Max Born

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**Max Born** <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Image:Max Born.jpg
Max Born</td></tr>
Born	December 11, 1882 Breslau, Germany <tr><th>Died</th><td>January 5, 1970 Göttingen, Germany</td></tr><tr><th>Nationality</th><td>Image:Flag of Germany.svg German - Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg British</td></tr><tr><th>Field</th><td>Physicist</td></tr><tr><th>Institution</th><td>University of Frankfurt-on-Main</br>University of Göttingen</br>University of Edinburgh</td></tr><tr><th>Academic Advisor</th><td>Carl Runge</td></tr><tr><th>Notable Students</th><td>Victor Frederick Weisskopf</br>Robert Oppenheimer</br>Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim</br>Max Delbrück Walter Elsasser Friedrich Hund Pascual Jordan Maria Göppert-Mayer Herbert S. Green</td></tr><tr><th>Known for</th><td>Foundations of quantum mechanics</td></tr><tr><th>Notable Prizes</th><td>Image:Nobel.png Nobel Prize for Physics (1954)</td></tr>

Max Born (December 11, 1882 in Breslau – January 5, 1970 in Göttingen) was a mathematician and physicist. He won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1 Early life and education
2 Career
3 Published works
4 Awards and Honors
5 See also
6 Bibliography
7 Notes
8 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Born was one of two children of Jewish parents Gustav Born, an anatomist and embryologist, and Margarete Kauffmann, from a Silesian family of industrialists. He had a sister called Käthe, and a half-brother called Wolfgang from his father's second marriage with Bertha Lipstein. His mother died when Max Born was 4 years old. Initially educated at the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium, Born went on to study at the University of Breslau followed by Heidelberg University and the University of Zurich. During study for his Ph.D.<ref> His Ph.D. thesis in mathematics was defended at the University of Göttingen on June 13, 1906: Untersuchungen über die Stabilität der elastischen Linie in Ebene und Raum, unter verschiedenen Grenzbedingungen. It was awarded magna cum laude. See Greenspan, 2005, pp. 35-36 and Max Born’s Life.</ref> and Habilitation <ref> The Habiliation was done at the University of Göttingen, on October 23, 1909: Über das Thomson'sche Atommodell Hablitations-Vortag (FAM, 1909). See Greenspan, 2005, pp. 49, 51, and 353.</ref> at the University of Göttingen, he came into contact with many prominent scientists and mathematicians including Klein, Hilbert, Minkowski, Runge, Schwarzschild, and Voigt. In 1908-1909 he studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

When Born arrived in Göttingen in 1904, Klein, Hilbert, and Minkowski<ref> Hilbert and Klein were colleagues at the University of Königsberg. Klein brought Hilbert to Göttingen. Then, Hilbert brought Minkowski.</ref> were the high priests of mathematics and were known as the “mandarins.” Very quickly after his arrival, Born formed close ties to the latter two men. From the first class he took with Hilbert, Hilbert identified Born as having exceptional abilities and selected him as the lecture scribe, whose function was to write up the class notes<ref> Since the lectures were the creation of the lecturer and not take from a textbook, the scribe performed a very important function.</ref> for the students’ mathematics reading room at the University of Göttingen. Being class scribe put Born into regular, invaluable contact with Hilbert, during which time Hilbert’s intellectual largess fell upon Born’s fertile mind. Hilbert became Born’s mentor and Hilbert eventually selected him to be the first to hold the unpaid, semi-official position of Hilbert’s assistant. Born’s introduction to Minkowski came through Born’s stepmother, Bertha, as she knew Minkowski from dancing classes in Königsberg. The introduction netted Born invitations to the Minkowski household for Sunday dinners. In addition, while performing his duties as scribe and assistant, Born often saw Minkowski at Hilbert’s house. Born’s outstanding work on elasticity - a subject near and dear to Klein - became the core of his magna cum laude Ph.D. thesis, in spite of some of Born’s irrationalities in dealing with Klein.<ref> Greenspan, 2005, 26-34.</ref>

He married Hedwig, née Ehrenberg, who was of Jewish descent (although a practising Christian), in 1913; the marriage would have three children including G. V. R. Born. His granddaughter is the British-born Australian singer and actress Olivia Newton-John.

