The Golden Age of Theoretical Physics brings together 37 selected essays. Many of these essays were first presented as lectures at various universities in Europe and the USA, and then published as reports or articles. Their enlarged, final versions were published in the joint work of Jagdish Mehra and Helmut Rechenberg, The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, while the other essays were published as articles in scientific journals or in edited books. Here they are published together as a tribute to the Mehra-Rechenberg collaboration sustained for several decades, and cover various aspects of quantum theory, the special and general theories of relativity, the foundations of statistical mechanics, and some of their fundamental applications. Two essays, ‘Albert Einstein's “First” Paper’ (Essay 1) and ‘The Dream of Leonardo da Vinci’ (Essay 37), lie outside the major themes treated in this book, but are included here because of their historical interest. The origin of each essay is explained in a footnote.
This book deals with the most important themes developed in the first 40 years of the twentieth century by some of the greatest pioneers and architects of modern physics. It is a vital source of information about what can veritably be described as ‘the golden age of theoretical physics’.
Author(s): Jagdish Mehra
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Year: 2001
Language: English
Commentary: Reconstituted from individual chapters cf. DOI s. LCCN 2001270366.[UL]
Pages: xix+637
Tags: Физика;История физики;
Contents ...... Page11
01. Albert Einstein's 'First' Paper ...... Page 22
02. Max Planck and the Law of Blackbody Radiation ...... Page 40
03. Planck's Half-Quanta. A History of the Concept of Zero-Point Energy ...... Page 77
04. Josiah Willard Gibbs and the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics ...... Page 115
05. Einstein and the Foundation of Statistical Mechanics ...... Page 144
06. Albert Einstein and Marian von Smoluchowski. Early History of the Theory of Fluctuation Phenomena ...... Page 174
07. The Historical Origins of the Special Theory of Relativity ...... Page 231
08. The Historical Origins of the General Theory of Relativity ...... Page 250
09. Albert Einstein and the Origin of Light-Quantum Theory ...... Page 347
10. Niels Bohr and the Quantum Theory of the Atom ...... Page 372
11. Arnold Sommerfeld and Atoms as Conditionally Periodic Systems ...... Page 393
12. The Göttingen Tradition of Mathematics and Physics ...... Page 425
13. The Bohr Festival in Göttingen- Bohr's Wolfskehl Lectures and the Theory of the Periodic System of Elements ...... Page 480
14. Satyendra Nath Bose, Bose-Einstein Statistics, and the Quantum Theory of an Ideal Gas ...... Page 522
15. Louis de Broglie and the Phase Waves Associated with Matter ...... Page 567
16. Wolfgang Pauli and the Exclusion Principle ...... Page 592
17. The Discovery of Electron Spin ...... Page 606
18. The Discovery of the Fermi–Dirac Statistics ...... Page 633
