Quantum Concepts in Physics: An Alternative Approach to the Understanding of Quantum Mechanics 1st Edition by Malcolm Longair | (PDF) Free Download

Description

Written for advanced undergraduates, physicists, and historians and philosophers of physics, this book tells the story of the development of our understanding of quantum phenomena through the extraordinary years of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rather than following the standard axiomatic approach, this book adopts a historical perspective, explaining clearly and authoritatively how pioneers such as Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli and Dirac developed the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and merged them into a coherent theory, and why the mathematical infrastructure of quantum mechanics has to be as complex as it is. The author creates a compelling narrative, providing a remarkable example of how physics and mathematics work in practice. The book encourages an enhanced appreciation of the interaction between mathematics, theory and experiment, helping the reader gain a deeper understanding of the development and content of quantum mechanics than any other text at this level.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “… will be extremely useful to instructors in quantum physics courses who wish to include some of the material in their own lectures. It should be required reading for those working in the philosophy or history of physics. An accessible, comprehensive treatment of the development of quantum mechanics. Highly recommended.” M. C. Ogilvie, Washington University, Choice”… a beautiful book … should be included in any respectable physics library.” Daniela Dragoman, Optics and Photonics News Book Description Innovative account of the origins of quantum mechanics told from a historical perspective, for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers. About the Author Malcolm Longair is Emeritus Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy and Director of Development at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He has held many highly distinguished positions within physics and astronomy and has served on and chaired many international committees, boards and panels, working with both NASA and the European Space Agency. He has received much recognition for his work, including the Pilkington Prize of the University of Cambridge for Excellence in Teaching and a CBE in the millennium honours list for his services to astronomy and cosmology. His previous well-received books for Cambridge University Press include Theoretical Concepts in Physics (2003), The Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology (2005) and High Energy Astrophysics (2011). Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It is not a dumbed-down text. It’s not one of that pop-sci adjective filled, mysticism enforced work either. It’s a conceptual guide for a physics or maths student who knows his/her calculus. It has a theoretical flow to it but also covers the subject in nice historical detail. In fact, he works from a historical context and completes with the interpretation of QM. So in that sense, it is a straightforward account. Starting with Planck in 1900 and ending with the full formulation and interpretation of QM in 1930. Nicely illustrated and beautifully printed. If you know his earlier work on Theoretical Concepts, you’ll generally get the drift of this work

⭐What a marvelous book! Having been introduced to QM through the Schrodinger approach and then working with the consequences of QM over the past 30 years (semiconductor industry), it has re-ignited my interest in the whole subject: historical development; biographies of the scientists; mathematical foundation and experimental background. It has done what any great book should: open up new paths for exploration.

⭐As the main title suggests, this book deals with the concepts of quantum physics – their history, their evolution, and how and why things developed the way they did.Part of the title also suggests: “An Alternative Approach to the Understanding of Quantum Mechanics”. I would say this alternative approach is very successful; the author has gone right to the original papers, tracing the reactions of the players involved, while keeping the technical and mathematical content at the level of an advanced under graduate.The main audience will be those who already have a good grasp of quantum mechanics at an intermediate level, and feel they lack the insight into the motives behind its development.

⭐It always irritated me in the past to read in more popular books on quantum mechanics sentences like “So-and-so could calculate that ….” but how these calculations actually looked like in those days were never hinted at or shown. One had to try and dig out the old original papers from local libraries (if they had them at all) to find out what had actually inspired physicists in the past to come to the conclusions they actually finally arrived at. This book presents all this for you and shows how genius thinking combined with hard work down arduous paths finally led to the formulation of modern quantum mechanics. Everything becomes so logical and one is not left wondering “what magic did they use to suddenly arrive at such a formulation!”

⭐A complete detailed history including the relevant mathematics. It includes Dirac’s relativistic equation. The difference between Quantum mechanics and Wave mechanics is clearly shown as well as their ultimate combination. A wonderful work of history which also teaches the subject on the way.

⭐This is a linear story of how was born quantum physics together with a description of the different propositions which were made before the current setting of what we today call quantum physics. The reading is interesting and pretty easy even if it requires to be a little familiar with quantum physics. I would only make one criticism about this book. It would need some more schematics and drawings along with many explanations. Of course, the reader can easily imagine them, but for comfort it would be much better.On a more general point of view, I would strongly recommend the reading of this book by all physicists for several reasons among which the fact that discoveries not always are based on logical grounds and need, in a first time, approximation and also to realize, especially for those who are specialized in quantum physics, that the current interpretation only is a consensus and that it could or should still be challenged. Indeed, this book clearly proves it, whereas Schrödinger’s wave equation or even Heisenberg’s matrix view have some logic and link from a standard classical view of physics as the one deployed by de Broglie all his life long, the introduction of the spin of particles represents quite a breakthrough which foundations are still unclear under this logic. Maybe we still have to wait for someone finding a link between classical physics and the spin concept.

⭐The book is by a clear author on astrophysics. I enjoy referring to it. It will be a useful reference book on astrophysics. .

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