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                                                                                September 11, 1933

Maxwell-Quantum Theory



     So darkly complex, so fabulously remote from the familiar
things of human existence is science's probing into the
fundamental secretae of the universe--of light, electricity,
gravity, matter--that the language of physicists is becoming
metaphysical. Efforts to fit new discoveries to demonstrable
theory, or to perform the converse, simply pile paradox on
paradox. While U.S. probers have been mostly content to spin new
riddles by unearthing new facts in their laboratories, European
physicists have tried more & more of late, by sheer sweat of
mind, to coordinate, to reconcile to reduce the areas of conflict
among observed phenomena. Last week U.S. readers of the British
scientific journal "Nature" were apprised of an important
reconciliation which Professor Max Born, theoretical physicist of
the University of Gottingen, had achieved by Juggling
mathematical symbols.

     What Professor Born had done, it appeared, was to revise the
equations of Scotland's brilliant James Clerk Maxwell (1931-79)
to accommodate the concepts of modern quantum theory. Clothing
electrical phenomena in mathematical language, Maxwell discovered
electromagnetic waves by inventing them out of his own head. he
then correlated electromagnetic waves an light waves. But his
equations were based on the assumption that these waves could
represent any amount of radiant energy, depending on conditions
at the source.

     Along came Max Planck to knock this assumption into a cocked
hat with his discovery of bundles and jumps. In 1900 Planck
announced that radiant energy could only be propagated in tiny,
indivisible bundles which he called "quanta." Furthermore these
bundles did not proceed through space continuously, but by jumps.
It was not long before experimenters were finding this lumpiness
and jerkiness everywhere. Albert Einstein used it to explain
photoelectric action. Subatomic explorers found that atoms had
only a fixed number of orbits in which their electrons might
travel; that the electrons jumped from on orbit to another with
emission or reception of energy exactly equaling one or more
quanta.

     The little symbol "E" [epsilon] representing a quantum began
seriously to restrict the old free & easy mechanics. Nevertheless
the work of reconciliation began. Denmark's Niels Bohr ingeniously
yoked classical laws and quantum laws to predict the "probable"
interorbital jumps of electrons. His famed Correspondence
Principle was postulated in 1913, was later abandoned when it was
found not to work for atoms having more than one electron.

     Professor Born, long before last week, published results of
his wrestling with the problem of retaining Maxwellian theory as
a guide for what ought to happen under quantum conditions. But
his equations incorporated the quantum mechanics only as a
special restriction on the old laws, and they were such jungles
of intricacy that encyclopedias did not bother to include them in
discussions of his work.

     A different point of departure led to the solution presented
last week. Maxwellian theory took no notice of the "size" of
energy-radiating particles, handled them as mathematical points.
By 1925 subatomic theory had reached such a stage that electrons
(which Maxwell did not know existed) had to be considered as
waves as well as corpuscles--hence as abstractions. Reduced to
its simplest terms, Professor Born's latest work elevates them to
the status of physical entities. By introducing a symbol to
represent he electron's radius, by investing the electron with
the four Einsteinian dimensions of time & space (which are
handled symmetrically as four independent variables), Professor
Born has made the old theory and the new lie down side by side in
the same equation.

     As a result, stated Professor Born, the positions and
velocities of orbital electrons may now both be calculated. The
Uncertainty Principle advanced six years ago by Professor Werner
Heisenberg held that the position "or" velocity of a given
electron might be observed, never both. It has been widely
accepted by theorists ever since, was reiterated last June by
Niels Bohr at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science meeting in Chicago. (Professor Bohr's reiteration was in
connection with his new theory of complementarity--a dualistic
doctrine of despair which hold that all phenomena have two
aspects, like the convexity and concavity of a sphere, and that
both aspects cannot be true at the same time.)

     Last week's announcement won instant acclaim. One acclaimer
was Cambridge's Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac who, now only 31, three
years ago startled his learned compatriots by declaring that
nuclear protons were simply "holes" in the circumambient
electronic field. "A major advance!" cried Dr. Dirac.

     Such great minds as Dr. Albert Einstein and Sir Arthur
Stanley Eddington have long pondered the possibility of a
Maxwell-quantum equation. Dr. Einstein could have used it as part
of his Unified Field Theory co-ordinating the laws of
electromagnetism, gravity and light, which he succeeded in
expressing mathematically, only to discard the expression when
flaws were detected. At first blush Professor Born's feat of
cerebral acrobatics seems to hold real promise to help to Dr.
Einstein to rebuilding the Unified Field Theory, to which he
expects to devote the rest of his life.

     Born 50 years ago in Breslau, Max Born was the first son of
Professor Gustav Born, University of Breslau anatomy professor
famed for pioneer experiments in grafting tadpoles, and of
Margarete Kauffmann Born, sprig of a solidly established family
of industrial weavers. At Gottingen he drank the intoxicating
elixir distilled by the distinguished mathematicians Hilbert,
Klein & Minkowski, was only 22 when Einstein's Relativity turned
the universe topsy-turvy. Four years later, a teacher of
theoretical physics, he was plunging along the labyrinths opened
up by the master (his mathematical treatises include an
exposition of Einstein theory), but with many a nostalgic glance
over his shoulder at Maxwell and classical mathematics. Now a
gentle, grey-haired, square-jawed Jew with a shuffling walk and a
husky voice, dislodged from Gottingen by the Nazi revolt, he
lives quietly in Zurich, Switzerland with his wife and children,
has turned down a professorship offered in Belgrade.