Matrix mechanics
Mecánica matricial
- Date
- 1925 · confidence high
- Place
- Heligoland and Göttingen, Germany
- Credited to
- Werner Heisenberg; Max Born; Pascual Jordan
- People
- 👤 Max Born1882–1970👤 Pascual Jordan1902–1980👤 Werner Heisenberg1901–1976
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
On Heligoland, Heisenberg builds a mechanics based only on observable quantities (frequencies and intensities) whose products do not commute; Born and Jordan recognise them as matrices. The first complete formulation of quantum mechanics.
The 'three-man paper' (Born, Heisenberg, Jordan) of November 1925 gave it its definitive form; Jordan did not receive the Nobel Prize.
What it led to
- Modern quantum mechanics
- Uncertainty principle
- Equivalence with wave mechanics (1926)
- Quantum field theory (Jordan)
Built on
- Bohr model and the correspondence principle
- Kramers's dispersion theory
- Failure of the old quantum theory with helium