Abstract

George Birtwistle (1877–1929) published The New Quantum Mechanics in 1928. His stated aim was to give a detailed account of work which had brought the relatively new subject of quantum mechanics to the fore in the previous few years. The earlier chapters give a restatement of Alfred Landé's theory of multiplets which reconciles it with the new mechanics which follow. Later chapters present the matrix theory of Heisenberg, the q-number theory of Dirac and the wave mechanics of Schroedinger, and synthesise new theories, statistics and controversies in the work of de Broglie, Bose, Einstein, Fermi and Dirac. The book gives a complete overview of the state of quantum mechanics at the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, making it a valuable benchmark for historians of science and mathematicians alike.