Instead of

imagining the volcano to be a teeming hive of scurrying par

ticles, we must imagine within its crater a vibrant, surging lava
of $ probability. That muchis
quantum mechanically reasona
ble, surely. And now the mathematics shows that, somewhat
as sound waves issue from a closed room, so do the ^ vibrations

insinuate themselves through the crater walls and set up ^

waves outside. This pronouncement of the mathematics,
though strange, was very welcome. For what were these $
waves which had thus managed to appear outside the confines
of the crater's walls? According to quantum mechanics, were

they not probabilities? And what sort of probabilities? Why,

probabilities that a particle was actually there somewhere out
side the crater,having mysteriously passed through the vol
canic walls with never a hole or blemish to mark its passage.
Could anything but quantum mechanics have rescued the
volcano picture so audaciously? There was indeed more than

audacity in the rescue operation. It was a rescue in the grand

manner, with not even a trace of niggardliness. For in remov
ing the primary difficulty of the speeds it also accounted for a
variety of well-known characteristics of radioactivity, such as
the experimentally discovered relation between the speeds and
the rate of decay, and that paramount fact of nature, the exis
tence of a ladder of energy levels within the nucleus.
Such was the first attack upon the nucleus, and surely it was
 EPILOGUE 2O5
a major triumph. Yet it was no more than a preliminary skir

mish.The nucleus was not to be vanquished so easily. It had not

begun to yield its deeper secrets. The volcano picture was still
beset with difficulties, and woefully lacked the detail needed
for an adequate concept of the nucleus.
One thing was particularly disquieting about the volcano
picture. When dealing with the helium particles shot out by a
radioactive nucleus it
gave the splendid results recounted
above. But for electrons shot from the nucleus it gave the same
sort of results. That does not seem cause for concern. What's
sauce for the helium particles surely sauce for the electrons,
is

isn't it? One would certainly think so. But the electrons had

other views. They came out of the nucleus with speeds which

flatly contradicted the idea of an energy ladder within. Nor

was this all. For, speaking loosely, the electron was found to be
larger than the nucleus. How it could ever get inside was thus
a major mystery even for quantum mechanics. There was

something decidedly queer about the electron. The quantum

theory almost came a cropper over it. How it
ultimately con
trived to save itself, and with what brilliant adroitness and
intricacy of maneuver, is a truly fascinating story. A
humane
author would hasten to tell it at once. Let me tell you instead
of the curious incident of the Dirac protons.
Two chapters ago Dirac had just succeeded in wedding
relativity to quantum mechanics, the electron spin emerging
as offspring. Dirac's equations were undoubtedly well fitted to
describe the behavior of electrons. They did so superbly, with
every little detail faithfully delineated. Unfortunately, they did
more than seemed really necessary, not only describing the
usual behavior of an electron but also another mode of
behavior in which it had a negative amount of energy, which
 2O6 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
is to say a negative
weight If pushed by a force acting toward
the righty it woold move toward the left This, of course, was
nonsense, and it would have been natural enough to ignore
it as an unfortunate but
luckily unimportant idiosyncrasy of
otherwise excellent equations. But the negative energy states
of the electrons could not be ignored.
In the prequantum era all would have been well, for there
was a gap between the negative and positive states that
could not be bridged classically. But alas we are in the
quantum age and our electrons will jump from one energy
value to another, for that is the hallmark of the
quantum
regime. And see what that would mean. If we started
with an ordinary electron, could jump and become a
it

nonsensical one of negative energy. Dirac was

greatly per
turbed. There was nothing in the equations to
prevent these
jumps. Either there was a grave defect in his theory or else it
was trying to convey an urgent message. What could that
message be? An electron liable at any moment to change into
the scientific equivalent of a mythological monster is
surely
no electron for the serious scientist. Yet there was nothing in
the equations that could possibly prevent this
Jekyll-Hyde
transformation.

Nothing in the equations but how about something out

side? For example, how about the Pauli exclusion
principle,
that rigid ordinance against If we we
overcrowding? drag that in
may possibly save the situation. It isa desperate
remedy, but it
may work. And if it does work it will be well worth the effort.

Suppose we imagine all the states of negative energy

already
occupied by these mythical monsters. Then the ordinary elec
trons may no longer jump into these states. The exclusion
principle prevents them. The jumps would create overcrowd-
 EPILOGUE 2Oy

ing. Our problem is solved. We can ignore the jumps, after

all. And it's
really not too bad a solution at that.

But alas our problem is not solved. The idea will not work.
The remedy turns out to be just as bad as the disease. To be

sure, the ordinary electrons can no longer jump into the

negative energy states. But what is to prevent these myriads of

negative energy electrons from jumping into the positive
energy states and thus suddenly changing from lazy monsters
to well-behaved electrons? Once this happens, the jumps can
even proceed in both directions. It's a pity it would not work.
So heroic a measure as introducing multitudes of lethargic
monsters deserved a better fate. There is no sense wasting
time in idle lamentation, though. Work is to be done. We
still have our problem to solve.

What is another possible line of attack? Can we perhaps

alter the equations just a little? Put in some extra mathe
matical term, an x here or a y there? It will be hard to do
without damaging the equations, but at least it is a possibility.
No harm in trying. Let us see. It is not going to be too easy.
There's relativity to consider too, and that makes changes
difficult. We
would have to be careful to put in the extra
bit of mathematics where it would not interfere with the . . .

But wait! Quick! Back to the exclusion

principle. It's going
to be all right, after all. We
can save everything. And get
something very wonderful out of it too. Look. Suppose we
did have all the negative energy states full, a veritable ocean
of mythical monster electrons. And suppose that then one
of these monsters did suddenly jump to a positive energy
state. An
ordinary electron would suddenly appear. But there
would also be a tiny bubble in the monstrous ocean where
the monster suddenly ceased to be. Never mind the ordinary
2O8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
electron for the moment Concentrate on the bubble. How
will it look? How will it behave? We must do a little calcula
tion of course, but it is performed. Here it is. Yes. The
easily
bubble, being, so to speak, an absence of a negative energy,
will behave as if it has a positive energy. That means it will
seem like an ordinary well-behaved particle. Good. Splendid!
Will it seem like an ordinary electron, then? Let us have

another look at the equations. Will it? No. It will move in

the direction opposite to that expected; that means it will
have just the opposite electric charge. What has just the op
posite charge to an electron? Why, a proton of course. What
a wonderful chance to create a theory of protons as a mere

by-product of our theory of electrons. That would be really

something; a grand unification if ever there was one; one of
those big things in scientific theory that come once in a life
time maybe twice for a Dirac. We must certainly work on
it some more. How heavy will the new
bubble-particle seem
to be? It is easily calculated. The mass will be the same as
that of an electron.
But that is very bad. It does not fit. A proton is almost
two thousand times as heavy as an electron. If we are on the
right track, whence comes this enormous mass? Perhaps we
can unearth some unexpected idiosyncrasy in the electron
equations, some undiscovered lack of symmetry. Perhaps the
presence of all those low-energy monsters might have a bias
ing effect upon the masses. It is worth a tremendous effort to
find out. The prize is dazzling.
Dirac had gaily gone so far. And then his luck gave out. By
no amount of effort could he make the mass come out right
It clung tenaciously to the electronic value, simply refusing
to budge, and Dirac had on his hands a bitterly disappointing
 EPILOGUE 209

theory of electrons and protons which maintained that the

masses of proton and electron were equal off by a mere two
hundred thousand per cent There was nothing for it but to
admit defeat and announce the theory in this deplorable con
dition in the hope that other, fresher minds might find a

way to patch it
up.
The months rolled by, But where Dirac
and the years.
had failed, no one else succeeded. The mass remained ob
durate. The theory was plainly defective, and Dirac no longer
referred to his mythical monsters as protons but called them
antielectrons.
And then, some four years later, in that magic year 1932,
the young American experimenter Carl D. Anderson per
formed the experiments for which, in 1936, he was to receive
the Nobel prize. Our story has been progressing toward ever
more comprehensive unifications. Now it suddenly takes on
a different aspect. While investigating the effects of cosmic

rays, Anderson discovered a new type of particle, the positron.

Despite experimental difficulties, for the positron is an elu

sive, short-lived particle, the evidence indicated strongly that

positron and electron have opposite electrical charges and

equal masses. Here was Dirac's "proton"; here was his anti-
electron. The theory of the monstrous bubbles was vindicated.
There was more to Anderson's discovery than this, though,
something really exciting. Photons of enormous energy in
the cosmic rays were being transmuted into pairs of electrons
and positrons. Radiation light was changing into matter
-

in accordance with Einstein's famous law of the equivalence

of mass and energy. In the restless underworld of our material
universe this tremendous process of seething transformation
had been going on since time immemorial.
21O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Does the transformation of light into matter seem almost
impossible to visualize? Let us look at it with the aid of
Dirac's theory. Light of enormous energy, striking down into
the murky ocean, is swallowed up by a lethargic monster.
The monster, full of energy after its light meal, immediately
leaps from the ocean, changing thereby into a regular elec
tron, and leaving a tiny bubble where it had been. This bubble
is a positron, inescapable companion of the newly created
electron. If later the electron wishes to return to its earlier
monstrous state it must disgorge its surplus energy and re

join former
its
companions in the ocean, filling the waiting
bubble. To us this would appear as if an electron and a posi
tron had suddenly crashed head-on and vanished amid a
burst of radiation matter transmuted back into energy.
Since this reverse process limits the average life span of the

positron to an incredibly small fraction of a second, it is per

haps no wonder that the positron escaped our observation all
these years. Yet once attention had been directed toward it,
it was readily detected by many observers, and in
1933 was
found to play an important nuclear role. For in that year the
French scientist F. Joliot and his wife I. Curie, daughter of
Marie Curie, discovered that radioactivity could be induced
in certain nuclei by a bombardment of a particles, and found
too that positrons were shot out by nuclei thus rendered

artificially radioactive. For this discovery, so happily in the

family tradition, they received the Nobel prize for chemistry

in 1935.
Does the discovery of the positron suffice to make a magic
year? Perhaps. But surely no more magical than many another
year. There was more that happened in 1932. And certainly
it was magical, for how else may we explain the fascinating
 EPILOGUE 211

pattern which the strange forces of coincidence fashioned for

our delight? It was a year consecrated to the experimenter, a
fabulous, phenomenal year which brought to light as many
as three new The
positron was but one of a trilogy.
particles.
Two other major discoveries came that year. There was, for
instance, the discovery of heavy water by the American chem
ist H. C. Urey, which won for him
the Nobel prize just two

years later. What made the water heavy was the presence of

heavy hydrogen, whose atomic nucleus, a particle twice as

massive as the proton but of equal charge, was something
hitherto quite unknown to science. When finally this new
particle was christened deuteron, a wit remarked that Urey
had created the new science of deuteronomy.
Though the deuteron is of major significance, and though
heavy water was so potentially important for atomic bomb
research that men gave their lives to prevent the Nazis from

using it, it is nevertheless of relatively minor interest for our

story of the quantum. Its discovery was startling, to be sure,

and, as we shall see, it did point up certain defects in previous
ideas about the nucleus. But it had none of the impact of
that other event of 1932, that epochal event which was to
revolutionize our theories of the nucleus, and without which
atomic bombs would be mercifully denied us, the dis
still

covery by the English physicist J. Chadwick of yet another

new type of particle, the neutron. For his world-shattering
discovery we use the phrase not lightly Chadwick received
the Nobel prize in 1935. The possible existence of the neutron
had been conjectured in 1920 by Rutherford, and simulta
neously by the American chemist W. D. Harkins, on the basis
of the properties of nuclei. On the experimental side, too,
Chadwick's work was but the brilliant culmination of the
212 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
pioneering researches of the German physicists W. Bothe
and H. Becker and the further investigations of Curie and
Joliot.
The neutron is a particle about as heavy as the proton, but
without electrical charge. Weknow that a hydrogen atom
consists of a proton and an electron. What if the electron
should fall into the proton? There might be quite an ex
plosion. But suppose it were more peaceful, so that proton
and electron simply merged. There would then result an
electrically neutral particle. It was this possible particle, this

collapsed hydrogen atom, which Rutherford and Harkins had

envisaged. Pauli, too, had felt the need for some sort of
neutral particle in order to explain an anomaly in the nucleus
of the nitrogen atom. But all this was far from direct experi
mental demonstration. When Bothe and Becker noticed a
curious radiation which^ seemed to defy the accepted laws of

physics, the further investigations of the Curie-Joliots served

but to emphasize its strange behavior. Chadwick, a former

pupil of Rutherford, brilliantly put two and two together

and demonstrated conclusively, both experimentally and
theoretically, that this new radiation must consist of the un
charged particles we call neutrons, a name already used by
Harkins and Rutherford a dozen years before. Were this the
story of thedevelopment of physics, or even the oft-told tale
of the atomic bomb, we could pause to tell the many interest

ing details of this quest, how the great Italian scientist Enrico
Fermi used neutrons to bombard uranium, and with what
curious results, and how this ultimately led to the discovery
of nuclear fission, with all that that entails. But this is the

story of the quantum. We dare not stray too far from our
central theme.
 EPILOGUE 213
For all that the existence of the neutron had been antici

pated, its advent found the theorists unprepared, their

theories unable to encompass it. The idea of treating it as a

collapsed hydrogen atom proved unsuccessful. Now that the

neutron had been detected by the experimenters, the evidence
began to pour in to confirm that the neutron was no such
naive combination of well-known particles. It was no im

poverished beggar at the feast, but a high dignitary in the

mansions of science to be treated with every proper mark of

respect and accepted in its own proud right as a fundamental
particle.
For the theorists all this seemed a disquieting retrogression.
Hitherto they had taken this complex, puzzling world of ours
and, with a grand feeling of heart-warming satisfaction, re
duced itto nothing but protons, electrons, and photons.
Had Dirac succeeded with his theory of the proton, what a

magnificent unification would have ensued; the whole uni

verse built of nothing but electrons and photons. Alas, the

positron spoiled such lofty dreams. And the neutron, corning

at practically the same time, seemed to tear their gossamer
fabric into shreds.

