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atomic structure in detail, whereas Newton's equations simply did not make
A good friend of Erwin Schrodinger recalled that 'he did his great work
during a late erotic outburst in his life'. The epiphany occurred in the
Christmas holidays of 1925, when the thirty-eight-year-old Viennese physicist vacationed with a former girlfriend at the Swiss ski resort of Arosa near
Davos. Their passion was the catalyst for a year-long burst of creative activity. Like that of the dark lady who inspired Shakespeare's sonnets, her
name remains a mystery, though most likely Schrodinger's wife was not in
the dark about her husband's latest infidelity. Perhaps we owe to this
unidentified woman the marvellous fact that apparently unconnected strands
of research coalesced, and Schrodinger discovered the equation that bears
his name.
In its form, at least, Schrodinger's equation was familiar to many scientists and its appearance was almost comforting in the light of the assault on
familiar concepts coming from younger quantum physicists. It appeared to
be the long-sought-after expression of the quantum theory that had been
first articulated by its reluctant discoverer Max Planck in 1900, and had then
been further refined by Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, among others. In
essence, it did for the subatomic world what Newton's laws did for the
large-scale world some two centuries before - Schrodinger's equation
enabled scientists to make detailed predictions about how matter behaves,
while being able to visualize the atomic systems under study. Aimed with
the SchrOdinger equation, it was possible for the first time to understand
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-The
---------------------atomic theory current at the time was formulated in 1913 by the twentyseven-year-old Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Bohr's was a frighteningly
intense search for clarity, in a lifelong journey that he would share with colleagues and students in deep, critical dialogues. For this reason many of
Bohr's scientific papers are almost opaque, having been worked and
reworked so many times that omitting a word or a sentence can completely
distort its meaning. He thought at his best in conversation, when he had
someone against whom to bounce ideas. But in 1913 he was a young man
in a hurry and moved with a gracefulness honed by the high level of football
that he played. Ten years later he would begin to assume the heavy, gloomy
veneer that reflected the weight of the problems he took upon himself in
seeking the meaning of a new physics, one that defied all preconceptions of
what a theory ought to be. 4
Bohr's atomic theory of 1913 is best remembered for its hallmark
imagery of atoms as minuscule solar systems. It was a magnificent pastiche
of Newton's celestial mechanics with adroit insertions from Planck's
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possible only to calculate atomic energy levels; that is, to deal only with
electrons bound in atoms. On the other hand, the concept of what is abstracl
is relative: Bohr, Heisenberg and Pauli considered energy levels 'and the
like' to be perfectly concrete. SchrOdinger admitted in 1926 that there may
exist 'things' that cannot be comprehended by our 'forms of thought', and
hence do not have a familiar Newtonian space and time description, bu1
'from the philosophic point of view' he was sure that 'the structure of the
atom' does not belong to this set of things. 6
But Schrodinger did realize, along with Heisenberg and other physicists
of the time, that visual imagery taken wholesale from the world of sense
perception would not suffice. In order to avoid it altogether, Heisenberg
based his quantum mechanics on unvisualizable particles. Schrodinger
sought a means of visualizing electrons that was different from the way in
which scientists had become accustomed to thinking of them; that is, as particles. He realized that such an approach to the electron had been made
available by de Broglie and SchrOdinger and set out to exploit it. This may
have been an aesthetic preference, but it was one on which theories could be
based. Building on de Broglie's daring idea that electrons can be waves as
well as particles, Schrodinger applied this hypothesis to electrons bound in
atoms.
Schrodinger's basic idea was to formulate a theory for electrons bound in
atoms in which they are analogous to a vibrating string fixed at both ends.
How the string vibrates is an indicator of the electron's energy. This sort of
wave theory also avoids quantum jumps. The reason is that atomic transitions were understood as occurring in the manner of waves representing the
electron's charge density, surrounding the nucleus and decreasing their
radius in order to pass between allowed states.
Let me describe how Schrodinger applied his ideas to the simplest atom
of all, a single electron orbiting a nucleus- a hydrogen atom. As a thought
experiment, consider the electron as a string fixed at both ends; thai is,
bound in a hydrogen atom . When the string is vibrating at its lowest energy
as a standing wave, there is exactly one half-wavelength between the ends.
At the next highest energy, there are two half-wavelengths between the
ends; then, at the next highest energy, three half-wavelengths, and so on.
The point is that each configuration of the vibrating string corresponds to a
particular energy, or eigenvalue, of the string.
Schrodinger's equation, when applied to the hydrogen atom, yielded
much the same relationship between energy levels and allowed wave functions. The equation predicts the possible energy values that the electron can
The letter fl. stands for the mathematical expression (known technically as
un operator) that represents the total energy of the atom. After the mathematics has been done, one ends up with a set of energy levels, each with at
least one corresponding wave function.? 8
The amazing thing was that this simple mathematical operation predicted exactly the right energy levels for the hydrogen atom, reproducing the
success of Bohr's planetary model. But how should we picture orbiting
atomic electrons in Schrodinger's picture? That's where it gets difficult.
Schrodinger visualized the atomic electrons as a distribution of electronic
charge whose distribution in space is related to the electrons' wave function.