[edit] Career

From 1915 to 1919, except for a period in the German army, Born was extraordinarius professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin, where he formed a life-long friendship with Albert Einstein. In 1919, he became ordinarius professor on the science faculty at the University of Frankfurt am Main. While there, the University of Göttingen was looking for a replacement for Peter Debye, and the Philosophy Faculty had Born at the top of their list. In negotiating for the position with the education ministry, Born arranged for another chair at Göttingen and for his long-time friend and colleague James Franck to fill it.<ref> James Franck took the dual position of ordinarius professor and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at Göttingen. See Nobel Prize Biography.</ref> In 1921, Born became ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and Director of the new Institute of Theoretical Physics at Göttingen.<ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 96-97.</ref> While there, he formulated the now-standard interpretation of the probability density function for ψ*ψ in the Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954, some three decades later.

For the 12 years Born and Franck were at Göttingen, 1921 - 1933, Born had a collaborator with shared views on basic scientific concepts - a distinct advantage for teaching and his research on the developing quantum theory. The approach of close collaboration between theoretical physicists and experimental physicists was also shared by Born at Göttingen and Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich, who was ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics - also a prime mover in the development of quantum theory. Born and Sommerfeld not only shared their approach in using experimental physics to test and advance their theories, Sommerfeld, in 1922 when he was in the United States lecturing at the University of Wisconsin, sent his student Werner Heisenberg to be Born’s assistant. Heisenberg again returned to Göttingen in 1923 and completed his Habilitation under Born in 1924 - the year before Heisenberg and Born published their first papers on matrix mechanics.<ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 113, 120, and 123.</ref> <ref> Jungnickel, Christa and Russell McCormmach. Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, Volume 2: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925. University of Chicago Press, Paper cover, 1990. ISBN 0-226-41585-6. pp. 274, and 281-285 and 350-354.</ref>

In 1925, Born and Werner Heisenberg<ref> Heisenberg completed his Habilitation under Born in 1924, and became a Privatdozent at Göttingen. </ref> formulated the matrix mechanics representation of quantum mechanics. On July 9, Heisenberg gave Born a paper to review and submit for publication.<ref> W. Heisenberg, “Über quantentheoretishe Umdeutung kinematisher und mechanischer Beziehungen,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 33, 879-893, 1925 (received July 29, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1 (English title: “Quantum-Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations”).] </ref> In the paper, Heisenberg formulated quantum theory avoiding the concrete but unobservable representations of electron orbits by using parameters such as transition probabilities for quantum jumps, which necessitated using two indexes corresponding to the initial and final states.<ref> Emilio Segrè, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and their Discoveries (W. H. Freeman and Company, 1980) ISBN 0-7167-1147-8, pp 153 - 157. </ref> When Born read the paper, he recognized the formulation as one which could be transcribed and extended to the systematic language of matrices, which he had learned from his study under David Hilbert at Göttingen <ref> Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times in Physics, Philosophy, and Polity (Clarendon Press, 1991) ISBN 0-19-852049-2, pp 275 - 279. </ref> - Hilbert space, is a fundamental mathematical tool in the matrix formulation of quantum theory. Born, with the assistance of his student Pascual Jordan, began immediately to make the transcription and extension, and they submitted their results for publication.<ref> M. Born and P. Jordan, “Zur Quantenmechanik,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 34, 858-888, 1925 (received September 27, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1] </ref> A follow-on paper was submitted for publication before the end of the year by all three authors.<ref> M. Born, W. Heisenberg, and P. Jordan, “Zur Quantenmechanik II,” Zeitschrift für Physik, 35, 557-615, 1925 (received November, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1] </ref> <ref> It is of interest to note that in 1926, the year after the matrix mechanics formulation of quantum theory, the mathematician John von Neumann became an assistant to David Hilbert at Göttingen. When von Neumann left in 1932, von Neumann’s book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, based on Hilbert’s mathematics, was published under the title Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. See: Norman Macrae, John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More (Reprinted by the American Mathematical Society, 1999) and Constance Reid, Hilbert (Springer-Verlag, 1996) ISBN 0-387-94674-8. </ref> Based on this, one could say the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Heisenberg in 1932 should have been jointly awarded to Born. <ref>Especially since Werner Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 for the creation of quantum mechanics, the role of Max Born has been obfuscated. A 2005 biography of Born details his role as the creator of the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. This was recognized in a paper by Heisenberg honoring Max Planck, in 1950. See: Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, "The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born" (Basic Books, 2005), pp. 124 - 128, and 285 - 286.</ref>