Somehow the shattered dreams must be replaced. This was

no time for despair. A challenge had to be met Though neu
trons might not be the collapsed hydrogen atoms of Harkins
and Rutherford, if they had been knocked out of the nucleus
a place must somehow be found for them inside. It was still
the year 1932 when Heisenberg made the first successful
theoretical attack on the detailed internal structure of the
nucleus. In it he assumed that nuclei contain protons and
neutrons only. How radical a departure this was from previous
214 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
ideas, how great its revolutionary import, how daring its im
plications, events will show.
Had you by any chance forgotten about the electrons, and
how the volcano picture could not handle them? It could not
handle the positrons either. If the nucleus contains only pro

tons and neutrons, one of our nuclear problems is solved

right away. We
need worry no more that electrons and posi
trons are too large. Neutrons and protons are very much
smaller. For them there is room enough within the nucleus.
In fact they fit quite snugly.
?
And we
use only protons and
if

neutrons we can overcome some hitherto puzzling discrep

ancies. For there are many numerical facts about the various
nuclei that must be correctly accounted for: their mass, and
charge, and spin, and other things.
The old idea could explain practically all of these, but in
the case of nitrogen there was a discrepancy. For the nitrogen
nucleus, which has a mass fourteen times that of the proton,
must, on the old view, contain fourteen protons. Since its
charge is only seven times that of the proton, it must contain
seven electrons to neutralize the excess charge of the fourteen

protons. Thus mass and charge have told precisely how many
protons and electrons must be contained. The spins must
therefore balance automatically. Now, the spins of protons
and electrons are each known to be half a unit. Their values
may be combined, or they may cancel in pairs. But with
twenty-one particles in all, which is an odd number, it is

impossible to obtain a whole-number spin; and unfortunately

the spin of the nitrogen nucleus in question is one whole
unit With neutrons and protons this can at once be ac
counted for if neutrons, like protons, have spin of half a unit
For now the nitrogen nucleus will consist of seven protons
 EPILOGUE 215
and seven neutrons, an even number of particles in all. Let
sixof these cancel the spins of six others, and the remaining
two combine their half-unit spins, and the total spin comes
out to be one unit as required. The newly discovered deuteron
was later found to provide a similar corroboration of the new
idea. Since the deuteron has twice the mass of the proton
and a charge equal to the proton charge, the old view would
require it to consist of two protons and an electron. But its
spin was found to be one unit, and one unit could not arise
from an odd number of protons and electrons. The new idea
encounters no such difficulty, for it would have the deuteron
consist of one proton and one neutron.
Yes, it does sound rather good. But does it really solve
our problem? Does it not rather exchange one worry for
another? If there are no electrons or positrons inside the
nucleus, pray how does happen they come shooting out?
it

Now we shall see what devious cunning pervades our

nuclear theories. It is subtle with
the twisted subtlety of
all

the quantum; strange and topsy-turvy, and yet for us who are
now so deeply steeped in quantum lore, so utterly logical.
For it is rooted in remembrance of things past. The mental

path is clear. We know well how the scientists came upon

their idea. Let us follow the path their thoughts once trod.
Ages ago, as it must seem to us now, though only a few
short years in actual time, young pioneering Bohr had pic
tured the atom as a nucleus surrounded by electrons jumping
from orbit to orbit. Despite the happenings of the interven
ing years, age has not marred the vivid potency of this rough
picture. It remains a valued guide and counselor. Let us ask
it a decisive question, a question not yet about protons and
neutrons, nor yet about electrons and positrons, but rather
2l6 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
about those swift, ethereal particles the photons. What hap
pens precisely to a photon when it is swallowed up by an
atom?
It is a question easily asked. Why, then, does the oracle
remain silent? It is a silence of wisdom, an oracular answer

whose message we must ponder, a pregnant silence from

which will grow great things.
When a photon of the proper energy is so unfortunate as
to strike a Bohr atom, that is the end of its individuality as
a photon. It vanishes completely away, and in vanishing
causes an electron to jump from one orbit to another of

higher energy. Could one really say that the photon is trapped
within the atom? No one would ever recognize it in captivity.
It changed into something utterly different an electron
is

jump which formerly occurred.

There is the reverse process too. What happens when an
electron jumps to an orbit of lower energy? A photon
magically appears as if from nowhere. There had been no
photon within the atom. The newly created photon was but
an external symptom of the electron's convulsive jump.
At first this hide-and-seek game of hunt the photon caused
great concern. Men asked what happened while the electron
was in the act of jumping, and by just what wizardry the
photon vanished away into nothingness, its place to be taken
by a mere colorless jump in energy. But the deeper maturity
that came with quantum mechanics taught us that just such
questions must forever remain unanswered, the alleged hap
penings to which they have reference being veiled by the
indeterminacy principle.
But indeterminacy principle or no, the photon remained a
very curious particle, quite different from the electron in a
 EPILOGUE 217
most important particular. Electrons, like protons, were in
destructible, admirable building material for an imperishable
universe. But photons! Why, photons were mere will-o'-the-
wisps, evanescent and insubstantial, their energy alone abid
ing. True, they behaved like wavicles, just as the electrons
did, but they were free to come and go; to come out of noth

ingness and return to nothingness; to materialize as radiant,

lustrous waviclesand melt away again into black, lightless
energy jumps. There was nothing solid or stolid about them.
They had no continuing personality. They were Protean
rather than protonic. They could multiply like rabbits. You
could never be sure how many you had. You might even
start with none at alland suddenly find yourself overwhelmed
by them. Is not that precisely what happens when an atomic
bomb explodes, or even an ordinary bomb though less spec
tacularly? In an instant, along with other effects by no means
negligible, there appears astupendous plenitude of photons,
a dazzling flash of light where previously all was darkness,

bright photons brought suddenly into existence in numbers

of staggering splendor. Nor do we need a bomb to effect
such creation. It is a commonplace. We
do it every day
without thinking by simply pressing a switch to turn on the
light.
This flighty propensity of the photon of jumping into
and out of existence sets it apart from the sturdy, reliable
electron. Who could have foreseen that the seemingly im

perishable electron was destined to go the way of the wayward

photon? Yet the oracle taught us well by its silence. And did
not the coming of the positron destroy the vaunted claims of
the electron to imperishability? Like the photons, electrons
and positrons jump into and out of existence. Their ignominy
2l8 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
is
truly complete, for they even change into the very photons
they once pretended to despise for being so evanescent
If electrons and positrons are so like the photon in this

particular, why should they not also behave like photons in

other respects? If
they are too big for the nucleus,
why could
they not be definite personalities outside the nucleus but
mere unrecognizable jumps of state within? This would pre
serve the triumphs of the prenuclear era of quantum
all

physics while saving the quantum from serious nuclear em

barrassment. Indeed, there are many important details about
the nucleus which we have not mentioned
at all, which indi
cate that had such an idea not been envisaged the nucleus
would have utterly vanquished the quantum. It was a narrow
escape. But the way of escape was strictly within the estab
lished traditions of the quantum way of thought. No longer
do we believe that the nucleus is built of protons and elec
trons. We think of it npw as made up of protons and neu
trons. Electrons and positrons are never inside the nucleus.

They are external manifestations of

jumps occurring within.
This is a novel concept. And it has a novel
implication,
for it means that the electrically charged proton and the
electrically neutral neutron are actually one and the same
particle.
Of course, this seems absurd. How can the uncharged
neutron be the same particle as the charged proton?
The oracle has already supplied the answer. What happens
when a photon merges with an electron? The electron jumps
and the photon no more. Electron-plus-photon is not some
is

new composite particle. It is just the same old electron as

before but in a new state of energy. With the nucleus made
up of protons and neutrons, what would be the analogous
 EPILOGUE 219

thing? When an electron merged with a proton there would

be a jump in the proton's state of energy and charge, and the
electron would be no more. Proton-plus-electron would not
be some new composite particle. It would be just the same
old proton as before, but in a new state of energy and charge;
the same old proton but now electrically neutral, for the
electronicand protonic charges exactly balance; the same old
proton, but we would call it now a neutron. And if a positron
should similarly merge with a neutron, or a neutron should
create and shed an electron, the neutron would jump back
to its old protonic state.

That is how we must think of the nucleus. That is the stuff

of which the uranium and plutonium of atomic bombs are
made. That is the fanciful way we must build our universe.
Though the concept is subtle and tenuous, the analogy with
the photon is
perfect, even to the detailed mathematical
treatment.
Our story still has surprises. Have you by any chance for
gotten about the electrons? Though we have now banished
them from the nucleus, they are able to get into mischief.
still

Remember, they still contradict the incontrovertible fact that

there an energy ladder within* the nucleus. Somehow the
is

energy books do not balance. Can the quantum help us out

once more? Only by emphasizing that the spin accounts also
do not balance when, for instance, a proton turns into a
neutron or vice versa. This was enough for Pauli, though. If
the books do not balance, there must be a thief at work, said
he. Anew type of particle must be declared to exist, a
marauder which steals off with some of the energy and spin
and leaves no trace. But how can so bold a particle escape
observation? Clearly we must endow it with a cloak of invisi-
22O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
bility. Divest then, of telltale electric charge. Allow it only
it,

the most minute mass. If necessary, let it have no mass at all.

Such a disembodied particle could pilfer right under our nose
and escape detection; its nefarious activities would come to

light only through an auditing of the electron accounts. And

what could be a more fitting name for this diminutive neutron
than the Italian diminutive neutrino?
Our sole clue to the character of the neutrinowould be
the character of its would never be caught.
thefts, for the thief

Clearly, on the circumstantial evidence, a case could be made

against it. But would the case hold water? In the hands of
Fermi and his followers the idea of the neutrino was de
veloped into a full-fledged mathematical theory. Everything
hinged on the consistency of the evidence when subjected to
the rigors of a searching cross-examination of a
profundity
and intensity such as only a powerful mathematician could
conceive. Despite some difficulties still not
fully resolved, the
available evidence was found to present a
reasonably con
sistent picture of the invisible thief, and the
marauding
neutrino was accordingly admitted to the sacred halls of
science. It was born in 1933, almost within the
magical year
of the particles.

Through this bit of detective work hitherto unsolved

mysteries were now
cleared up. Whenever a proton
changed
into a neutron, or a neutron into a proton, a neutrino must
be involved along with the positron or electron, lest the

ledgers betray unaccountable deficiencies.

But though the neutrino had joined the merry
throng,
there was yet a mystery to be solved,
yet a discrepancy to
thrust its stem compulsion on men's
thoughts.
Within the nucleus are stupendous forces of fabulous
 EPILOGUE 221

power welding its

separate parts into a compact whole. From
elementary characteristics of the different nuclei it could be
seen that these forces must be
analogous to the chemical
forces that bind atoms into molecules. Heisenberg therefore
ascribed them to exchange phenomena within the nucleus,
his scheme being later modified in an important detail by
E. Majorana. According to the curious
picture scientists have
to use in thinking of these things, this
exchange is a sort of
rhythmic interchange of position between the particles com
prising the nucleus.
Now a neutron can become a proton by shedding an elec
tron and a neutrino, and a proton can become a neutron
by
absorbing them. Thus the interchange of place between a
proton and a neutron can be pictured as a sort of tossing to
and fro between them of an electron and a neutrino, as in a

long, fast rally in tennis. The neutron serves, and in serving

becomes a proton. The original proton receives, and in receiv
ing becomes a neutron. It at once returns the serve, and so
reverts to proton state while converting
its its opponent back
into the neutron state. The effect of such a
rally is a rhythmic
alternation in which at one moment we haveon a neutron
this side of the netand a proton on that, the next moment a
proton here and a neutron there, and so on back and forth.
If we wish to picture in this
way how two neutrons could
exchange places, or two protons, we would have to imagine
a tennis game played with two balls at once
flying in opposite
directions.
Of course we may not think of this travel to and fro too

literally. After all,the various "particles" involved are all

wavicles, and so far as it is permissible to talk of their sizes
at all, the electron would be larger than the proton and the
222 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
neutron, and the whole nuclear tennis court Thus surround
ing the neutrons and protons of the nucleus is a ghostly halo
of electrons and neutrinos fluctuating uncertainly between
existence and nonexistence. This electrical halo of wavicles

is linked with the electromagnetic field that Maxwell had

conceived so many years ago as the seat of Faraday's tubes
of force. And through his tennis-rally mechanism Heisenberg
sought to establish a deep connection between it and the
gigantic forces within the nucleus.
The idea was attractive but alas for all its undeniable
charm it would not quite work. Though forces could be de
duced from it, and enormous, fabulous forces at that, the
theorists, like a sleeper on a wintry night whose blanket is
too short, found themselves involved in a hopeless dilemma.
It was no problem at all for them to give the forces the proper

energy content, but if

they did the forces would not reach
one two-hundredth far enough. True, the theorists could
stretch the reach of the forces, but that was like pulling a
blanket up to the ears only to expose the toes. Worse even.
For if they extended the reach of the forces the necessary
two hundred and fiftyfold, the energy content became not
just hundreds but hundreds of billions of times too weak.
Either the toes or the ears could be kept from freezing,
but not both. The infant theory seemed doomed to die of
lack of energy brought on by unavoidable exposure. It was
rescued from untimely death by the Japanese scientist H.
Yukawa, who found a theoretical way out of the impasse; a
way to cover both .ears and
toes simultaneously. It involved

something then fast becoming a habit among physicists; al

most an occupational disease of the mind. Can you guess?
What was the prevailing fashion in those days? New particles,
 EPILOGUE 223
was it not? Positrons. Neutrons. Neutrinos. And now yet
another. For Yukawa proved that the nuclear forces could
be made to fit as
Heisenberg had originally hoped if only we
would imagine a new type of wavicle in that powerful halo
surrounding the protons and neutrons. The tennis must be
played with a new type of ball. Not only was its mass to be
intermediate between that of the neutron and that of the
electron, was to be an actual intermediary between the two.
it

For, according to Yukawa, when a neutron changed into a

proton and emitted an electron and a neutrino from a nucleus
during radioactivity, it did not at once create and shed the
electron and neutrino, as formerly thought. It Erst created a

Yukawa which, after an incredibly brief life span,

particle,

exploded into two fragments that were the electron and

neutrino of the older idea.
The pace of discovery was swift, Heisenberg mentioning
his idea in 1934 and Yukawa proposing the new particle in
and promis
1935, a purely theoretical speculation, interesting
ing, but unconfirmed. Confirmation was not long delayed,
however, for as early as 1936 the new type of particle was
actually observed among the cosmic rays, one of the first to
notice being the same Anderson who discovered the posi
it

tron. To resolve some of the many grave difficulties that still

remain in the theory of nuclear forces, it has been necessary
to assume various different types of Yukawa particles, both
charged and electrically neutral. Such particles are now ex
perimentally recognized as important constituents of the
cosmic rays, yet there is still no agreement as to their name,
some physicists referring to them as mesotrons, while others
call them mesons.

The equations governing the mesons ultimately proved

224 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
familiar, bearing a striking resemblance to the equations
which Maxwell had given for the electromagnetic field. One
could take the equations of Maxwell and by a quite small
them into the meson equations. Could it
alteration convert
be that the quantum physicists were entering a second child
hood? Could it be that there was life in the older theories
yet?
From our present state of knowledge, with our positrons
and neutrinos, our neutrons and our various types of mesons,
how sketchy and primitive the old Rutherford-Bohr atom
now appears, and how extraordinarily effective considering
its utter
crudity. Surely in years to come men will look back
on our present tentative gropings with the same wonder and
tolerant admiration, amazed that concepts so crudely incom
plete and incorrect should nevertheless probe so deep, and
wrest from Mother Nature so many precious, dark, and ter
rible secrets, and expose our infantile civilization to such hor

rible dangers.

