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EINSTEIN, PHYSICS AND REALITY
by Jagdish Mehra
About the Author
Trained as a theoretical physicist in the schools of Heisenberg and Pauli, Jagdish Mehra is a distinguished historian of modern physics. His major work (with Helmut Rechenberg, six volumes, nine books) is The Historical Development of Quantum Theory, 1900–1940. In 1994 Professor Mehra published The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, and he is now working (with Kimball A Milton) on a companion volume, Climbing the Mountain: The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger. With Arthur Wightman of Princeton University, he has coedited The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner in eight volumes.
Professor Mehra has held prestigious academic appointments in Europe and the USA, including the UNESCO – Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Professorship of History of Science in Trieste, Italy, and Paris, France. He lives in Houston, Texas, USA, where he is associated with the University of Houston.
Albert Einstein was one of the principal founders of the quantum and relativity theories. Until 1925, when the Bose–Einstein statistics was discovered, he made great contributions to the foundations of quantum theory. However, after the discovery of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg and wave mechanics by Schrödinger, with the consequent development of the principles of uncertainty and complementarity, it would seem that Einstein's views completely changed. In his theory of the Brownian motion, Einstein had invoked the theory of probability to establish the reality of atoms and molecules; but, in 1916–17, when he wished to predict the exact instant when an atom would radiate — and developed his theory of the A and B coefficients — he wondered whether the "quantum absorption and emission of light could ever be understood in the sense of the complete causality requirement, or would a statistical residue remain? I must admit that there I lack the courage of my convictions. But I would be very unhappy to renounce complete causality", as he wrote to his friend Max Born. However, he wrote later to Born that quantum mechanics "is certainly imposing", but "an inner voice tells me that it is not the real thing ... It does not bring us closer to the secret of the 'Old One'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice". At the 1927 and 1930 Solvay Conferences on Physics in Brussels, Einstein engaged in profound discussions with Niels Bohr and others about his conviction regarding classical determinism versus the statistical causality of quantum mechanics. To the end of his life he retained his belief in a deterministic philosophy. This highly interesting book explores Einstein's views on the nature and structure of physics and reality.
Contents:
- The "Non-Einsteinian Quantum Theory"
- "The Crisis in Theoretical
Physics"
- Letters on Wave Mechanics
- Epistemological Discussion with Einstein: Does Quantum Mechanics Describe Reality Correctly?
- Is the Quantum-Theoretical Description of Nature Complete?
- Does God Play Dice?
- Mach Contra Kant: Aspects of the Development of Einstein's Natural Philosophy
Readership: Scientists and general readers.
| 168pp |
Pub. date: Dec 1999 |
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