Those who received their Ph.D. degrees under Born at Göttingen included Max Delbrück, Walter Elsasser, Friedrich Hund, Pascual Jordan, Maria Göppert-Mayer, Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim, Robert Oppenheimer, and Victor Weisskopf.<ref>Sources for History of Quantum Physics</ref> Born’s assistants at the University of Göttingen’s Institute for Theoretical Physics included Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, Gerhard Herzberg, Friedrich Hund, Pascual Jordan, Wolfgang Pauli, Léon Rosenfeld, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner.<ref>Sources for History of Quantum Physics</ref> <ref>Greenspan, 2005, pp. 178 and 262.</ref> <ref>Biography on Gerhard Herzberg - National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada</ref> Born not only recognized talent to work with him, but he let his “superstars stretch past him.” <ref>Greenspan, 2005, p. 143.</ref> His Ph.D. student Delbrück, and six of his assistants (Fermi, Heisenberg, Göppert-Mayer, Herzberg, Pauli, Wigner) went on to win Nobel Prizes.

In a letter to Born in 1926, Einstein made his famous remark regarding quantum mechanics, often paraphrased as "God does not play dice with the universe."

In 1933 he emigrated from Germany. (He had strong and public pacifist opinions; moreover, while he was a Lutheran, he was classified as Jewish by the Nazi racial laws, and was experiencing anti-Semitism.) He took up a position (Stokes Lecturer) at the University of Cambridge. From 1936 to 1953 he was Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He became a British subject and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1939. <ref>Born was elected to the Royal Society in March and received his Certificate of Naturalization on August 31, 1939, one day before World War II broke out in Europe. See Greenspan, 2005, p. 226.</ref>

Born had a dislike for nuclear weapons research, but he still acknowledged “it might be the only way out.”<ref>Greenspan, 2005, p. 239.</ref> Much of the theoretical power behind the development of the first atomic bomb was due to many of those surrounding him at Göttingen and working on atomic physics and quantum mechanics: three of his Ph.D. students (Maria Göppert-Mayer, Oppenheimer and Weisskopf), there of his assistants (Fermi, Teller, and Wigner), the Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics (James Franck), and David Hilbert’s assistant (John von Neumann).<ref>Students, assistants, and colleagues of Born at Göttingen who worked on the Manhattan Project:

Maria Göppert-Mayer – Worked on the Manhattan Project with Harold Urey at Columbia University on isotope separation.
Robert Oppenheimer – Director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) - One of the four major sites of the Manhattan Engineering District.
Victor Weisskopf – Head of T-3 Group, Experiments, Efficiency Calculations, and Radiation Hydrodynamics, LASL
Enrico Fermi – Director of Research, Met Lab of the University of Chicago - One of the four major sites of the Manhattan Engineering District.
Edward Teller – Head of T-1 Group, Hydrodynamics of Implosion and Super, LASL
Eugene Wigner – Director of Theoretical Studies, Met Lab
James Franck – Director of the Chemistry Division, Met Lab, and Chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems
John von Neumann – LASL consultant on implosion mechanism for the plutonium bomb. (Neumann was assistant to David Hilbert at Göttingen and was greatly influenced by both David Hilbert’s and Max Born’s work. Neumann applied the mathematics of Hilbert space to Born’s quantum mechanics, and, in 1932, his foundational book on the mathematical underpinnings of quantum mechanics, Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, was published.)</ref>

Max and Hedwig Born retired to Bad Pyrmont (10 km south of Hamelin (Hameln)) in Germany, in 1954<ref> Biographical Sketch from the German Historical Museum </ref>.

Born was one of the 11 signatories to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

Born is buried in Göttingen, Germany, in the same cemetery as Walther Nernst, Wilhelm Weber, Max von Laue, Max Planck, and David Hilbert.