Though the picture of the nucleus grew more detailed,

increasing knowledge did not smooth the path of the theorist

The nucleus was too complex a structure. It had too many
particles in close proximity to yield readily to detailed mathe
matical analysis.To regard any but the simplest nuclei as
conglomerations of different interacting particles treated indi

vidually, neutrons and protons, with concomitant elec

their

trons, positrons, neutrinos, photons, and mesons that was

out of the question. The sheer complexity of the problem
defeated such efforts. Some short cut was needed through
the maze of complications if practical results were to be
obtained to guide nuclear research. While the detailed studies
must be pursued without letup, some simple, over-all princi-
 EPILOGUE 225

pie was required lest the solution of pressing problems be de

layed.
Here was an ideal setting for Bohr's unique genius. When
atomic theory falters, he helps it along with an admittedly

temporary theory which somehow proves dazzlingly success

ful. He did it in 1913 with his original atomic theory, and

again with his correspondence principle. He was now to

initiate another makeshift theory in 1936, his idea being

carried forward independently by the Russian theorist J.

Frenkel. Bohr is the great sustainer and tider-over of atomic

physics, a vital catalyst to keep the flickering mental flame

alive till it be self-sustaining. What theoretical physicist has
ever patched up and improvised so successfully and withal so
simply as Bohr? His earlier successes were no accidents. Here
was another seemingly jerry-built theory which was to prove
of phenomenal sturdiness.
What manner of thing was this new theory of Bohr and of
Frenkel? Was it some curious blend of the old and new,
some magic brew of quantum and classical ingredients to
parallel the atomic theory of 1913?
It was no brew of ill-matched essences, but a wholesome,

old-fashioned, purely classical theory. Yes. Classical, not

quantum.
If we were a littlesurprised at the recent mesonic signs of
second childhood, what shall we think of a theory that
actually likens the nucleus to a drop of water? What shall

we think of this final classical twist to our quantum tale?

At first one stands incredulous that such a classical, such
an utterly irrelevant model of the nucleus should have any
chance of success. But are not the nuclear forces largely
exchange forces, and are not the chemical binding forces
226 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
likewise exchange forces? Is it so startling, then, that there

might be some analogy between the groupings of atoms and

molecules and the groupings of fundamental particles in the
nucleus? If water atoms and molecules cling together to form
a drop, whyshould not nuclear particles likewise cling to
gether to form a droplike nucleus? The known facts about
nuclear forces show the analogy will be very close indeed.
From a general, not too detailed point of view, the two would
behave similarly, even such classical water-drop concepts as

temperature, surface tension, and rippling waves being ap

plicable to the nucleus. In the light of this analogy, familiar
factswould take on new significance; thus particles would
no longer be "shot out" from radioactive nuclei as of old but
"evaporated" from them.
In 1939, with the world hovering ominously on the brink
of war, there came the decisive experiment of O. Hahn and
F. Strassmann in Germany which showed that barium re
sultedwhen neutrons bombarded uranium, Lise Meitner and
O. R. Frisch, who fled Nazi Germany, found in the water-
drop theory of the nucleus a picture already to hand to fur
nish the clue to what was taking place. With it they de
ciphered the cryptic message of the experiments. The uranium
nucleus was undergoing fission, splitting violently apart, mass

being converted into energy that was released in staggering

quantities. When later it was found that neutrons too are
released which could keep the fission process going sponta
neously, physicists saw a new era opening up for mankind.
For better or worse, nuclear energy of terrible potency was
to be placed in the unready hands of man.
The fission idea of Meitner and Frisch was taken up by
Bohr. He it was who foresaw the importance of the rare
 EPILOGUE 227
uranium isotope of mass number
235. With the American
physicist J. A. Wheeler, he developed the water-drop model
into a comprehensive mathematical
theory of nuclear fission,
even as Frenkel was doing so
independently. This tentative,
classical picture of the nucleus,
proposed three years before,
seemed almost to have been conceived with the new phe
nomena in mind, so
extraordinarily apt did it prove. It alone
could picture the process of nuclear fission. It alone could

explain its mechanism and predict its various outcomes in

this pressing hour of high urgency.
The picture it yields of the process of nuclear fission is

one of extreme simplicity. When we say that the nucleus is

like a drop of water we mean not loosely and vaguely, as

it

one would say it in conversation, but

mathematically and
precisely, having regard to its structure and internal stresses,
for these are so very similar in the two cases that we may pro
ject the behavior of an electrically charged water drop into
the behavior of a nucleus.
Nuclear was not an obvious concept. True, the
fission

presence of barium indicated that the bombarded uranium

nucleus might have been split apart. But how could the al
most negligible impact of a neutron have so cataclysmic an
effect upon the nucleus? What terrible internal catastrophe
could the gentle neutron have caused?
It was because
they were able to imagine a plausible
mechanism that Meitner and Frisch dared to suggest the
possibility of fission. The forces in the nucleus are of two
opposing kinds. On the one hand are electrical repulsions

which, if unrestrained, would tear it

violently apart On the
other are powerful attractive forces binding the nuclear
particles one to another. These binding forces, however, have
 228 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
limitations. For example, unlike their antagonists the re
pulsions, they have extremely short reach. In a small nucleus
they can easily hold the repulsions in check. But when the
nucleus is large their reach proves inadequate and, what with
other limitations, they cannot so readily dominate the forces
of disruption which benefit greatly from the
large electric
charge of the heavier nucleus. A
large nucleus, then, when
likened to an electrified water drop, will correspond to one
so bigand so highly charged as to be on the verge of
breaking
apart. When an extra neutron is added to the nucleus it is
as if a speck more water were added to the already swollen
drop. The tendency to disrupt increases alarmingly. Let the
neutron but be added with the gentle speed needed to set
the nuclear drop aquivering and the chances are the
drop
forming two smaller nuclei which the vic
will shake apart,

torious disruptive forces then cause to rush

violently away,
and, though Meitner and Frisch did not know it at the time,
spattering forth afew small specks of nuclear matter neu
trons.For nuclear power slow neutrons are
employed; in
atomic bombs, fast ones. But the two pictures are similar in
their essentials.
And here it was that the curtain fell, a curtain of dreary
silence and suffocating secrecy What
hiding a deathly fear.
of the tremendous new theories which have
may grown up
in captivity, corralled behind the wire fences of Los Alamos
or Oak Ridge? Such now
things are military secrets, to be
told by but not by
spies scientists. Yet a corner of the cur
tain has been lifted to let some fragments of knowledge
escape to the light, and despite the vast expenditure of
effort and resources that went into the
making of the atomic
bomb, it has been said on high authority that no new theory
 EPILOGUE 229
has arisen therefrom to supplant or challenge the quantum.

Physicists are returning to the ways of peace. But the world,

emerging from its ivory tower, now realizes that the innocent
speculations of a Planck, an Einstein, or a Bohr may be
charged with stupendous power for good or evil The days of
the nightmare are upon us, and science is in mortal peril of

becoming an occult, unfertile priesthood, passing its mysteries

on to chosen novitiates who meet stern tests and take the
solemn vow of eternal silence. We can but hope the danger
soon will pass, and someday, when the skies are brighter,
science will again be free to stride forth
boldly, in goodly
fellowship, along its enchanted path into the unknown.
In truth, the story of the quantum is
just begun. All that
we have told is but a prologue. So many problems
yet remain
tobe solved, so many questions are waiting to be answered.
The picture is confused and tremendously exciting. It mat
ters not that our theories are but temporary shelters from
those icy winds of doubt and ignorance that chill the stoutest
heart. Though they be destined to be forsaken by generations
to come, they remain a wonderful adventure of the human
mind, a wonderful exploration of the works of God. Crude
and primitive though they may appear to men as yet unborn,
they yet contain within themselves something of the eternal,
and to our mortal gaze they stand a dazzling edifice of tower
ing majesty, whose brilliance gladdens the soul and sends
forth brave, struggling rays to pierce the murk and gloom
that press around.
Here in such theories and discoveries is a revelation, all

too scant, of the mighty wonder that is the universe. Here

through the minds of our Einsteins and Bohrs we may dimly

sense its structural beauty and cunning intricacy, its soaring
230 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
poetry and its awe-inspiring grandeur and magnificence, with
never a hint of its pain and tragic bestiality.
When at the empty dawn of all creation God created the

primal essence energy, he endowed it with such subtle, miracu

lous potencies that, as from a seed that slowly comes to

flower, there grew from it what we call space and time, and
matter and radiation. Mightily, yet infinitesimally, there
evolved a universe of coursing atoms and spacious nebulae.

Energy coalesced into matter according to an immutable law

so exquisitely contrived that amid the stupendous forces of

writhing Nature there yet was found a gentle place and time,
a small, quiet, friendly corner, to nurture fragile life. tri A
fling change in the laws of the universe, so small as to appear
of negligible moment, and energy might have coalesced dif

ferently, might never even have coalesced at all. Deep down

within the primal attributes of energy lay the rich promise of
electrons and positrons, of protons, neutrons, mesons, and
photons, of space and time and motion, of energy levels in
nuclei and outside, of forces binding primary particles into

atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into matter sus

taining life and love and hate. What if the energy levels had
been different? There might be no material universe. Nuclei
now stable might be impossible structures. Oxygen, could it
exist, might Space and
carry the deadly taint of radioactivity.
time might be cramped into narrow compass, with no vast
regions of emptiness to protect the universe against its own
explosive violence, with no vast aeons of time to let it slowly
unfold and explore its innate heritage.
What little we understand of the deeper workings of the
world is yet enough to reveal a sublime harmony beneath its
turmoil and complexity. Our fragmentary knowledge is not
 EPILOGUE 231
A meager handful of men is vouchsafed each
lightly acquired.
generation with the precious gift of scientific insight, and we
marvel at their powers. How much more, then, shall we
marvel at the wondrous powers of God who created the
heaven and the earth from a primal essence of such exquisite
subtlety that with it he could fashion brains and minds afire
with the divine gift of clairvoyance to penetrate his mysteries.
If the mind of a mere Bohr or Einstein astounds us with its

power, how may we begin to extol the glory of God who

created them?

Alas, that fearand greed may pervert the incomparable

blessing of nuclear energy. Alas, that so great a treasure should
bring forth unparalleled crisis, and that in this moment of
direst peril the sovereign nations of the world, archaic relics

of a bygone age as remote in fact as it is near in time, should

squabble over dangerous irrelevancies; dangerous irrelevancies

of national sovereignty and individual power which, if not
forever banished from the earth, will bring on us war of un
thinkable horror and futility whose end will be utter de
struction.
Almost overnight mankind can now plunge from the
technological triumphs of an atomic age to the primitive
barbarism of a desperate struggle for individual survival

against the harsh forces of animal and inanimate nature.

Already, from relatively minor causes, starvation and want
spread darkly over the earth. Now is the terrible crisis of our
civilization. Now isthe fateful hour of high decision. For
better or worse, We, the People of Earth, must choose our
future. It can be fine and lovable, gentle and dignified, and
filled with joy and wonder and thrilling discovery. Or it can

be degraded and obscene, despairing and wretched beyond

 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
measure, with death and primitive misery stalking the land
unchecked . . .

I call heaven and earth to record this

day against you, that I have set before

you and death, blessing and curs

life

ing: therefore choose life, that both

thou and thy seed may live.

Deuteronomy 30:19
POSTSCRIPT 1959
"My grateful thanks go to A. Pais for clarifying
various concepts for me, and to }. A. Wheeler
for reading the postscript and making several
7

helpful suggestions/
B. HOFFMANN
Queens College
Flushing, N. Y.
June, 1958
 POSTSCRIPT 1959

INTO a book that already contains a preface, a prologue, an inter

mezzo, and an epilogue, a postscript intrudes itself with ill
grace. Some apology is needed for its
presence.
Much has happened in the world at large during the ten

years that have passed since this book first appeared, and much
has happened, too, in the world of the quantum. The occasion
of a reprinted edition gives me a chance to bring this book up
to date, and if I do so by means of a postscript, it is with good
reason. A
postscript has valuable properties that a regular
chapter lacks. For example, one can cram into it indeed, one
is
expected to cram into it not only the latest breathless
news but also an assortment of items that one forgot to men
tion before. Above all, a postscript is informal; nobody expects
it to be trim and orderly. Thus it is an ideal instrument for
my purpose; for science is seldom tidy, except in retrospect.
The events of the last ten years that touch on the quantum do
not into a neat, inevitable pattern. They sprawl and
fall

flounder. They breach old boundaries in unexpected places

that may or may not prove to lead to brave new worlds.

235
236 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
There hazard in reporting scientific events so soon
is after

they occur, while the stir and bustle they excite are still

unsettled. The Nobel

prize committee is well aware of this
hazard, often delaying the award of a prize till a decade and
more after the discovery for which it is awarded. Max Born,
for example, did not receive his Nobel prize till
1954, almost
thirty years after his interpretation of Schrodinger's smeared
electron as a wave of probability. Delay is so far from being
the exception that when T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang of whom
more later were chosen for the Nobel prize a year after the
appearance of their first paper on the possibility that parity
might not be conserved, and within mere months of the spec
tacular experimental confirmation of their hypothesis, the
event was hailed as extraordinary, albeit amply justified.
Which quantum events of the last ten years shall I tell

about? Which shall I pass over lightly? Which shall I not

mention at all? Whatever my decisions, time will surely mock
them. For events have a knack of twisting unexpectedly.
The story of the Yukawa meson is an excellent case in
point. Writing the epilogue in 1947, 1 told that in 1935 Yukawa
had predicted the existence of a particle, the meson, and that
shortly thereafter the cosmic ray experimenters had discovered
that a meson actually existed. This seemed an eminently sat

isfactory situation (though I marred

my account with remarks,
now wholly inappropriate, about the resemblance of the meson
equations to the equations of Maxwell). Yet even as I wrote,
events were taking their unexpected turn. Three Italian cosmic

ray experimenters, M. Conversi, E. Pancini, and O. Piccioni,

made a disquieting discovery: the mesons they had been study
ing in the cosmic rays had little affinity for nuclear particles.
This was a grievous blow to the theory of Yukawa, for mesons
 POSTSCRIPT 237
that had little affinity for nuclear particles could hardly be

expected to bind such particles together. Thus the discovery

of mesons in cosmic rays, which had once seemed so apt and

speedy a confirmation of Yukawa's hypothesis, was now seen

to have been no confirmation at all, but rather a case of mis
taken identity. True, Yukawa had
postulated a particle of inter
mediate mass, and a particle of intermediate mass had been
observed. But the observed particle lacked the key property
demanded by Yukawa: the ability to interact strongly with
nuclear particles. The meson situation was once more untidy.
Yet even as these events were unfolding, another twist was

developing. In those days, so soon after World War II, austerity

was the rule in England. With money scarce, and cyclotrons
and suchlike paraphernalia of nuclear research immensely
costly, the physicist C. F. Powell employed a wonderfully inex

pensive method of studying cosmic rays. Essentially, he merely

left unopened packages of photographic plates lying around for
several weeks preferably on high mountains developed
them, and minutely analyzed the tracks left in them by the
cosmic ray particles. In Powell's hands this technique gave
remarkably detailed information and for his brilliantly parsi
monious researches he was awarded the Nobel 'prize in 1950.
In 1947? Powell and two collaborators, the Brazilian C. M.
G. Lattes and the Italian G. P. S. Occhialini, using this

photographic technique, discovered mesons

of a new kind in
the cosmic rays in the high atmosphere. The new mesons,
slightly heavier
than the old, had extremely short lives; and
those with positive charge, on decaying, gave birth to mesons
of the old type. The new mesons, being primary, were called
fl"
(pi)mesons, and the secondary mesons to which they gave
rise were called p> (mu) mesons.
238 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Onecould perhaps deplore the added complication of now
having two types of meson, but if nature was so constructed
it was so constructed and one
simply had to accept the fact.
Had physicists been able to foresee later discoveries of yet other

types of particles, including more mesons, they would have

been less concerned about this slight increase in the complexity
of the building material of the physical universe. Even so
they
had an immediate consolation, for the TT mesons, unlike the
old ^ mesons, did interact strongly with nuclear particles. The
TT mesons could therefore be the mesons that Yukawa had
postulated so many years before. Thus Yukawa's theory was
vindicated after all, and Yukawa received the Nobel prize in

1949.
Yet this belated vindication in its turn proved dubious. The
TT meson meet all the
failed to specifications originally laid
down by Yukawa. For example, it apparently did not give
birth to electrons*; because of this and related difficulties, and
the puzzling existence of the ^ meson, Yukawa's early hope of

accounting for the emission of electrons from nuclei could

not be fulfilled.

