Niels Bohr's discussions with Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger: The origins of the principles of uncertainty and complementarity

Foundations of Physics 17 (5):461-506 (1987)
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Abstract

In this paper, the main outlines of the discussions between Niels Bohr with Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger during 1920–1927 are treated. From the formulation of quantum mechanics in 1925–1926 and wave mechanics in 1926, there emerged Born's statistical interpretation of the wave function in summer 1926, and on the basis of the quantum mechanical transformation theory—formulated in fall 1926 by Dirac, London, and Jordan—Heisenberg formulated the uncertainty principle in early 1927. At the Volta Conference in Como in September 1927 and at the fifth Solvay Conference in Brussels the following month, Bohr publicly enunciated his complementarity principle, which had been developing in his mind for several years. The Bohr-Einstein discussions about the consistency and completeness of qnautum mechanics and of physical theory as such—formally begun in October 1927 at the fifth Solvay Conference and carried on at the sixth Solvay Conference in October 1930—were continued during the next decades. All these aspects are briefly summarized

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Citations of this work

Uncertainty in Bohr's response to the Heisenberg microscope.Scott Tanona - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3):483-507.
Uncertainty in Bohr's response to the Heisenberg microscope.Scott Tanona - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (3):483-507.

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