[edit] Published works

Über das Thomson'sche Atommodell Hablitations-Vortag (FAM, 1909) - The Habiliation was done at the University of Göttingen, on October 23, 1909. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 49, 51, and 353.</ref>

Dynamik der Kristallgitter (Teubner, 1915) <ref>Greenspan, 2005, p. 352.</ref> - After its publication, the physicist Arnold Sommerfeld asked Born to write an article based on it for the 5th volume of the Mathematical Encyclopedia. World War I delayed the start of work on this article, but it was taken up in 1919 and finished in 1922. It was published as a revised edition under the title Atomic Theory of Solid States. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 66, 110, and 115.</ref>
- Dynamical Theory of Crystal Lattices, with Kun Huang. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1954) <ref> A new edition of Dynamical Theory of Crystal Lattices is available from Oxford University Press in hard cover ISBN 978-0-19-850369-9 and in soft cover ISBN 0-19-850369-5.</ref>

Die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins und ihre physikalischen Grundlagen (Springer, 1920) - Based on Born’s lectures at the University of Frankfurt am Main. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, p. 100.</ref>
- Available in English under the title Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. <ref>Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Dover Publications, 1962 edition, ISBN 0-486-60769-0.</ref>

Vorlesungen über Atommechanik (Springer, 1925) <ref> Greenspan, 2005, p. 352.</ref>
- Mechanics of the Atom (George Bell & Sons, 1927) - Translate be J. W. Fisher and revised by D. R. Hartree. <ref> AIP Niels Bohr Library and AbeBooks: Search on Mechanics of the Atom.</ref>

Problems of Atomic Dynamics (MIT Press, 1926) – A first account of matrix mechanics being developed in Germany, based on two series of lectures given at MIT, over three months, in late 1925 and early 1926. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, p. 132.</ref> <ref> Problems of Atomic Dynamics is available from MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-52019-2, and Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-43873-2.</ref>

Elementare Quantenmechanik, with Pascual Jordan. (Springer, 1930) - This was the first volume of what was intended as a two-volume work. This volume was limited to the work Born did with Jordan on matrix mechanics. The second volume was to deal with Erwin Schrödinger’s wave mechanics. However, the second volume was not even started by Born, as he believed his friend and colleague Herman Weyl had written it before he could do so. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 159-160.</ref>

Optik: Ein Lehrbuch der elektromagnetische Lichttheorie (Springer, 1933) - The book was released just as the Borns were emigrating to England.
- Principles of Optics: Electromagnetic Theory of Propagation, Interference and Diffraction of Light,<ref> Principles of Optics is now in its 7th revised printing, ISBN 0521642221. The first 5 revised editions were done by Pergamon Press (1959 - 1975). The last 2 were done by Cambridge University Press in 1980 and 1999.</ref> with Emil Wolf. (Pergamon, 1959) - This is the English translation of Optik. Shortly after World War II, a number of scientists suggested that Born update and translate his work into English. Since there had been many advances in optics in the intervening years, updating was warranted. In 1951, Emil Wolf began as Born’s private assistant on the book; it was eventually published in 1959 by Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press<ref> Paul Rosbaud, a former editor at Springer who remained in Germany during World War II and spied for the allies, was initially involved with Born and the endeavor to publish Optik in English, as Rosbaud was organizing a publishing company in England after the war. The publishing company did not materialize, and Rosbaud eventually joined Pergamon Press. (Greenspan, 2005, pp. 292-294.)</ref> - the delay being due to the lengthy time needed “to resolve all the financial and publishing tricks created by Maxwell.” <ref> Greenspan, 2005, pp. 174, 292-294.</ref>

Moderne Physik (1933) -- Based on seven lectures given at the Technischen Hochschule Berlin. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, p. 201.</ref>
- Atomic Physics (Blackie, London, 1935) - Authorized translation of Moderne Physik by John Dougall, with updates. <ref>The eighth edition was published in 1969, including revisions by R. J. Blin-Stoyle & J. M. Radcliffe. The 8th edition of Atomic Physics is available from Dover Publications in paper cover, ISBN 0-486-65984-4.</ref>

The Restless Universe <ref> The Restless Universe was last published by Dover Publications, 1951, ISBN 0048620412X, but it is no longer in print.</ref> (Blackie and Son Limited, 1935) - A popularized rendition of the workshop of nature. Born’s nephew, Otto Königsberger, who’s successful career as an architect in Berlin was brought to an end when the Nazis took over, was temporarily brought to England to illustrate the book. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, p. 201.</ref>