We shall have more to say about mesons later on. The

theory of mesons has not trod a royal road. Yet despite diffi
culties and keen disappointments it has proved enormously
fruitful in stimulating ideas and novel experiments. That it

is still from being capable of giving a satisfactory account

far

of nuclear phenomena is less an indictment of the

theory
than a manifestation of the complexity of these phenomena.
For no other nuclear theories are really satisfactory, though
some have achieved excellent local successes.
For example, there is the idea of Bohr and Frenkel of treat
ing the nucleus as though it were a drop of liquid composed of
* Time
waits hardly at all to begin its mockery. Evidence has come from
Geneva that the TT meson does sometimes decay into an electron.
 POSTSCRIPT 239

protons and neutrons nucleons, as these particles are called.

This idea and its offshoots are called collective theories because
they treat the nucleus as a collective whole and are concerned
with such overall effects as the vibrations in its shape and the
circumstances under which these vibrations become so violent
that the nucleus breaks into splatters.
Collective models of the nucleus have not lacked successes.
But many details have eluded them. Take, for example, the
seemingly haphazard numbers 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126.

them magic numbers, a name harking back to

Physicists call
the days when the numbers were less well understood than they
are now. The magic numbers have special nuclear significance;

among the many hundreds of known nuclei, those containing

just these numbers of neutrons or protons stand out from the

rest because of their greater stability and other tell-tale signs.

Clearly they reflect fundamental properties of the possible

configurations of nuclear matter. They present a prime chal
lenge to any nuclear theory. And one such theory has brilliantly
met the challenge. This theory, the shell model, goes back to
the earliest days of nuclear quantum theory. Its characteristic

assumption is that each nucleon can be treated individually

inside the nucleus, and that the motion of any one nucleon

can be calculated by ignoring the individualities of al-1 the

other particles, lumping together the effects of all these other
and then, since these effects are not known in detail,
particles,

replacing them by a sort of non-quantum spherical

box or
container within which the individual nuclear particle splashes
around. This seemingly crude approximation had some initial
successes; but they were not enough to overcome the awkward
ness of its basic assumptions. Indeed, Bohr brought forward
his liquid drop model in protest against the shell model, and
240 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the quick successes of the collective theories caused interest in
the shell model to languish. In those days only a few of the
lowest magic numbers were recognized. But in 1948 Maria

Goeppert-Mayer, in America, collating known experimental

results, showed impressively that the list was indeed magical
and that must include the further numbers 20, 50, 82, and
it

126. This had immediate repercussions. In Germany O. Haxel,

}.
H. D. Jensen, and H. E. Suess proposed a modification of
the shell model of the nucleus, a modification proposed inde

pendently by Goeppert-Mayer. It was a curious modification:

where, before, the effects of the other nucleons were replaced
simply by a spherical container, now there was added a further
effect of a magnetic sort, but one that could not be satisfac

the new effect could be so tailored

torily justified. Nevertheless
to the needs of the moment that the theory was able to account
splendidly not merely for the existence of magic numbers but
for their actual numerical values and for the special nuclear
properties that went with them. In 1950, J. Rainwater, in
America, added further successes to the theory by distorting the
spherical shape of the container.
In the shell model the protons and neutrons within the
nucleus are treated much as the earlier quantum theorists
treated the electrons surrounding the nucleus. The extra-

nuclear electrons determine the chemical properties of atoms,

and the earlier theorists, applying the Pauli exclusion principle
to these electrons, were able to account for the exceptional
chemical stability of the noble gases, helium, neon, argon, and
the like, containing 2, 10, 18, 36, 54, and 86 electrons respec

tively. In essence, they accounted for magic numbers connected

with the chemists' periodic table of the elements. Just so, the

proponents of the shell model have been able to explain the

 POSTSCRIPT 241
magic numbers connected with the physicists' more compli
cated table of the atomic nuclei.
The model has many considerable successes to its
shell

credit successes whose very impressiveness is a source of

puzzlement and embarrassment. For the theory seems obvi

ously incorrect. The nucleus is so crowded with whirling
nucleons that one would expect their mutual jostlings to make
the smoothly regal nuclear motions contemplated by the shell
theorists quite unrealistic. Yet the successes of the theory are

there, and can not be laughed away. All is not dark, however.
Fermi made an illuminating suggestion: we know that the
Pauli exclusion principle prevents two nucleons from sharing
the same quantum state; with so many of the neighboring
states in the crowded nucleus already occupied, a jostled
nucleon has few convenient quantum states to go to, and
so,
unless a jostle is
unusually violent it will be unable to budge
the nucleon from its
regal motion after all. While a quantum
state of motion is an elusive thing to visualize, the general idea
willbe clear to anyone who has tried to budge the straphangers
in a crowded subway train during rush hour.
Shell models and collective models tend to complement
each other, each type working best where the other works
worst. Why not, then, try to fuse the best features of each
into a single theory a unified model of the nucleus? The
idea was proposed in 1952 and proved singularly successful,
not only in explaining known effects but in predicting new
ones that were subsequently confirmed. Not the least pleasing

aspect of the unified model, and one that must have been
particularly gratifying to Niels Bohr, is that it was proposed

by his son Aage Bohr.

There are yet other nuclear models, modifications of the
242 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
basic types above. All are approximations, and each has its
own niche of successes. But the overall picture, while rapidly
becoming clearer and more detailed, is still one of probing
rather than decisive penetration.
Nuclear forces are not properly understood. Even if they
were, the crowded nucleus would pose formidable mathe
matical problems that would make exact calculations
virtually
impossible. This in itself might not be too serious, for most
calculations in physics are perforce approximate ones, and in
these days of giant electronic computers the drudgery of com

putation is no longer the deterrent it once was. But, though

the nuclear models discussed above deal principally with

protons and neutrons, there is still reason to believe that

mesons are deeply involved in nuclear forces, and the numeri
cal values of certain meson constants are so large that
they
on the very validity of the customary approxi
cast grave doubts

mation procedures and thus deprive the theorist of one of his

most potent weapons. What profit is there in performing an
intricate computation when the whole computational proce
dure is
suspect right from the start? The surprising thing is
that these computations sometimes give good results in spite
of their inherent defects.
To add to the woes of the theorist, he has been over
whelmed by a veritable flood of new fundamental particles
discovered in the last few years. They have mocked any
hopes
he may once have entertained that the structure of matter
was on the verge of being clarified. Yet he has managed to
keep bravely abreast of the flood, and has made heroic classi
fications and discovered tantalizing patterns among the new
particles that hint of tremendous things as yet only dimly
perceived. We shall tell of these later. Meanwhile there are
 POSTSCRIPT 243
other events to be reported.
Once upon a time, before the flood, in the far off days of
1928, when the world of the quantum was yet young and
innocent, people believed that the material world was built
of protons, electrons, and photons just three types of par
ticles; and in those days Dirac was trying to make an even
simpler world one built out of only two types of particles
by thinking of protons as absences of negative energy electrons
in a monstrous ocean. This much we have already told, and
we have told, too, how Dirac's absences of electrons proved
to be not protons but positrons.
The idea of a monstrous ocean was awkward, to say the
least; and the situation was not improved by the "fact that,
in principle, Dirac's equations referred to a single electron
and ought not to encompass the teeming swarms needed for
the monstrous ocean and its bubbly turmoil. Something
needed to be done. But what?
Actually Dirac himself had already supplied the clue to the
remedy. He had, as we know, enclosed Maxwellian light in
a box so that it behaved like a collection of oscillators, and
on these oscillators he had then clamped quantum properties.
Where the Maxwellian theory of light had been a wave theory,
the new quantized theory proved to be one that embraced
both the wave and particle aspects and actually referred to
hordes of photons.
The great success of Dirac's theory of light,
its ingenuity,

and its intrinsic air of rightness set men thinking. Heisenberg

and and Jordan and Wigner, and others began extend

Pauli,
other types of waves.
ing the idea and applying it to
What other types of waves? Well, there were the Schro-

dinger waves, for example, and the Dirac electron waves.

244 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
You will object, perhaps, that these are already quantum
waves and represent particles as well as mere waves. In a sense
this is so. Never mind, though. Just wait and see what happens.

There were good reasons for wanting to modify them; so the

theorists took the various types of quantum matter waves,
among them the them as
electron waves of Dirac, treated

though they were "classical" waves on a par with the Max-

weilian light waves, and by a manoeuvre analogous in principle
to that used by Dirac on the light waves, clamped further

quantum properties onto the matter waves a process known

as second quantization.
Perhaps highly successful quantum waves deserved to be
spared the indignity of having this second quantization in
flicted on them. But, as the results emphasized, the
original
Dirac electron waves, for example, really were on a quantum

par with the Maxwellian light waves, and when subjected to

second quantization they blossomed into vastly more potent
entities capable of encompassing myriads of electrons and
positrons in a turmoil of mutual annihilation and pair crea
tion. Then, in 1934, Heisenberg showed how to dispense with
the former monstrous ocean and its bubbles, and to treat
electrons and positrons as co-equals in the
second-quantized
theory.
But one thing in particular marred the rejuvenated Dirac
theory and cast a pall over even its most brilliant successes:
when theorists tried to calculate certain quantities> for exam
ple the amount of energy associated with an electron, they
obtained the ridiculous answer "infinity/' Infinities infested
the theory and insulted its creators. How, then, did the
infinity-bedevilled theorists manage to perform calculations
that could be tested against experimental data? With crossed
 POSTSCRIPT 245
fingers they introduced all sorts of special tricks and dodges
to erode the infinities, or even
snip them out. Their various
ruses kept the infinities
snarlingly at bay while the compu
tations were being performed; but no one
seriously believed
in the validity of the ruses, and who used
probably everyone
them did so with an uneasy mathematical conscience. Never
theless the computations could be made, and the results
gave
spectacular evidence of the aptness of the theory even as the
infinities gave evidence of a
deep-seated malady; deep-seated,
and also pervasive, for though some of the infinities were
inherited from the classical theories, others were the fruits
of the second quantization itself; and both
types could be
blamed on the theory of relativity.
In 1943 Heisenberg, exasperated by the infinities,
proposed
a heroicnew theory designed to avoid their very locale. At
the age of 23, fresh from a stay in Copenhagen and deeply
influenced by the profound, instinctive atomic wisdom of
Bohr that has so surely moulded the world of the quantum,
he had, as we know, renounced the unobservable electron
orbits to build his matrix mechanics. Now he sought to
repeat the triumph of his youth. Stay away, he urged, from
the places where particles clash and infinities cluster. These

places are dark and dangerous. They can not be directly

observed. They are beclouded
by uncertainties, and the hap
penings that we now imagine in them may be as fictitious
as the old electron orbits. Stay with the tried and true, the

things that are clearly seen and indubitable.

What are these things? Are there any at all? Yes. We can
shoot particles at other particles and observe how they are
affected by the collisions. This is, indeed, a principal mode
of exploring atomic phenomena.
246 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Back 1937, Wheeler had introduced
in a mathematical

quantity, the scattering matrix, or S-matrix, that was to

prove ideally suited to Heisenberg's new purpose. Suppose

we have a that mathematically represents our beam of
</>

particles well before the collision, and another $ that repre

sents the scattered beam well after the collision. The hap
penings in the dangerous region are reflected in the changes
in the beam, and these are reflected in the change from the
first */>
Let us then fathom the dangerous
to the second.

region by studying the change. Let us seek the rules that

*/>

govern this change. First we must describe the change appro

priately, and here is where
the S-matrix comes in; for the
S-matrix is an operator which, when applied to the first $,

converts it into the second. Thus the S-matrix becomes the

central object of the new theory, a veritable dossier of news
from the danger zone.
What rules must the S-matrix obey? Heisenberg was loath
to hunt for them among the old ideas and equations that
were suspect in the dangerous regions. He sought to remain
on safe
ground by extracting self-sufficient rules for his

S-matrix from various basic requirements: for example, that

the rules must conform to demands of the theory of rela

tivity, and that they should

not imply that an effect can

precede its cause.

Itwas an ambitious program, and a valiant one. But it
did not succeed. General requirements such as those above
failed to yield sufficiently detailed rules for a self-contained

theory; indeed, the second requirement above proved singu

larly recalcitrant. Thus the
could not be by-passed
infinities

in the manner Heisenberg had envisaged. But the S-matrix

was to play a central role in later developments.
 POSTSCRIPT 247
As for the infinities, they are still with us but greatly
tamed. Unable to avoid them, the theorists have learned to
live with them, as we shall now tell.

