Constructing Quantum Mechanics, Two-Volume Pack Volume 1: The Scaffold: 1900-1923, Volume 2: The Arch: 1923-1927

This two-volume book is on the genesis of quantum mechanics. The first volume covers the key developments in the period 1900-1923, which provided the scaffold on which the arch of modern quantum mechanics was built. This volume traces the early contributions by Planck, Einstein, and Bohr to the theories of black-body radiation, specific heats, and spectroscopy, all showing the need for drastic changes to the physics of their day. It examines the efforts by Sommerfeld and others to provide a new theory, now known as the old quantum theory. After some striking initial successes (explaining the fine structure of hydrogen, X-ray spectra, and the Stark effect), the old quantum theory ran into serious difficulties (failing to provide consistent models for helium and the Zeeman effect) and eventually gave way to matrix and wave mechanics. The second volume provides detailed analysis of the classic papers by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Dirac, De Broglie, Einstein, Schrödinger, von Neumann and other authors. Drawing on the correspondence of these and other physicists, their later reminiscences and the extensive secondary literature on the "quantum revolution," this volume places these papers in the context of the discussions out of which modern quantum mechanics emerged. It argues that the genesis of modern quantum mechanics can be seen as the construction of an arch on a scaffold provided by the old quantum theory, discarded once the arch could support itself.

1 - Introduction to Volume One
2 - Planck, the Second Law, and Black-Body Radiation
3 - Einstein, Equipartition, Fluctuations, and Quanta
4 - The Birth of the Bohr Model
5 - Guiding Principles
6 - Successes
7 - Failures
A - Classical Mechanics
B - Spectroscopy
8 - Introduction to Volume 2
9 - The Exclusion Principle and Electron Spin
10 - Dispersion Theory in the Old Quantum Theory
11 - Heisenberg's Umdeutung paper
12 - The Consolidation of Matrix Mechanics
13 - De Broglie's Matter Waves and Einstein's Quantum Theory of the Ideal Gas
14 - Schrödinger and Wave Mechanics
15 - Successes and Failures of the Old Quantum Theory Revisited
16 - Statistical Interpretation of Matrix and Wave Mechanics
17 - Von Neumann's Hilbert Space Formalism
18 - Conclusion: Arch and Scaffold
C - The Mathematics of Quantum Mechanics

Michel Janssen studied physics and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned his PhD in 1995. He was an editor at the Einstein Papers Project before joining the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota as a historian of science in 2000. He has also been a regular visitor at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin. His research focuses on the genesis of relativity and quantum theory. Anthony Duncan received his PhD in theoretical elementary particle physics in 1975 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Steven Weinberg. Following postdoctoral and junior faculty positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Columbia University in New York, he joined the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1981 as Associate Professor of Physics. He has taught a wide range of courses, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, including courses on the history of modern physics. He is now (since 2015) professor emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh.