Physicist — Max Born (Breslau 1882 – Göttingen 1970) was a German physicist, among the founders of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954. At Göttingen he directed one of the world’s most important centres of theoretical physics, where students such as Heisenberg, Pauli and Jordan worked. Together with Heisenberg and Jordan he formulated matrix mechanics, the first coherent version of quantum mechanics. His most celebrated contribution is the probabilistic interpretation of the wave function: the square of its modulus gives the probability density of finding the particle, an idea that earned him the Nobel Prize. Jewish, he was forced to leave Nazi Germany in 1933 and emigrated to Britain, where he continued his scientific activity.
Fun fact
His famous ‘Born rule’ was stated in a footnote, and it was precisely that probabilistic interpretation that prompted Einstein to write him the phrase ‘God does not play dice’.
Theories and contributions
- Born rule — The probability of finding a particle is given by the square modulus of the wave function: .
- Matrix mechanics — Formulation of quantum mechanics in terms of matrices, developed with Heisenberg and Jordan.
- Born approximation — Perturbative method for calculating cross-sections in scattering processes.
Present in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.