When Dirac proposed his theory of the electron in 1928

he could not foresee the adventures that would befall it. Even
without the later idea of the positron bubbles, it had extraor
dinary achievements to its credit. Did it not bring together
quantum theory and relativity? Did it not account for the
spin of the electron? Did it not yield an improvement on the
Sommerfeld formula for the fine structure of the hydrogen

spectrum an improvement that was in excellent agreement

with the intricate details of the observed spectrum?
Here was a theory that commanded respect. But not even
the most impressively successful theories are immune to the

disrespectful probings of the experimenters. How

well did
the Dirac theory really account for the fine structure of the

hydrogen spectrum? Excellently well, apparently. The theory

seemed to match the observations right up to the limits of

precision of the measurements. But the finer details of the

fine structure were not easy to observe, being blurred by the

motions of the hydrogen atoms producing the spectra, and

some observers in the late nineteen-thirties thought they
detected discrepancies peeping through the slight fuzziness
of the spectral lines. No one could be sure, for the measure
ments were difficult. One or two theorists made half-hearted

attempts to explain the possible disagreement, but on the

whole little attention was paid to the matter: life was so
much simpler if one ignored unlikely discrepancies. Never
theless a doubt had been raised.
In 1947 the American experimenter Willis E. Lamb, in
collaboration with R. C. Retherford, put the question to a
248 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
novel test. He used no
prism or grating to produce a spectrum;
he used no optical spectrum at all. Instead he studied the
energy levels directly by a brilliantly ingenious method that
largely avoided the blurring effect of the motions of the atoms
and was capable of yielding results of extraordinary precision.

According to the Dirac theory of the electron, two of the

lower energy levels of hydrogen should have exactly the same

energy. Doubt had been raised as to whether the energies

were in fact exactly equal. The Lamb-Retherford experiment
was conclusive. It transformed what had formerly been a mere
doubt into a glaring discrepancy. The celebrated Dirac theory
of the electron was not in accord with the facts. Though the
shift in the energy was small, the implications of its indu
bitable existence were profound. The phenomenon became
known as the Lamb shift, and Lamb received the Nobel prize
in 1955.

By a happy chance, a conference on the foundations of

quantum mechanics was being held on Shelter Island in June

of 1947. The startling news of the Lamb shift caused frenzied
discussion among the participants; and out of the discussion
came not only swift understanding but also a beautiful
vindication.
First the cause of the Lamb shift was divined, and its

locale in the theory seen to be the very heart of the danger

zone, where it
lay smothered by infinities. Next the Dutch

physicist Kramers made a basic suggestion for dealing with

the infinities. Then H. A. Bethe, who originally came from
Alsace, quickly used it in a
rough, non-relativistic calculation
that gave highly satisfactory results. Upon which the Amer
ican virtuoso Julian Schwinger, and others, began a series of
more detailed, relativistic calculations that were to yield results
 POSTSCRIPT 249
in astoundingly close agreement not only with the experi
mental value of the Lamb shift but also with other anomalies

into which we need not enter. And these dazzling results

flowed from the very Dirac equations that had seemed to be

placed under a pall of doubt.

Seldom has been so rapidly met and resolved. When
a crisis
the initial excitement died down it was found that one of
Schwinger's basic mathematical ideas had been anticipated.
The Japanese theorist S. Tomonaga had published it as far

back as 1943, and its roots stretched back to earlier work by

others. That the idea did not attract wide attention at the
time may be attributed to its having been published in

Japanese, yet the Swiss physicist Stueckelberg had actually

discussed it as early as 1934; and Tomonaga had published
an English version of his own paper in 1946; however the
idea remained relatively unknown till
Schwinger thought of
it independently in the midst of crisis.

What was the secret of the Lamb shift, and how were the
infinities dealt with? The secret lay in long-known phenomena
associated with second quantization phenomena in which
particles are not permanent but may be created and destroyed.
We have all enjoyed stories about men on desert islands.
And some of us have heard the old argument that it is impos
sible for a man to be on a desert island in the first place
because his presence makes the island no longer desert. This
verbal quibble applies, of course, to the world of the quantuip
too. For instance, we can not have an electron in a vacuum
because the presence of the electron negates the vacuum. But
in thequantum world we may not stop with this pleasantry.
The situation is more serious, for the electron destroys the
vacuum not merely by being present but by actually inter-
250 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
acting with the vacuum and modifying it.
This is a strange idea. How can an electron interact with
nothingness?
In the world of the quantum, particles are incessantly ap

pearing and disappearing. What we would think of as empty

space is a teeming, fluctuating nothingness, with photons
appearing from nowhere and vanishing almost as soon as they
are bom, with electrons frothing up for brief moments from
the monstrous ocean to create evanescent electron-positron

pairs, and with sundry other particles adding to the confusion.

Whence comes the energy for the creation of these particles?
It is borrowed. And it is paid back before the default can be
detected. That iswhy the lives of the particles must be
extremely short. Were the particles to
exist for an appreciable

length of time the energy balance would be destroyed.

How does mere shortness of life save the energy balance?
Through Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle. If the life is
short, the time at which the particle exists is sharply defined.
The more sharply we know the time, the less sharply we
know the energy. And if the time is sufficiently sharp the

energy becomes so fuzzy that the violations of the energy

balance are completely obscured. There is a momentum
balance to consider, too, but momenta are blurred when

particles are precisely located, so this too presents no insur

mountable obstacle to fleeting falsification of the books.

.Evanescent, come-and-go particles that evade the laws of

conservation of energy and momentum are called virtual

They were unthinkable in the pre-quantum era.

particles.
Even in the
quantum era they can exist only by virtue of the
Heisenberg principle. But exist they do. And their role is far
from negligible.
 POSTSCRIPT 251
For example, we
place an electron in empty space it
if

immediately conjures forth virtual photons, electrons, posi

trons, and other particles from the void. We have likened it

to a man on a desert island. But we should liken it, rather,

to a man on a picnic, beset by hordes of buzzing midges,
gnats, and mosquitoes that seem to come from nowhere.
An electron in empty space does more than conjure forth

quantum mosquitoes. It also disturbs the larvae: it affects

the breeding ground, the monstrous ocean whence come the
and positrons.
virtual electrons
An electron clothed in a cloud of virtual particles would
behave differently from one that was bare. The quantum
theorists had been well aware of this, but they had shied away
from it. For they well realized that the principal effect of the
cloud of virtual particles would be to increase the effective
mass of the electron, but when they calculated the increase
it came out
infinitely large. Since this infinite answer would
smother everything, the theorists tended to ignore the sec
ondary effects.

Under pressure of the Lamb shift, though, they looked

more closely at these secondary effects these gentle whispers
Downed out by infinite cacophony and realized that among
them lay the most likely solution to the Lamb conundrum.
In the old Dirac theory, nt was as if, in marvelling at the
energy of a man on a picnic fleeing from an enraged bull,
one was so intent on the man's peril that one thought only
of his sprinting feet and overlooked the mosquito-induced
flailing of his swatting arms. Dirac's celebrated calculations
hydrogen atom had been made for
of the energy levels of the
a bare electron moving under the electromagnetic influence
of the nucleus in an old-fashioned, classical emptiness. But
252 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
actually the electron was surrounded by virtual photons in a
modern electromagnetic teeming with quanta, and its
field

interaction with this quantized field would involve not only

the former items taken into account by Dirac but also new
effects arising from the quantum aspects of the field. These

last would shift theenergy levels away from their former

values, and so could perhaps account for the Lamb shift
as in fact it was found that they did.

To explore the possibility further the conferees

had to
devise a way to escape from the smothering dead weight of
the infinities. Kramers took the decisive first step. He pointed
out that we never measure the mass of a bare electron. The
electron always surrounded by its cloud of virtual particles
is

and what we measure is always the total mass of the electron

and its cloud. Our present theory is defective; it
yields infinite
mass for the cloud. Suppose we had a better theory that
yielded a sensible mass. Then we would begin by assigning a
mass to the bare electron, calculate the additional mass due
to the cloud, and say that the combined mass was the mass
we actually observe. Thus the bare mass with which we started

and, indeed, with which theories hitherto had both started

and finished was not the observed mass of the electron. The
bare mass must be adjusted because of the cloud, a process
called mass renormalization.
Now let us return from the delightful realms of fantasy
where all problems are solved by a wonderful theory that
does not yield infinities. Here we are back to earth, our theory

imperfect and a Lamb shift urging us forward. We pick out

the mathematical expression that corresponds to the mass of
the cloud. It is infinite. True. But that is not our fault. It is
the fault of the faulty theory. In a better theory this expres-
 POSTSCRIPT 253
sion would have a suitable value. So let us take this infinite
quantity, add it to the bare mass of the electron, and simply
say dogmatically that we will call the result the observed mass
of the electron. Then all we need do to replace this infinite
is

mathematical quantity by a quite small number furnished us

by the experimenters. It is cheating, of course. But inspired

cheating. And works miracles. For now we can keep the
it

infinities at
bay and calculate the delicate secondary effects
hitherto smothered by them. Bethe's calculations were pos
sible only because of this trick. And all the subsequent
renormalization calculations were utterly dependent on it too.
Renormalization is not confined to mass; it applies to
electric charge too, for example. Though it has an aspect of

chicanery when applied to infinities, it is far from being a

mere trick. Even if we had a theory giving finite answers we
should still have to use the renormalization technique but
in that case we could use it with full mathematical propriety.
With the aid of the renormalization technique, the

quantum electrons, positrons, and photons was

theory of
brought to so high a degree of perfection that no single
phenomenon within its compass remained unaccounted for.
Its predictions were confirmed down to the finest observable
detail by experiments of the utmost refinement. The Dirac

theory of the electron had indeed come into its own, forming
in conjunction with the quantized theory of the electro

magnetic field a triumphant theory able to meet all experi

mental challenges with a dazzling precision that placed it
among the most successful physical theories of all time.
And yet the infinities are still there, lurking and snarling,
tamed but unvanquished. Renormalization pushes the accom
of the theory
plishments of the theory beyond the limitations
 254 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
itself, and shows that deep down thereis
something essen
tially right beneath the morass of infinities that are
certainly
wrong. It does not show us how to prevent the infinities
from occurring, but only how to live with them. It does not
point the way to a new theory free of the curse of the infinities
or if it does, no one has yet interpreted its hints correctly.
Rather it seems to take us farther than ever into a cul-de-sac.
The audacious juggling with infinities is extraordinarily bril
liant. But its brilliance seems to illuminate a blind alley.
There is another major theoretical advance to report. It

begins in the year 1948,

though go its roots farther back; and
nothing less than a new mathematical formulation of
it is

quantum mechanics by an American youngster, Richard P.

Feynman, then barely out of graduate school. It has to do in

part with the notion of time.

We really know very little about time, yet it is the stuff
of which life is made. We live our lives trapped in the fleeting
present, a timeless boundary between past and future whose
flow is the very essence of time. Memory may cheat the present
by bringing fond recollections; but we can not return to the
days of our youth, for time hastens on whether we will it or
not. Nor can we speed time in its
flight; we must wait
patiently till tomorrow comes.
Yet in imagination we can
escape the grip of the present
and roam freely in the realm of time. can move forward We
and back into future and and
peer past map the domain
as if it were ever present. To restore the semblance of the
flow of time we view our static map with an eye that roves
from past to future, much as a doctor might scan the fever
chart of a patient
The mapping of time is a commonplace in science, and
 POSTSCRIPT 255
furnishes valuable insights. We do not always use it, though.
For instance, when, as is
customary quantum theory, we
in

think of particles as progressive waves we think of them

as in the perennial, flowing present, and write equations

expressing the manner in which they evolve as they go from

one present to a present a moment later.

Young Feynman let go the apron strings of the present

by making a map of the past and the future and treating

the particles therein as particles rather than waves. By so

doing he forsook the firmly entrenched tradition of Hamilton

with its
emphasis on progressive waves, and returned, in
essence, to the earlier way of Lagrange.
In everyday life when we make maps of time, for example
in graphs of temperature and rainfall, and of business con
ditions and the like, we
usually think of time as progressing
from left to right. Feynman, schooled in the theory of rela
tivity, followed the relativistic
custom of representing time as
flowing from bottom to top of his map. In theory, his map
had four dimensions, three belonging to space and one to
time; but for practical purposes he sketched maps with two
dimensions only, one of space and one of time.
Let us take a blank sheet of graph paper and represent
space horizontally and time vertically. Suppose we place
a
dot somewhere on the graph paper. What sort of thing will
it represent? Remember that time flows upwards. To bring
this vividly to mind let
us view the graph paper through a
"time slot/' a narrow horizontal slot that moves steadily
upwards, from bottom to top of the paper. What we see
through the any instant is space in the present; when
slot at

the slot we are blind to both past and future.

looking through
With only a single dot on the graph paper we shall most of
256 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
the time see nothing at all through our time slot. Then the
dot will suddenly appear for one brief moment and be gone.
Clearly the dot will not adequately represent a particle. A
particle persists in time. To represent it on our map we must
draw a line a world line, in relativistic parlance. Suppose
we draw a vertical line.Then as we view it through our
travelling time slot we see a persisting dot that remains at
rest in the slot. Thus our vertical world line can represent
a particle at rest. Do we want a particle that moves to the

right? Then we draw a world line that slopes to the right,

for when we view it through our time slot we see a dot

moving to the right. For a particle that moves to the left

we draw a world line sloping to the left. A zig-zag line would

represent a particle that changed speed abruptly, as though

colliding with other objects.
What of a pair of particles suddenly created? V-shaped A
mark can take care of that. For as we look through our

moving time slot we at first see nothing; then when we reach

the apex of the V we see a dot that at once becomes two
dots scurrying away from each other in opposite directions.
For two particles that annihilate each other we need an
inverted V.
Now that we understand the rules, let us try our hands
with a little story. Here is the scenario:
We start with a lone electron, Ei.
Suddenly a positron-
electron pair, Po, E 2 , is created, and P 2 and E 2
speed apart.
Now we have three particles. But after a while positron P 2
encounters the original electron Ei and the two annihilate
each other. This leaves the second electron, E 2> as the sole
survivor. In real life photons would be involved
along with
the electrons and positrons, but we shall concentrate only on
Ei, E2 ,
and P 2 here.
 POSTSCRIPT 257
How will our space-time map look? Here is a possible
version:

View this through the travelling time slot and you will

easily see that it follows the scenario faithfully.

So far there is
nothing at all new. Three world lines to
represent three particles that is standard practice.
But in his graduate student days, Feynman had collaborated
with Wheeler on a theory wherein certain effects could pre
cede their causes.* And during their collaboration Wheeler
had had a remarkable idea. Like the boy who cried "The
7

Emperor has no clothes/ he had suddenly realized there was

only one world line, not three. Look at it. One zig-zag line.
Count it.

No doubt we makes the ?2 part

retort in horror that this

run backwards in time; that the graph has three sensible

world lines like this

*
For reasons connected with the war, part III of their study appeared four years
before part II. Could one reasonably ask for a more telling experimental con
firmation of their thesis of topsy-turvy time?
2 58 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM

not one nonsensical one like this

But let us not dismiss the idea so hastily. Admittedly the

new scenario is
vastly different from the original one, running,
as it does, as follows:

We start with a lone electron, Ei. At a particular moment

the electron undergoes a collision so violent that it causes the
electron to speed into the past. Then if that is the word

at an earlier moment it undergoes another or perhaps we

 POSTSCRIPT 259
should say a previous violent collision that causes it to go
forward into the future.
Yet when viewed through our time slot the new diagram
tells the same story as the old one did.