Great though SchrOdinger's achievement was in writing down his equation, it is at odds with the special theory of relativity. Basically the equation
is inconsistent with guidelines set down by Einstein's principle of relativity,
according to which an equation should have the proper mathematical form
so as to be able to include measurements made on systems moving at high
speeds close to that of light. But this was intentionally so because
Schrodinger initially tried a relativistic approach and failed. What he did
was to insert de Broglie's results into the relativistic equation connecting
energy, momentum and mass. Then he specialized to that benchmark for all
quantum theories, the hydrogen atom, in order to calculate its spectrum of
energy values. He failed because Schrodinger's relativistic equation did not
include the electron's spin, a property that was only beginning to be understood at the time. On the other hand, Schrodinger found that a
non-relativistic version gave results in agreement with observation. This
problem would be overcome in 1928 when the English theoretician Paul
Dirac brilliantly proposed a quantum equation for the behaviour of the electron that was consistent with special relativity. This equation naturally
explained why the electron has spinY Looking back on this episode, Dirac
wrote that Schrodinger should have pursued the relativistic equation
because, in his view, 'It is more important to have beauty in one's equations
than to have them fit experiment.' IO
H
chrOdinger derive his equation? The derivations that
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when light was shone on alternating strips of opaque and transparent material (known as a diffraction grating) it behaves like water waves, producing
a smoothly varying pattern of light that cannot be explained by assuming
that light behaves as particles. This profound problem was solved only in
1927 when Born put forward his interpretation of the wave function, which
accounted for these diffraction patterns in terms of myriad tiny impacts by
individual particles of light. For many physicists, however, the mixture of
wave and particle elements in the explanation remained deeply puzzling.
Just as a particle representation for light seemed out of place, so, at first,
did a wave representation for the electron, as it was proposed in 1923 by de
Broglie. Physicists were eventually persuaded to accept a wave-particle
duality for the electron, because experimental data in that year lent some
support to de Broglie's hypothesis. Conclusive results were achieved in
1927. Yet evidence for the existence of light quanta appeared in experiments of 1923. But even the pe.rson who performed these experiments,
Arthur Compton, couldn't believe the results. His principal objection lay in
the relation between the energy of the light quantum (which is, after all, a
particle, and is therefore lo"calized) and its wavelength (which is not localized). How can such entirely different quantities be related at all? Is this not
like trying to link fishes and rocks? Clearly the wave nature of electrons,
which would by 1927 be accepted as conclusive, did not upset physicists as
much as disturbing the centuries-old sacred representation of light as a
wave.
To Heisenberg, as to SchrOdinger, the fundamental issue in quantum
theory became, as Heisenberg put it, to explore the 'kind of reality' that
existed in the atomic world. Physics had become a branch of metaphysics
because nothing less was at stake than understanding the nature of physical
reality. Heisenberg took on this problem in his classic paper of 1927, 'On
the intuitive content of the quantum-theoretical kinematics and mechanics',
the so-called 'uncertainty principle' paper. 17 The term 'intuitive' in the title
signals that this absolutely fundamental concept has to be redefined in the
atomic world. Straightaway Heisenberg makes it clear that the basic issue
facing quantum mechanics is the meaning of certain terms when they are
extrapolated into the atomic realm: 'The present paper sets up exact definitions of the words : position, velocity, energy, etc. (e.g. of an electron).'
Heisenberg insists that it is the interpretation of quantum mechanics that is
in question: 'Heretofore, the intuitive interpretation of the quantum mechanics is full of internal contradictions that become apparent in the struggle of
the opinions concerning discontinuum- and continuum-theory, wave and
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Ironically, although Heisenberg won the battle, and felt he had won tlw
war, Schrodinger's equation is more widely used than Heisenberg's version
of atomic physics. This is the case despite the incompatibility ol
Schrodinger's equation with relativity, which is unimportant for just abo ut
every practical application, notably because most of these applications
involve quanta that travel at nowhere near the speed of light. On the other
hand, Heisenberg's matrix formalism found its role in deeply theoretical
areas such as the quantum field theory of fundamental particle physics.
What I have always found so intriguing about the Heisenberg-Schrodinger
dispute is that it was fundamentally one of aesthetic choice. Both versions of
atomic physics could account, in principle, for all known experimental dat<t
about the hydrogen atom and were fundamentally equivalent, in that they gave
the same explanations about, for example, the helium atom. Each man
defended his view of nature passionately. Bohr's great realization here is that
neither man took serious account of the wave-particle duality of light and
matter. And here Bohr made a key point: there is a third aesthetic, in which
waves and particles are taken together, within a suitable interpretation of
Schrodinger's wave.function, which was already to hand - namely Born's.
That there are two versions of atomic physics should come as no surpiise, because in our world of perceptions things come in pairs, such as
particles and waves, yin and yang, black and white, yes and no, love and
hate, light and darkness - there are no intrinsic maybes as there are in the
atomic world. Yet through abstraction, through emphasis on conception
rather than perception, we can move onto a higher plane and appreciate the
power of ambiguity. This is generally uncomfortable in our personal lives,
in which we strive to resolve ambiguous situations through decisiveness once again into an 'either/or' mode. As Einstein and Picasso demonstrated
in the first decade of the twentieth century, ambiguity is the key to discovering representations of nature that are beyond mere superficial
appearances. Direct viewing can deceive, as Einstein discovered in physics
and Picasso discovered in art. In Einstein's relativity theory of 1905, time
and space are relative, and are interpreted according to how different
observers view them. For example, two events that occur at the same time
to one observer will not be simultaneous for another observer in relative
motion. In Picasso's great work of 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, from
which the cubism of Georges Braque and Picasso developed, the painter discovered a way of representing figures so that many possible perspectives
appear on the canvas all at once. 27 In their own ways, Schrodinger and
Heisenberg carried this adventure of abstraction into the atomic world.