Atoms, Metaphors and Paradoxes
Niels Bohr and the Construction of a New Physics

This book examines the development of Niels Bohr's crucial insights during the birth of quantum mechanics.

Sandro Petruccioli (Author), Ian McGilvray (Translated by)

9780521402590, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 November 1993

252 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.513 kg

"...the best overall treatment of the background to the doctrine of complementarity." Edward McKinnon, Isis

This book gives a detailed study of the development and the interpretation given to Niels Bohr's Principle of Correspondence. It also describes the role that this principle played in guiding Bohr's research over the critical period from 1920 to 1927. Quantum mechanics, developed in the 1920s and 1930s by Bohr, Heisenberg, Born, Schrödinger and Dirac, represents one of the most profound turning points in science. This theory required a wholly new kind of physics in which many of the principles, concepts and models representing reality, that had formed the basis of classical physics since Galileo and Newton, had to be abandoned. This book re-examines the birth of quantum mechanics, in particular examining the development of crucial and original insights of Niels Bohr.

Introduction
1. The paradigm of complementarity
2. Atomic model and quantum hypotheses
3. The principle of correspondence
4. The theory of virtual oscillators
5. The conceptual foundation of quantum mechanics
6. The Bohr–Einstein confrontation: phenomena and physical reality
General bibliography
Name index
General index.

Subject Areas: Quantum physics [quantum mechanics & quantum field theory PHQ]