Note how one zig-zag world line can give rise to the simul
taneous presence of three particles. When Wheeler first had
his idea he saw in a flash astupendous cosmic pattern: a
single electron shuttling back and forth, back and forth, back
and forth on the loom of time to weave a rich tapestry con
taining perhaps all the electrons and positrons in the world.
Given the outlandish idea that an electron might travel
towards the past, we can easily see how the electron when
so moving would appear as a positron moving towards the
future. For an electromagnetic field that pushes an electron
in a particular direction pushes a positron, which has opposite
electric charge, in the opposite direction; and a particle moving
to the left as time progresses moves to the right when we run
time backwards.
Feynman did dazzling things with the zig-zag world lines.
He showed, for instance, that there is an essential similarity
between

and
26O THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM

even though the physical processes seem at first glance quite

dissimilar. In each case an electron undergoes two collisions,

with objects not represented in the diagram. In the former

the world line points throughout towards the future, and
when we look at it through our moving time slot we see
the
electron make two abrupt changes of speed. In the latter the

collisions, being more violent, reverse the direction in time,

and when we look through our time slot we see pair creation
and annihilation. In a sense the only difference between the
two cases is that in the former the collisions occur in the

expected order while in the latter the second collision occurs

before the first. Does that phrase "the only difference" strike

you as an understatement? It is, of course. Yet not as great

a one For Feynman did more than just point out
as it seems.

that the diagrams are similar zig-zags with two bends each.
He demonstrated that the mathematics of the mild collisions

was in principle the same as that of the violent ones, so that

the two types could indeed be treated on an equal footing.
And he went much further than this. He associated proba
with the various possible world lines and developed
bilities

thereby a complete reformulation of quantum mechanics.

 POSTSCRIPT 26l

The older formulations our entrapment in the

reflected

present by viewing the world through a moving time slot

and describing the evolution of waves from moment to
moment; but Feynman took an Olympian view of time.
Where the earlier formulations groped their way into the
future as though through a fog, Feynman strode boldly,

basing his strategy on time maps and following individual

particles through their zigs and zags as readily towards the
past as towards the future. In his world lines for photons,
electrons, mesons, and the like, he had a graphic accounting

system for the hitherto confusing tangle of collisions, crea

tions, and annihilations, both real and virtual, that might
occur. With each possible idiosyncrasy of the time map he
was able to associate a corresponding mathematical expression,
so that his time maps became simple campaign outlines for

complex mathematical investigations.

Previously in solving their quantum mechanical equations,
the theorists had often resorted to mathematical manoeuvres
that could not readily be interpreted in physical terms. But

Feynman's graphs described the actual physical happenings,

and his mathematics, paralleling the convolutions of his

graphs, remained intimately related to the physical processes

under discussion, each mathematical term having its direct
physical counterpart. Where the earlier calculations became
lost in the terrain so confusingly glimpsed through the

moving time slot, Feynman, with his overall picture, could

steer his mathematics through hitherto impenetrable com
plications. The Feynman graphs, and the mathematical tech
niques based on them, have become invaluable basic tools of
modern quantum theory, transforming its outlook and vastly
its power.
increasing
262 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
In his theory, Feynman was concerned with the life his

tories of particles and followed them through their various

collisions. Thus he related their behavior before the collisions
to their behavior after the collisions, and in this sense he had
an S-matrix theory. But it differed from the theory envisaged
by Heisenberg. It did not avoid the danger regions. On the
contrary, it followed the particles wherever they went and
took its chances with the infinities.Again, Heisenberg had
sought to create a new physical theory free from some of the
But Feynman's theory, for all
pressing defects of the old. its

remarkable novelty, was proved to be basically equivalent to

the old, the proof of this equivalence being due principally

to F. Dyson, a youthful theorist who came from England
J.

to work in America and fell under Feynman's influence just

at the crucial time when the new formulation was being

developed.
It is time now to tell briefly about the new particles that
have been discovered in such unexpected abundance. To
follow the chronological order of their discovery would be

unnecessarily confusing. We shall group them a little to make

their pattern clearer.

First, then, let us mention the experimental detection of

the elusive neutrino. With the advent of atomic piles,
neutrinos came be in plentiful supply; for in a typical
to

large pile the power leakage due to neutrinos is enough to

light a small town. One might imagine, therefore, that the

supply was ample for the experimenters bent on detecting
the neutrinos. But the ability of neutrinos to penetrate the
massive shielding surrounding a pile is striking evidence of the

difficulty of stopping neutrinos in their headlong flight to

the ends of the universe. So minute a proportion of the
 POSTSCRIPT 263
fleeing neutrinos couldbe entrapped that the supply was
barely enough for the experimenters. It required an experi
ment of heroic proportions,
culminating three years of work
by F. Reines and C. L. Cowan, and others, before the neutrino
was detected at Los Alamos in
finally 1956.
The neutrino, of course, was an expected particle. Yet it
had eluded the experimenters for more than twenty years after
its existence was first suspected. There was another
particle
longer. The theorists had
that eluded the experimenters even
found that their equations possessed a certain symmetry be
tween positive and negative charge known as invariance under
charge conjugation. This told them that to every type of par
ticle there
ought to correspond an anti-particle. A positron, as
we already know, is an anti-electron; and this means that the
electron automatically qualifies as an
anti-positron. But the
invariance under charge conjugation implied that all
particles,
including even electrically neutral ones, should have their
anti-particles. In Feynman graphs, for example, particles and
anti-particles are represented by world lines pointing in oppo
time directions, and when a particle and its anti-particle
site

meet they annihilate each other with enormous release of

energy.
In particular, since protons exist, there ought to be anti-

protons too. An anti-proton would have the same mass as a

proton but an opposite electric charge. No such particle was

known. The experimenters had searched diligently for anti-
protons, but for years they had searched in vain, and doubts
arose as to whether the anti-proton existed. With the
passage
of time, though, the synchrocyclotrons and other atom-smash

ing machines grew in power till at last they were capable of

producing the enormous energies needed to create proton and
264 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
anti-proton pairs if
anti-protons existed, that
Indeed, the is.

Bevatron at Berkeley, California, was designed with anti-

protons in mind. Andin 1955 a team of Berkeley scientists,
headed by E. Segre, succeeded, in a brilliantly conceived ex

periment, in producing protons and anti-protons and, what

was crucial, in identifying the latter unmistakably as anti-
protons. The achievement was greeted
with admiration min

gled with because the symmetry of the theory

relief; relief

was now confirmed. Anti-neutrons quickly followed.

Yet all was not symmetric. Anti-protons have negligible
chance of survival. are quickly annihilated
They by ordinary
If there
protons, the latter being in ample supply.
is
complete
symmetry between protons and anti-protons, why are protons
so common and anti-protons so rare? A possible answer is

simply that the universe always has had far more protons than
initial holocaust of mutual
anti-protons, so that after a possible
annihilations protons have survived in large numbers and anti-

protons hardly at all. This is a lop-sided answer. A more sym

metrical one is that the numbers of protons and anti-protons
are comparable, but that we happen to be in a part of the
universe where the protons predominate. Predominance of

protons carries with it such effects as predominance of elec

trons over positrons. So if the second answer is correct we
must picture the universe as containing regions occupied by
matter anti to ours. A
conjunction of two such dissimilar
regions would be catastrophic.
Up to about 1950, although their number and diversity
bloated the appearance of atomic physics, almost all of the
known fundamental be encompassed within
particles could

accepted ideas; only the ^ mesons seemed misfits. But then

came a deluge of unexpected and unwelcome new particles
 POSTSCRIPT 265
that the theorists, withdespairing candor, quickly called
"strange particles/' Some were heavier than protons. The
others, called K
particles, were new types of mesons, heavier
than the old mesons but lighter than protons. The immediate
strangeness of these new particles lay in their lifetimes, which
were in the neighborhood of a billionth of a second. Short
though this may seem, it was, according to accepted ideas,
actually far too long tens, even hundreds of billions of times
too long. It was, indeed, a lifetime!
The long lifetimes had disconcerting implications. Gravita
tional and electromagnetic forces have long been known, the
former being intrinsically many billions of billions of billions
of billions of times weaker than the latter. In the quantum era
other types of forces were discovered, and after a while people

began to notice that they fell into two widely disparate groups,
being either very strong or very weak, with none in between.
The strong forces, associated with processes involving nucleons
and others of the heavier particles were intrinsically more
than a hundred times stronger than the electromagnetic forces,
being indeed the strongest forces of which we have any knowl
edge; the weak forces, intrinsically about a hundred thousand
billion times weaker than the strong forces, were originally
recognized as being associated with processes involving

neutrinos.

Just as a spring vibrates faster than a pliant one, so do

stiff

processes involving strong interactions go intrinsically faster

than those involving weak ones. Thus particles whose decays
are governed by strong interactions should have much shorter
lifetimes than particles that decay by weak ones. Now the

problem of the strange particles lay in this: since they are

produced in strong interactions, they are certainly susceptible

266 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
to the influence of strong interactions, and should therefore
decay by strong interactions; but they have lifetimes character
istic of weak interactions. And in addition to the numerical

discrepancy of the lifetimes, there was a qualitative discrep

ancy, for there seemed no room for conventional weak inter
actions anyway since no neutrinos were involved in the decay.

The strange particles were

gawky intruders that simply did
not fit scheme of things.
into the accepted
In 1952, at the Institute for Advanced Study, the theorist
A. Pais, who came to America from Holland, saw a way out of
the difficulty. Fresh from the stimulus of an international con
ference at Rochester, N. Y. largely devoted to the matter, and

benefiting from elaborate studies that had been made of the

strange particles, particularly by Y. Namba, S. Oneda, and
other Japanese physicists, Pais suggested that there must be
some rule some law of nature that prevents strange par
ticlesfrom being produced singly. If, for example, two differ
ent types of strange particles were produced in a strong
interaction, and the two particles immediately moved away
from each other, they could slip through the fingers of the life-

shortening, two-particles-at-a-time grip of the strong interac

tion and live to a ripe old age of a billionth of a second. Their

leisurely decline would then have to involve a new type of

*weak interaction to be added to the neutrino group.
This idea had important repercussions. It resolved the para
dox of the lifetimes; it revealed the existence of a new group
of weak interactions not necessarily involving neutrinos; and,
above all, it posed a formidable theoretical problem: why

could strange particles not be formed singly in strong inter

actions?
The promising beginning of an answer came a year later,
 POSTSCRIPT 267
when the American M. Gell-Mann and the Japanese scientist
K. Nishijima independently proposed a scheme for bringing a
measure of order to the crowd of fundamental particles. It
introduced a new quantum number, S, measuring, in whole
numbers, a baffling quantity that is
aptly called the strange
ness. What it meant physically was obscure and still is. But
it the pattern of the fundamental particles,
beautifully clarified
and even required the existence of further particles that were
later detected experimentally. Thus the price of order was an

increase in the number of particles; but this was really no price

at all, for the new particles would anyway have been detected
sooner or later.

Strangeness may seem to belong more to poetry than

physics. But do not be misled by a word. Whatever it may be,
strangeness is lumpy stuff: so far, it has been found only in
units of 2, i, o, i, and 2. It is fairly durable stuff, too, for

itcan be neither created nor destroyed in strong interactions,

though, curiously, this is not the case in weak interactions.
Let us confine ourselves to strong interactions for a moment.
Of the particles that interact strongly, the nucleons and ir
mesons have S equal to zero; this being the badge of their
unstrangeness; the rest are strange in varying degrees. Sup
all

pose two unstrange particles collide. There is zero strangeness

initially. Therefore there must be zero strangeness after the
collision. But we can not have zero strangeness with only

one strange particle; we need at least two for example,

one with S = 1 and another with S = -1. Thus the rule dis
cerned a year before by Pais was seen to be the law of conser
vation of strangeness in strong interactions. This law was not
invented ad hoc to satisfy Pais' requirement. It was a conse

quence of quite different things having to do with electrical

268 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
forces. Nor is by any means the only instance of exquisite
this
of the fundamental par
dovetailing in the emerging pattern
ticles. The pattern holds together well. It is not jerry-built.

Yet there are far too manytypes of fundamental particles

for comfort. How many? There comes a time when the truth
can be embarrassing. Let me answer with the classic feminine

phrase "over twenty-one/'

Thus do I keep my estimate fresh

for many a decade and protect myself against the flow of new
discoveries threatened when giant accelerators now abuilding
are completed.

My protection is
only partial though. I am still vulnerable
in a way no woman For surely there is some deeper unity
is.

beneath the present multiplicity, and should this be discovered

it could reduce the number of really fundamental particles well

below twenty-one. Even without such a principle the number

of particles has not always risen, as the following, final item
in this postscript will now show.

Imagine an experimenter who, after spending long months

is about to perform his experiment
setting up his apparatus,
to test a law of physics. On his way to the laboratory he has
an attack of appendicitis and is Two
rushed to the hospital.
weeks later he performs his experiment.
In writing up his account of the experiment for publication,
he does not mention his appendectomy and the delay it
caused. Why not?
Because it is irrelevant. Obviously.

Obviously, indeed. Yet there an important principle be

is

hind this "obviously": the precise moment at which one

makes an experiment to test a physical law is usually irrele
vant so far as the testing of that law is concerned.
Whether the experiment is performed now or a couple of
 POSTSCRIPT 269
weeks hence, makes no essential difference in the results ob
tained; the laws of physics will not change in the meantime.
At least we hope not; and more than just hope, we assume not.
If the experiment is an important one, other physicists, at
different places and different times, will
repeat it, making
allowances for any accidental items like differences of
tempera
ture and atmospheric pressure; and, if the
original experiment
was an honest one, they will get the same essential results.
Even the original experimenter repeats his own
if
experiment
in his own he does so not at a different time
laboratory only
but also at a vastly different place; for the earth does not
stand still in the heavens.
The irrelevance of location in time and space will be re
flected in the mathematical form of the equations that express
the basic laws of physics; the equations will have certain
simple
characteristics that ensure that the laws
they express are the
same at any time or place.
So far we seem to be saying nothing particularly
exciting.
But now comes a profound mathematical consequence. If our
equations reflect the irrelevance of location in time, then,
automatically, they imply a law of conservation and the con
servation turns out to be a conservation of
energy. If our equa
tions reflect irrelevance of location in
space, there must be a
corresponding law of conservation, in this case a conservation
of momentum. Conservation laws are linked to irrelevancies.
That and momentum should prove to be partners
position
or that time and energy should,
here, ought not to surprise us
unduly. We have already met them as partners in indeter

minacy; and their partnerships go back to the classical

mechanics of the pre-quantum era.

