On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, Karl Popper's lifelong pursuit of answers in several areas of scientific and philosophical thinking is briefly traced, mainly with reference to excerpts from his own writings.

The ground-state dispersion energy of a pair of axially symmetric molecules is calculated, to arbitrary order in the inverse intermolecular separation, on the basis of London's anisotropic oscillator model.

Quantum theory is one of the most fascinating and successful constructs in the intellectual history of mankind. Nonetheless, the theory has very shaky philosophical foundations. This book contains thoughtful discussions by eminent researchers of a spate of experimental techniques newly developed to test some of the stranger predictions of quantum physics. The advances considered include recent experiments in quantum optics, electron and ion interferometry, photon down conversion in nonlinear crystals, single trapped ions interacting with laser beams, atom-field coupling in micromaser (...) cavities, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, decoherence and macroscopic quantum effects, the quantum state diffusion model, quantum gravity, the quantum mechanics of cosmology and quantum non-locality along with the continuing debate surrounding the interpretation of quantum mechanics. -/- Audience: The book is intended for physicists, philosophers of science, mathematicians, graduate students and those interested in the foundations of quantum theory. (shrink)

A study is made of the dominant terms of an earlier model-based formula describing the dispersion energy of axially symmetric interacting molecules. The existence of mixed-pole eighth-order terms is noted.