On the verge of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Umdeutung</Emphasis> in Minnesota: Van Vleck and the correspondence principle. Part one |
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Authors: | Anthony Duncan Michel Janssen |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA;(2) Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA;(3) Tate Laboratory of Physics, 116 Church St. NE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA |
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Abstract: | In October 1924, The Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation
at the University of Minnesota. Using Bohr’s correspondence principle and Einstein’s quantum theory of radiation along with
advanced techniques from classical mechanics, Van Vleck showed that quantum formulae for emission, absorption, and dispersion
of radiation merge with their classical counterparts in the limit of high quantum numbers. For modern readers Van Vleck’s
paper is much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar
terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. This makes Van Vleck’s paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also
makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself.
This paper was written as part of a joint project in the history of quantum physics of the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin. |
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