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Letters on Wave Mechanics: Schrödinger, Planck, Einstein, Lorentz

Abstract:

" In this article I should like to show, first of all for the simplest case of the (non-relativistic and unperturbed) hy-drogen atom, that the usual rule for quantization can be re-placed by another requirement in which there is no longer any mention of ‘integers'. The integral property follows, ra-ther, in the same natural way that, say, the number of nodes of a vibrating string must be an integer. The new interpreta-tion can be generalized and, I believe, strikes very deeply into the true nature of the quantization rules.” With these words Erwin Schrödinger began the first paper of his series,“Quantization as a Proper Value Problem”, sent off to the Annalen der Physik at the end of January, 19261. By the end of June he had completed four more major papers develop-ing and applying the concepts and methods of a new wave mechanics that he hoped would be related to classical me-chanics in the same way that wave optics is related to geome-trical optics. What impressed him most in his elegant theory, perhaps even more than its evident power to treat a wide range of basic atomic problems, was its “naturalness", its apparently intuitive character for anyone at home in classi-cal physics, and the way in which it seemed to avoid the most perplexing and disturbing features of the existing quan-tum theory. For Schrödinger was writing a quarter of a century after Max Planck had broken with the past by introducing energy quanta into physics, in order to explain the black-body ra-diation law. During those twenty-five years physicists had been confronted with a series of shocking departures from established modes of thought: Planck's treatment of the en-ergy as a …