There are other irrelevancies, and other conservation laws.

 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
For example, it does not matter fundamentally which way
round we place our apparatus; experimenters in America, Aus
tralia, England, and Russia can check each others' results
though the directions of their ups and downs are quite
different, as are those of their easts and wests, and their norths
and souths. Coupled with this irrelevance of orientation in
space is the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Again, we know from experimentthat electric charge is

conserved; a positron, for example, can annihilate an electron,

but the not thereby altered. Corresponding to
total charge is

this conservation there is an irrelevance of a curious sort. It

iscalled independence of gauge, or gauge invariance, and can
be thought of as an irrelevance of location on a hypothetical
mathematical line known as the gauge space. This one-dimen
sional gauge space not akin to ordinary space. Yet a unified
is

field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism has been con

structed in relativity by considering it as an additional dimen

sion making, with space and time, a five-dimensional world.
Thus though the gauge space may seem like something of a
mathematical fiction, it is, like many other such fictions, a

powerful one. It should be, too, being related to so funda

mental a law as the conservation of electric charge. Moreover
deeper conservations suggest that two hypothetical dimensions
may be involved, forming an entity known as isotopic spin

space.
There is one irrelevance that is
particularly relevant here:
the irrelevance of handedness. If, instead of viewing nature

directly, we view it in a mirror, thereby interchanging right-

handedness and left-handedness, we can expect to notice no
difference in the basic physical laws. This irrelevance differs
from the previous ones in not leading to a conservation law
 POSTSCRIPT 271
in classical theory. It does lead to one in quantum theory,
though, as E. Wigner showed as far back as 1927; a curious

one called the conservation of parity.

Parity is not a readily visualizable entity. It is a quality of

evenness or oddness. Particles in various states have either
even or odd parity, and the rules for combining parities hap
pen to be the same as those for combining even and odd
numbers. For example, two even numbers add up to an even
number; correspondingly, a system consisting of two smaller
systems, each of even parity, has even parity. Again, two odd
numbers add up to an even number; and, correspondingly,
two systems of odd parity form a system having even parity.
Further, anodd and even number add up to an odd number;
and a system of odd parity and one of even parity yield a
system of odd parity.
Suppose a particle of even parity disintegrates into two
particles. Then the law of conservation of parity tells us that
these two particles must form a system of even parity; that is,
the two particles must both be of even parity or else both be
of odd parity. But a particle of odd parity breaking up into twe
particles must yield one particle of even parity and one of odd
parity; otherwise the total parity would be altered.
Thus the law of conservation of parity limits the number of
possibilities, and
has proved invaluable in quantum physics,
it

showing why many processes were never observed, their non-

occurrence being otherwise incomprehensible. It was first
noticed by the theorist Otto Laporte in Germany back in 1924,
in connection with an analysis of the
extremely complex spec
trum of This was in the era of the Bohr theory, before the
iron.

explosive emergence of the new quantum theory, and the

principle has had an extensive and honorable career since then.
272 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Without it, for example, the complex disintegration scheme of
the fundamental particles would have seemed wildly
capricious.
Among the strange particles were some called (theta)
and others called r (tau) particles. They were K
particles
mesons.
Now a charged theta could decay into two v mesons; a
tau into three. Since the parities of the rr mesons are
charged
odd, the law of conservation of parity showed that the O's

should have even parity and the T'S odd.

But this conflicted with other information about the 6'$

and r's that was coming in from the experimenters. The

masses of 0's and example, were about the same, and
r's, for

so were their lifetimes. With much cogent evidence suggesting

?

that the Q's and r s were really the same types of particles, the

pronouncement of parity that they were different was unpleas

antly jarring to physicists. The anomaly was

discovered in Eng
land in 1953 by the theorist R. Dalitz in a masterly analysis of
the available experimental evidence, and as better measure
ments were made they served only to accentuate the conflict.
Soon the 0-r puzzle had become one of the central scientific
was a prime topic of discussion at the 1956
issues'of the day. It

International Conference at Rochester, N. Y., and with no

satisfactory solution forthcoming,

some of the participants

even wondered whether the law of conservation of parity

might be false. This was a striking measure of their despera
tion, for the evidence for the validity of the parity law was

particularly strong.
Stimulated by the discussions -at the conference, two young
Chinese theorists, Tsung Dao Lee, of Columbia University,
and Chen Ning Yang, of the Institute for Advanced Study,
 POSTSCRIPT 273
decided to examine together, with skeptical eyes, the seem
ingly overwhelming evidence in favor of parity conservation.
The evidence was indeed strong; yet weakness was to be
its undoing. For, on meticulously assessing the extensive
experimental data, Lee and Yang made a staggering discovery:
though the evidence for the conservation of parity was com
pelling in the realm of strong interactions and electromagnetic
interactions, in the realm of the weak interactions it was
inconclusive.
Now
the center of the 0-r puzzle lay among weak interac
tions. Thus there was here a hint of a possibility of a tiny

loophole. This was enough for Lee and Yang. Boldly, though
with understandable signs of trepidation, for they were staking
their reputations on a possibly ludicrous gamble, they took
two enormous they suggested that parity might not
steps: first
be conserved in any of the weak interactions; and then they
brought this speculation down to earth by showing specifically
how it could be tested by experiment.
Nothing could better indicate the audacity of Lee and Yang
than the fact that their proposals were promptly pooh-poohed
by Pauli.

Lee and Yang were theorists. They could point out where
to look for possible non-conservation of parity, and what par
ticular symptoms to look for. And in principle their suggestion

was simple enough: test whether processes involving weak

interactions have definite handedness; see, in fact, whether
the mirror images of such processes are physically impossible.
But designing feasible experiments and performing them
called for other talents.
So they took their problem to the experimenters, notably
their gifted Chinese colleague C. S. Wu
at Columbia Univer-
274 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
sity. With her mastery of the resources of the experimental
art she designed a feasible experiment. First, atoms of cobalt
60 were to be lined up with their spins parallel a difficult

two-stage operation calling for an ingenious use of interactions

with other atoms. Then, to reduce the trembling that is heat,

everything was, so to speak, to be frozen in place for the few

minutes during which the crucial measurements were to be
made. Therefore E. Ambler, the American cryogenics expert
at the Bureau of Standards in Washington, D. C., was called

in,and the experiment was transferred to his laboratory where

low temperature facilities were available. There and Wu
Ambler and their coworkers girdled the heart of their experi
ment with an electric current. The current produced a mag
netic field; the magnetic field lined up atoms in crystals of
cerium magnesium nitrate; and these atoms in turn lined up
cobalt atoms that had been incorporated into the crystal sur
faces. The
experimenters froze the lined-up atoms into relative
quiescence. And they watched the directions in which elec
trons came off as the cobalt underwent radioactive decay a

seemingly trifling matter, yet a fateful one.

Place your watch on the table face up, and imagine that the
electric current aligning the cobalt atoms flows clockwise
around the rim of the watch. View this in a vertical mirror and
the current will seem to flow in the opposite direction. Sup

pose the electrons come off equally upwards and downwards.

Then the mirror image will be equivalent to the actuality, being

just the actuality upside down. But if more electrons come off

upwards than downwards, or vice versa, the actuality will have

a definite handedness and its mirror image will differ from it

as a right hand does from a left. Wu

and Ambler and their
co-workers found that the electrons did not come off equally
 POSTSCRIPT 275

upwards and downwards. The actuality was intrinsically differ

ent from its mirror
image. Lee and Yang were vindicated.
Handedness was important. Parity was not conserved. And
this was in a weak interaction, each electron given off being

accompanied by a neutrino.

Even experiment was in progress a quite different

as this

one was being performed using the Columbia cyclotron. This

too corroborated the daring conjecture of Lee and Yang, the
results of the two experiments actually
being published
simultaneously.
Lee and Yang were vindicated. Yet, ironically, the experi
ments that brought them fame did not directly resolve the
0-r
paradox that had inspired them. True, the experiments
were concerned with weak interactions. But, for practical rea
sons, they dealt with weak interactions involving neutrinos.

They could thus be interpreted as showing that neutrinos

possess definite handedness. But no neutrinos were involved

in the 0-r puzzle, the weak interactions there being of a non-
neutrino kind.
Once the had been breached, however, evi
parity rampart
dence began to pour in from all sides confirming the violation
of parity conservation in weak interactions. And soon direct
evidence was found that handedness is significant in certain

processes involving weak interactions of the non-neutrino

sort, though still not the actual 6 and r interactions. Thus we

now know from direct experimental evidence that parity non-
conservation not confined to neutrino processes. And in the
is

face of so much evidence, the 0-r puzzle ceases to be a puzzle

and becomes rather the of a rapidly increasing list of
first

experimental confirmations of the non-conservation of parity

in weak interactions of all types.
276 THE STORY OF THE QUANTUM
Evidently, then, all weak interactions are kin. But they
seem to have disparate origins, and why they should be kin is
a mystery to which at present there seems to be not even an

inkling of a solution.
With parity conservation gone, handedness appears domi
nant and physics seems destined to denounce its mirror image
as unphysical.

But softly. Not so fast. Handedness does not yet have the
upper hand. There still may be a sort of mirror symmetry
in the world. The laws of physics may still be their own
mirror image, as Lee and Yang, and, independently, the Rus
sian theorist L. Landau pointed out. Let us give our mirror
magical power. When it
interchanges right and left, let it

also interchange matter and anti-matter. Then unless our

basic theory is
physics viewed in the magic
playing us false
mirror can be valid physics; the laws governing left-handed
still

matter, for example, can be the same as those governing right-

handed anti-matter despite the non-conservation of parity.
Parity non-conservation has thrown physics into a turmoil
that is still raging, but we may not tell here of the
many
further ramifications of the mirrorsymmetry problem. This
postscript is even though much has been
already far too long,
omitted that could make excellent claim to be included. For
example, there nothing here about the various "non-local"
is

theories of Yukawa and others. Nor about the recent

attempt
of Heisenberg to formulate a
simple, all-embracing theory to
account for the existence and properties of the fundamental
particles. Nor have I mentioned recent attempts to reinstate

causality among the basic principles of quantum physics, no

tably by D. Bohm, that have inspired de Broglie to extend

his early ideas of a causal
interpretation of quantum theory
 POSTSCRIPT 277

fascinating matters, but their outcome remains in doubt. Iso-

topic spin, which is related to strangeness, has received only

niggardly attention, though it seems destined to play a signifi

cant role in future developments. And for all that this post

script may seem to be packed full to overflowing, it

merely
skims a few of the high spots of a chaotically surging tale.
But now my space has all run out and I must bring this

postscript to an end.
Adieu.
 INDEX

a-particle, 46-7, 183-4, 210 Bothe, 212

Action, 79, 141 Bubble, 207-10
Ambler, 274 Bundles of energy, 22-26
Anderson, 209, 223
Antielectron, 20t9, 263
Anti-particle, 263-64. See also 276 y rays, 46, 146. See also 14
Appendicitis, 268 California, 17
Archimedes, 61 Causality, 174, 179-81, 187, 192-
Armaments, 35-41, 83, 166 93, 199, 276. See also 14-15,
Artillery, 40, 167-68 246, 257
Atom, Bohr's, advent of, 51 Cayley, 102, 120
Bohr's, as oracle, 215-18 Chadwick, 211-12
probabilities in world of, 176 Charge, 47, 59, 61, 209-14, 218-20,
Rutherford's, 47-54, 62, 201, 224 223, 227-28, 237, 253, 259, 263,
Atomic bomb, 31, 200, 211-12, 219, 270, 272
228 Chemistry, 16, 45, 46, 68, 186, 188,
energy, 31 200, 210, 240
processes, undisputed facts Chess, 130-32
about, 181 Chicken, color of, 159-60
Child, 156-57, 172, 173, 189
Circumference, 19-20, 56
fl-particle, 46-47 Clarinet, 86-87
Balmer, 48-50, 57-59, 91-95, 104, Cloud Chamber, 40-41, 83, 166
110, 116-17, 191 Cobalt, 274
Bare electron, 251-53 Coin, 161-64, 175, 178, 180, 186
Barium, 226-27 Collective theories, 239-41
Beat note, 116-18 Columbus, 177
Becker, 212 Compton, 40-41, 195-9-6
Becquerel, 44-45 Condon, 203
Bell, E. T., see Taine Conservation, 31, 57, 236, 250, 2-67-
Bell Telephone Laboratories, 80 76
Bethe, 248, 253 Contradiction, absence of, 169,
Bohm, 276 173, 181
Bohr, A., 241 Conversi, 236
Bohr, N., 24, 43-75, 79, 84-85, 88- Corks, 77-78
90, 97, 103, 108, 110, 113-14, Correspondence principle, 64-66,
117, 124, 126, 130, 133-37, 84-85, 88-90, 103, 106, 108,
141, 145, 148, 152, 156, 171- 225
72, 177, 191-92, 215-16, 224- Cosmic rays, 14, 201-2, 209, 223,
26, 229, 231, 238-39, 241, 245, 236-37
271 Courant, 123
Born, 72-73, 85, 102-7, 130, 142- Cowan, 263
43, 160, 236 Crowd effects, 166-70, 197-98

279
280 INDEX
Curie, L, 210, 212 as frequency, 22, 27-29, 74-75,
Curie, M., 44-45, 107, 210 147, 153, 162, 184
Curie, P., 45, 107 as mass, 30-31, 74-75, 78, 226
atomicity of, 26
Dalitz, 272 bundles of, 22-26
Darwin, 137 jumps, 57, 62, 88-89, 206-7, 215-
Davisson, 80-83 17
de Broglie, 73-85, 109-14, 119, 122- ladder, 58, 60, 62, 204-5, 219
25, 136-37, 141, 146, 177, 276 negative, 205-8
Desert island, 249 Epstein, 63
Determinacy, 175-76 Ether, 7, 11, 12, 31-33, 178
Determinism, 187. See also Cau Exactitude, 174-75, 179
sality Exchange forces, 184-85, 221, 225-
Deuteron, 211, 215 26
Diffraction patterns, 38, 44, 81 Exclusion principle, 68-69, 130,
Dirac, 104-9, 117, 118, 123-25, 128- 184-85, 188, 206-7, 240-41
37, 141, 145, 154, 158, 172, Experiment, 145, 154, 165, 169,
179, 205-10, 213, 243-44, 247- 174, 178-81, 191, 194-95. See
53 also Hertz; observation
theory of light, 134-36, 243
Dynamics, 7, 14, 79, 120-22, 126 Facts, undisputed, underlying
Dyson, 262 quantum mechanics, 181
Faraday, 9-11, 222
Fermat, 79
Eddington, 61, 172 Fermi, 212, 220, 241
Einstein, 2, 10, 11, 24-33, 39, 43,
Feynman, 254-63
Fictional space, 115, 120-22, 136,
57, 60-62, 67-70, 73-76, 80,
102, 109, 119, 134-36, 147, 209, 141, 178
229-30 Field, 11, 199, 222, 224
Fine structure of spectral lines,
Electricity and magnetism, 2, 9-
63, 67, 136, 138, 247
15, 27, 28, 34-35, 222, 224, 265,
Fission, 212, 226-27
270, 273
Force, 68, 184
Electron, 25, 41, 46-47, 53-59, 80- in nucleus, 221-30
83, 114, 151-52, 155-60, 176, tubes of, 10-11, 222
181-85, 236, 238, 240, 243-74 Foucault, 9
Dirac's theory of, 136-38, 205- Fourier, 85, 88-99
10, 243-44, 247-48 Fractions, addition of, 98
fraction of, not observed, 143, of electron not observed, 143,
168 168
part wave and part particle, Franck, 60
165-73 Free will, 16, 180
smeared, 116-18, 141-42 Frenkel, 225, 227, 238
See also Exclusion principle; Frequency, 13-14, 48, 88-91, 93-96.
Microscope Neutrino ; Nu
; See also Balmer
cleus ;
Photoelectric effect ; as energy, 22, 27-29, 74-75, 147,
Spin; Tennis; Volcano 153, 162, 184
Energy, 20-26, 53, 57, 58, 73, 78, Fresnel, 8, 12, 30
101, 121, 147, 149, 172, 184, Frisch, 226-28
192, 203, 210, 217, 222, 230, Fundamental particles, 242, 267-
250-52, 263, 269 68, 273, 276
 INDEX 281