Experiment and Theory in Physics (Cambridge University Press, 1943) – The address given King’s College, Newcastle-on-Tyne, at the request of the Durham Pholosophical Society and the Pure Science Society. An expanded version of the lecture appeared in a 1956 Dover Publications edition. <ref> Greenspan, 2005, 245-246 and AbeBooks</ref>

Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (Oxford University Press, 1949) – Based on Born’s 1948 Waynflete lectures, given at the College of St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford University. A later edition (Dover, 1964) included two appendices: “Symbol and Reality” and Born’s lecture given at the Nobel laureates 1964 meeting in Landau, Germany. <ref>Citations for Max Born Based on the Library of Congress - See the entry for Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance. Also see Greenspan, 2005, p. 352.</ref>

A General Kinetic Theory of Liquids with H. S. Green (Cambridge University Press, 1949) -- The six papers in this book were reproduced with permission from the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Physics in My Generation: A Selection of Papers (Pergamon, 1956) <ref> Physics in My Generation (Springer, 1969), ISBN 038790008X.</ref>

Physik im Wandel meiner Zeit (Vieweg, 1957)

Zur Begründung der Matrizenmechanik, with Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan (Battenberg, 1962) - Published in honor of Max Born’s 80th birthday. This edition reprinted the authors’ articles on matrix mechanics published in Zeitscrift für Physik , Volumes 26 and 33-35, 1924-1926. <ref>AIP Niels Bohr Library</ref>

My Life and My Views: A Nobel Prize Winner in Physics Writes Provocatively on a Wide Range of Subjects (Scribner, 1968) - Part II (pp. 63-206) is a translation of Verantwortung des Naturwissenschaftlers. <ref>AIP Niels Borh Library</ref>

Briefwechsel 1916-1955, kommentiert von Max Born with Hedwig Born and Albert Einstein (Nymphenburger, 1969)
- The Born-Einstein Letters: Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max and Hedwig Born from 1916-1955, with commentaries by Max Born (Macmillan, 1971).<ref> The Born-Einstein Letters, Macmillan Publishers, 2004, ISBN 1403944962.</ref>

Mein Leben: Die Erinnerungen des Nobelpreisträgers (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1975). Born's published memoirs.
- My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate (Scribner, 1978).<ref> My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate was also published by Taylor and Francis/Charles Scribner's Sons, ISBN 0850661749. No longer in print.</ref> Translation of Mein Leben.

Born Nobel Prize Speech - 1954
Born Nobel Prize Lecture - 1954

Published papers (as listed on the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS))

Published papers (as listed on HistCite)

Published Books (based on the Library of Congress citations)

Published Works - Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften Akademiebibliothek

[edit] Awards and Honors

1934 - Stokes Medal of Cambridge <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1939 - Fellow of the Royal Society <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1945 - MacDougall-Brisbane Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh <ref>The award was presented for research on quantum mechanics of fields and shared with Born's collaborator H. W. Peng. See Greenspan, 2005, p. 257 and Born Biographic Data.</ref>

1945 - Gunning-Victoria Jubilee Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1948 - Max Planck Medaille der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1950 - Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of London <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1953 - Honorary citizen of the town of Göttingen <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1954 - Nobel Prize in Physics The award was for Born's fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction. <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>
- 1954 - Nobel Prize Speech
- 1954 - Born Nobel Prize Lecture
1956 - Hugo Grotius Medal for International Law, Munich <ref>Born Biographic Data</ref>

1959 - Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the German Federal Republic <ref>Nobel Biographic Data</ref>

1982 - Ceremony at the University of Göttingen in the 100th Birth Year of Max Born and James Franck, Institute Directors 1921 - 1933. <ref> James Franck und Max Born in Göttingen: Reden zur akademischen Feier aus Anlass der 100. Wiederkehr ihres Geburtsjahres. (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983). Speeches by Norbert Kamp, Peter Haasen, Gerhart W. Rathenau, and Friedrich Hund. Franck was Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at Göttingen, while Born was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.</ref>

Max-Born Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie im Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. - Institute named in his honor.

[edit] See also

[edit] Bibliography

Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, "The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born" (Basic Books, 2005) ISBN 0738206938. Also published in Germany: Max Born - Baumeister der Quantenweld. Eine Biographie (Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, 2005), ISBN 382741640X.