The formation and logic of quantum mechanics. Transl. from the Japanese and with explanatory notes by Masayuki Nagasaki. III: The establishment and logic of quantum mechanics (Q2781755)

[For the 1st and 2nd volume see the reviews in Zbl 1089.81003 and Zbl 1090.81004.]NEWLINENEWLINEThis volume describes the breakthrough to modern quantum mechanics from 1925 till 1935. A time table showing the interrelations between the diversity of publications in that time at the beginning makes it easy for the reader to follow the lines of growing cognition. NEWLINENEWLINEThe first chapter reports about Heisenberg's quantum conditions and its development to matrix mechanics by him together with Born and Jordan. The chapter ends with Dirac's formulation (known as Dirac passage or canonical quantiozation) and two attempts, to interpret the formalism. The second chapter reports the almost parallel development of wave mechanics by Schrödinger. It contains the attempt to fund the Schrödinger equation on the basis of the so called optic-mechanical analogy and the Born interpretation. The establishment of quantum mechanics is the concern of the third chapter. Here the development of many body quantum mechanics, the explanation of Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistic on the basis of identical particle symmetries, the formulation of relativistic wave equations, transformation theory and its interpretation, the treatment of the spin in quantum mechanics, and other discoveries until 1928 are included. NEWLINENEWLINEUnder the title ``The Logic of Quantum Mechanics'' the fourth chapter describes what happened at the fall of the twenties and in the first half of the thirties of the 20th century as well as later discussions about the problem of quantum measurement. It begins with Heisenbergs discovery of the uncertainty relation, Bohr's complementarity principle and limits of the Copenhagen spirit. Here, the statement of the first author that physical knowledge develops in three stages, the phenomenological, the substantialistic, and the essentialistic one, is contemplated. The psycho-physical parallelism of von Neumann's theory of measurement, Schrödinger's critics with the cat paradox as well as critical remarks by the first author are included. A final block in this chapter contains the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument against Bohr's completeness assumption and the reply of Bohr. The chapter concludes with several discussions about the interpretation of quantum observation and Young's experiment.NEWLINENEWLINEIn summary, this work in three volumes presents the early history of cognition in quantum physics just describing the physical facts, their interpretation and formalization in a very readable form for physicists thereby justifying the realistic philosophical principles adopted by the authors for scientific cognition. It can especially be recommended to lecturers of quantum physics who like to include some history into their lecture.