H., 1926- Introduction to quantum mechanics. Includes bibliographical references and index. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIT 4LP ISBN-10: 1-1 ISBN-13: 978-1-7 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bransden, B. Joachain to be identified as the authors of this Work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex CM20 2JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world Visit us on the World Wide Web at: First published under the Longman Scientific & Technical imprint 1989 Second edition 2000 © Pearson Education Limited 1989, 2000 The rights of B. Joachain PEARSON Prentice Hall Harlow, England To find out more about the complete range of our publishing please visit us on the World Wide Web at: Quantum Mechanics 2nd edition B. Under a range of well-known imprints, including Prentice Hall, we craft high quality print and electronic publications which help readers to understand and apply their content, whether studying or at work. Section 1 contains, besides an introduction, also the papers five claims and a preview of the arguments supporting these claims so Part I, Section 1 may serve as a summary of the paper for those readers who are not interested in the detailed arguments.PEARSON Education We work with leading authors to develop the strongest educational materials in physics, bringing cutting-edge thinking and best learning practice to a global market. For reasons of length, the paper is published in two parts Part I appeared in the previous issue of this journal. The paper is self-contained and presupposes only basic knowledge of quantum mechanics. Since the analysis is performed from the perspective of Suppes structural view (‘semantic view’) of physical theories, the present paper can be regarded not only as a morsel of the internal history of quantum mechanics, but also as a morsel of applied philosophy of science. The present paper claims to be a comprehensive analysis of one of the pivotal papers in the history of quantum mechanics: Schrödingers equivalence paper. To Procrustean places we go, where we can demonstrate the mathematical, empirical and ontological equivalence of ‘the final versions of’ matrix mechanics and wave mechanics. During the period 1926–1932 the original families of mathematical structures of matrix mechanics and of wave mechanics were stretched, parts were chopped off and novel structures were added. In order to make the theories equivalent and to prove this, one has to leave the historical scene of 1926 and wait until 1932, when von Neumann finished his magisterial edifice. The author endeavours to show two things: first, that Schrödingers (and Eckarts) demonstration in March (September) 1926 of the equivalence of matrix mechanics, as created by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Dirac in 1925, and wave mechanics, as created by Schrödinger in 1926, is not foolproof and second, that it could not have been foolproof, because at the time matrix mechanics and wave mechanics were neither mathematically nor empirically equivalent.