Galileo, 59 lolanthe, 52
Gamow, 202, 204 Irrelevance, 268-70
Gauge, 270 Isotopic spin, 270, 277
Gell-Mann, 267
Germer, 80-83 Jeans, 134-35
Gilbert, 52 Jensen, 240
Goeppert-Mayer, 240 Jerks, 19-23, 26
Goudsrnit, 67 Joliot, 210, 212
Gravitation, 265, 270 Jolt, 29, 148-52, 162-63, 185-86
Gurney, 203 Jordan, 85, 103-7, 130, 137, 243
Jumps, 57, 62, 88-89, 99-100, 206-
h, 22, 55, 58, 59, 74, 79, 80, 90, 7, 215-19
103, 127, 149, 150, 180 Junk, 119-21
Hahn, 226
Halo, 222-23 K particles, 265-72
Hamilton, 110, 114-15, 119-26, 135, Kramers, 84, 90, 248, 252
153, 255
Hamlet, 76, 140. See also Marcel- Ladder, 49-50, 58, 60, 62, 91-94,
lus; 74 104, 116-17, 204-5, 219
Handedness, 270, 273-76 Lagrange, 119, 255
Harkins, 211-13 Lamb, 247-52
Harmonics, 88, 112 Lamb shift, 248-51
Haxel, 240 Landau, 276
Heisenberg, 84-110, 113, 117, 118, Laporte, 271
123-33, 137, 141, 144-45, 149- Lattes, 237
60, 165, 170-72, 179, 196, 213, Laundry lists, 90-99, 118
221-23, 243-46, 250, 262, 27-6 Lawrence, 201
Helium, 46, 130, 205 Lee, 236, 272-73, 275
Heredity, 159-60 Lenard, 25, 46
Hertz, G., 60 Lifetimes 265-66, 272. See also
Hertz, H., 2, 13-16, 25, 29, 38, 70, 237, 250
110, 190 Light, classical theories of, 2-15
Hilbert, 123 converted into matter, 209-10
Huygens, 8, 30 Dirac's quantum theory of, 134-
Hydrogen, 48-49, 58, 67, 93, 104, 36
109, 110, 116-18, 212-13, 247- in box, 134
48, 251 pressure of, 150
heavy, 211 speed of, 9, 12-13, 35, 75, 76-79,
nucleus, 201 191
Liquid drop, 238-39. See also
Identity of electrons, 183-86 Water drop
Imaginary numbers, 103. See also Location, 141-42, 153, 160, 195-98
V^T 285
,
Lord Chancellor, 52-53
Indeterminacy, 174-78, 269 Lorentz, -62
Indeterminacy principle, 149, 157,
160, 165, 170-72, 216, 250. See fA,
see Mu meson
also Perversity Macbeth, 140
Infinities, 244-54, 262 Magic numbers, 239-41
Insurance, 176 Magnetism, 188. See also Elec
Interference, 35-37, 39, 41, 82, 86, tricity and magnetism
122, 126, 166-75, 181 Majorana, 221
282 INDEX
Marcellus, 69 Neutrino, 220-24, 262-66, 275
Mass, 30-31, 59, 73-74, 78, 90, 208- Neutron, 211-30, 239-42
9, 214, 220, 223, 226, 251-53 Newspaper photograph, 196-97
Matrix, 102, 108, 118, 120, 128-30, Newton, 7-9, 14, 26, 29, 30, 35, 54,
137. See also Square tabula 59, 103-5, 110, 119, 122, 188
tion Nicholson, 54-55
Matrix mechanics, 103, 106, 245 Nickel, 80, 164
Matter, 20-21, 62, 80, 135, 192, Nishijima, 267
198, 209-10, 230 Nitrogen, 212, 214
waves, 74-80, 141 Nobel Prize, 18, 30, 41, 43-46, 60,
Maxwell, 10-15, 25-31, 34, 38,
2, 62, 63, 67, 81, 102, 133, 201,
42, 47, 51-53, 57, 60, 62, 66, 209-11, 236-38, 248
70, 135, 177, 188, 200, 222, Nuclear particles, 236-38
224, 236, 243-44 Nucleon, 239, 241, 265, 267
Mechanics, see Quantum mechan Nucleus, 47, 53, 57, 61, 68, 88-89,
ics 143, 188-89, 195, 201-5, 211-
Meitner, 226-28 30, 238-42, 251
Mendeleev, -68
Mental picture, 94, 105, 141, 162-
64, 170, 174, 179, 184 Oboe, 86
Meson, 223-25, 230, 236-38, 242, Observation, 148-52, 156, 160-64,
261, 265, 272 169-70, 173, 180, 185, 196. See
Mesotron, 223 also Experiment
Metaphysics, 104, 177, 180 Occhialini, 237
Michelson, 194 Sneda, 266
Microscope, 82, 146-53, 156, 159, Operator, 126-28, 145, 154-55, 246
179, 195-96 Oppenheimer, 142, 202
Mileage table, 92-93 Optics, 7, 79, 122, 125
Miller, 86 Orbit, 51-58, 61, 79, 88-90, 94, 114,
Millikan, 29, 39 116, 118, 126, 152, 191, 215-16,
Millionaire, 36, 78, 86, 116, 122 245
Molecule, 186, 197-98, 221, 226, Oscillator, 20, 62, 101, 118, 135,
230 243
Momentum, 31, 90, 95, 145, 150-
55, 172, 178, 192, 250, 269-70
Monster, 206-10. See also 243-44,
250-51 <, 55, 90, 103. See also 126
Morley, 194 See
TT, 20, 55, 59, 103, 106, 127.
Moseley, 61-62, 68 also Pi meson
Mosquitoes, 251
Motion, 195, 198, 230 !//, 115-18, 128-33, 142-43, 154-55,
equations of, 119, 126 158-59, 191, 204, 246
Motions, several, at once, 157-60,
p, 55, 90-103, 107, 111, 120, 126,
165, 169-70
Mu meson, 237-38, 264, 267 128, 135, 144-45, 149-50, 153-
57
Multiplication, 97-101, 127-28
Music, 85-88, 111-12 Pais, 234, 266-67
Pancini, 236
Parity, 236, 271-76
n, 55, 62, 103, 111 Particle in several places at once,
Namba, 266 157, 170, 198
 INDEX 283

Particle, new concept of, 151, 157, Proton, 201, 205, 208-24, 230, 239-
165-68. See also Wave-parti 43, 2-63-65
cle controversy Pulsating particles, 7-8, 13, 26,
pulsating, 7, 13, 26, 27, 74, 75 27, 74-76
theory of light, 5-9, 121, 243 Pulsations, simultaneous, 74-76,
See also Photon 85
Pauli, 67-69, 104, 109, 110, 130, Pythagoras, 4, 111
137, 184, 188, 206, 212, 219,
240-43, 273. See also Exclu
sion principle
q, 55, 90-103, 107, 111, 120, 127-
Periodic table, 68, 240
28, 135, 144-45, 149-50, 153-
Perversity, 144, 148-51, 161-65,
57, 159
169, 171, 178. See also Inde
q numbers, 107, 128-35, 141
terminacy principle Quantum denned, 22
Phase wave, 78
half, 101
Phonograph record, 85-87 mechanics, 107-8, 135-38, 143-
Photoelectric effect, 25-29, 39-41,
44, 156, 170, 172, 176-79, 180-
83, 171, 188, 191, 202 82, 184, 186, 188, 202, 204-5,
Photon, 25-31, 40-42, 73-75, 82-83, 216, 254, 259. See also Sign
173, 183-84, 202, 243, 250-53, language
256, 261 number, 55, 62-63, 66-68, 110-
as jump, 57, 216-19 11, 115, 118
converted into matter, 209
Dirac's theory of, 134-35
in Heisenberg microscope, 147-
Radiation, 14, 17, 24-25, 135, 192,
50, 183
209, 212, 230
Pi meson, 237-38, 272 converted into matter, 209-10
Piccioni, 236 Radiation formula, Planck's, 18,
Picnic, 251 62, 136
Pigeonhole, 99-101 Radioactivity, 14, 44-46, 188, 191,
Planck, 15-29, 54-60, 62, 70, 74, 201-5, 210, 223, 226, 230
75, 101, 103, 106, 110, 134, Radium, 14, 45-46
136, 147-53, 180, 184, 187, 229 Rainwater, 240
Plato, 4 Rays, see a-particle, /3-particle,
Plutonium, 219 Cosmic rays, y-rays, X-rays
Point, 195-96 Rays in fictional space, 121-22
Poisson, 106, 108 Reines, 263
Polonium, 45 Relativity, 10-11, 24, 27-31, 61, 63,
Polonius, 140 67, 73-78, 80, 102, 114-15, 119,
Position, 95, 145-56, 161, 163, 170, 122, 136-38, 188, 191, 194-95,
172, 178, 185, 195-96, 221, 269 199, 200, 205, 207, 245-48, 255-
Positron, 209-224, 230, 243-44, 247, 56, 270
250-53, 256, 259, 263-64, 270 Renormalization, 252-53
Retherford, 247-48
Powell, 237
Ricci, 102
Prediction, 15, 151-52, 175-77, 181 Ring, vibrating, 113-14
Pressure, 150, 197-98 Ritz, 51, 91-95
Probability, 142-44, 158-62, 165, Road map, 91-93
170, 175-76, 178, 185, 204, 236, Roentgen, 44, 46
260 Roulette, 175
 284 INDEX
Rutherford, 43-54, 61-62, 201, 211- Superposition, 158
13, 224 Symmetry, 264, 276

0,See Theta particles

S matrix, 246, 261 See Tau particles
r,
Scenario, 256-58 Taine, See California
Second quantization, 244-45, 249 Tau particles, 272-75
Segre, 264 Telephone, 80, 164
Schrodinger, 109-33, 136-38, 141- Temperature, 197-98, 226
43, 154, 158, 160, 172, 191, Tennis, 221-23
236, 243 Theta particles, 272-75
Schwartzschild, 63 Thomson, 25, 46-47
Schwinger, 248-49 Time, 30, 122, 136, 141, 153, 172,
Scintillation, 166-68, 173, 181 174, 177, 192-99, 230, 250-60,
Shakespeare, quotations from, 69, 263, 269-70. See also Simul
74, 76, 140, 246
taneity
Shell model, 239-41 Time map, 254-57, 260-61
Sign language, 131-32 r 145, 153- Tomonaga, 249
58, 162, 164, 172, 178 Transmutation, 46
Simon, 41 of light into matter, 209-10
Simultaneity, 30, 75-78 Trolley tracks, 54-57, 114 -

Sine wave, 87-90 Tubes of force, 10, 222

Soddy, 45-46 Twirling, See Coin
Sommerfeld, 63, 67, 136-38, 247
Space, 30, 95, 122, 136, 141, 153, Uhlenbeck, 67
174, 177, 192-99, 230, 255, 257, Ultraviolet light, 14, 16, 25, 39, 82,
269-70. See also Fictional 146
space Ulyanov, 131
Spectroscopy, 188, 201-2
Uncertainty, 149-50, 245. See also
Spectrum, 48, 62-64, 67, 91, 111, Indeterminacy principle
116-17, 130, 247-48, 271 Unified model, 241
Speculation, 180, 199
Universe, 15, 95, 97, 189, 192, 197,
Spin, 67-69, 136-38, 188, 205, 214- 209, 213, 217, 219, 229-30, 238,
15, 219, 247
262, 264
Spinor calculus, 138 Uranium, 44-45, 212, 219, 226-27
Square tabulations, 90, 93-102, Urey, 211
107-8, 118, 128-29
Stark, 63, 130
State, 154, 158-65, 169-72, 206,
Vacuum, 249-50
218-19, 241 Valence, 186
Strange particles, 265-66 Velocity, 145-51, 156, 159
Violet catastrophe, 17, 21, 27, 28,
Strangeness, 265-67, 277
51, 134, 191
Straphanger, 241
Virtual particles, 250-52
Strassmann, 226
String, vibrating, 111-12, 115 Volcano, 203-5, 214
von Neumann, 178
Strong interactions, 265-67, 273.
See also 237
Water, 198, 226
Stuechelberg, 249, 259 drop, 225-28. See also Liquid
Submarine, 160-61 drop
Suess, 240 heavy, 211
 INDEX 285

Wave accompanying electron, 114, Wavicle, 172, 179, 193, 195-97,

141 221-23
character of sound, 85-87 Weak interactions, 265-67, 273,
equation, 110, 115, 126, 137 275-76
from pulsation, 76-78 Wheeler, 227, 234, 246, 257, 259
light, in box, 134-35, 243 Whole numbers, 49, 56, 88, 111-
theory of light, 5-9, 12-13, 190, See also Quantum number
14,
243-44 Wigner, 243, 271
packet, 142, 160-61, 172. See Wilson, 40
also 78-79 World line, 256-63
particle controversy, 5-9, 24-30, Wu ? 273-74
34-42, 65, 82-83, 111, 124-26,
141, 151, 166; Resolved, 171- X-rays, 14, 38, 44, 46, 61, 81, 146
73
phase, 78
Yang, 236, 272-75
versus ray, 122
Yukawa, 222-23, 236-37, 276
See also de Broglie; Matter
waves
Wavelength, 13, 82, 114, 146-47, Zeeman, 62-63, 66, 130
150
of de Broglie waves, 81-82, 90,
114, 146 V-l, 103, 106, 127
1 04 932