Practicing the Correspondence Principle in the Old Quantum Theory: A Transformation Through Implementation

The history of the correspondence principle presented in this book has followed a theoretical tool and its use in many strands of research embedded in the patchwork of problems of quantum physics during the 1920s. In these highly local contexts, the implementation of the correspondence principle led... see more

After the discussion of the applications of the correspondence principle in Munich, Breslau and Göttingen, the final chapter of this book returns to Copenhagen. It studies how physicists around Niels Bohr approached the multiplet intensity problem and its relation to the correspondence principle. Ba... see more

This chapter discusses the work of Fritz Reiche on the quantum theory of radiation and his application of the correspondence principle in the context of dispersion theory. Following his private correspondence with Kramers in 1923 and 1924, I reconstruct Reiche’s attempts to determine transition prob... see more

The applications of the correspondence principle to multiplet spectroscopy, discussed in the previous chapter, presented an extension and rather radical adaptation of the correspondence principle in its original domain of atomic spectroscopy. The present chapter focuses on a research field that was ... see more

This chapter discusses Arnold Sommerfeld’s research on the intensity problem for multiplets and his application of the correspondence principle in the context of atomic spectroscopy, which he developed in collaboration with his students Werner Heisenberg and Helmut Hönl. The analysis is based on pub... see more

The discussion in the preceding chapter focused almost entirely on Bohr and his thinking about quantum theory. But how was Bohr’s correspondence argument received within the quantum network? When and how did his peers take up the principle in their work and develop their own applications? This chapt... see more

This chapter discusses the work of Niels Bohr and Hendrik Antoon Kramers on the quantum theory of the atom in relation to the correspondence principle. Within the main argument of this book, this chapter plays a pivotal role. It presents a historical analysis of the genesis of the principle and prov... see more

In the summer of 1923, Niels BohrBohr, Niels gave a lecture at Harvard University on the quantum theory of the atom. He had done so many times during the 1920s in Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, and now also in the U.S. For almost 300 listeners in the audience, BohrBohr, Niels’s presentation was ... see more