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Modern attempts to understand light go back to Newton who considered light to be particles, the so called corpuscular theory, and the other school of Huygens, Young and others. Huygens and Young viewpoint emphasised the wave property. This…
It is well known that Niels Bohr insisted on the necessity of classical concepts in the account of quantum phenomena. But there is little consensus concerning his reasons, and what he exactly meant by this. In this paper, I re-examine…
Niels Bohr introduced the concept of complementarity in order to give a general account of quantum mechanics, however he stressed that the idea of complementarity is related to the general dificulty in the formation of human ideas, inherent…
A complete history of early atomic models would fill volumes, but a reasonably coherent tale of the path from mechanical atoms to the quantum can be told by focusing on the relevant work of three great contributors to atomic physics, in the…
The logic--linguistic structure of quantum physics is analysed. The role of formal systems and interpretations in the representation of nature is investigated. The problems of decidability, completeness, and consistency can affect quantum…
The Einstein-Rupp experiments have been unduly neglected in the history of quantum mechanics. While this is to be explained by the fact that Emil Rupp was later exposed as a fraud and had fabricated the results, it is not justified, due to…
The assumptions added by Bohr and concerning the Hilbert space (formed by all solutions of Schroedinger equation) changed fundamentally the original physical interpretation of these solutions proposed earlier by Schroedinger. This new…
The atomic model that Niels Bohr suggested in 1913 celebrated its greatest victories in connection with one-electron atoms. Among them were the isotopic spectral effect and what became known as Rydberg atoms, insights that were fully…
A growing number of commentators have, in recent years, noted the important affinities in the views of Immanuel Kant and Niels Bohr. While these commentators are correct, the picture they present of the connections between Bohr and Kant is…
The quantum theory of Bohr has roots in the theories of Rutherford and J. J. Thomson on the one hand, and that of Nicholson on the other. We note that Bohr neither presented the theories of Rutherford and Thomson faithfully, nor did he…
Even if Einstein brought major contributions as a founder of quantum mechanics, he remained deeply unsatisfied with the bases of this structure he knew to be so efficient for physics. His critics are often known through his numerous…
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which first took shape in Bohr's landmark 1928 paper on complementarity, remains an enigma. Although many physicists are skeptical about the necessity of Bohr's philosophical conclusions,…
We review Bohr's atomic model and its extension by Sommerfeld from a mathematical perspective of wave mechanics. The derivation of quantization rules and energy levels is revisited using semiclassical methods. Sommerfeld-type integrals are…
This paper presents arguments purporting to show that von Neumann's description of the measurement process in quantum mechanics has a modern day version in the decoherence approach. We claim that this approach and the de Broglie-Bohm theory…
It is argued that the conclusions obtained by Renninger (Zeitschrift fur Physik 136, 251 (1953)), by means of an interferometer thought experiment, have important implications for a number of still ongoing discussions about quantum…
David Bohm has often been considered unable to understand the meaning of the quantum revolution as well as its radical metaphysical implications. Similarly, his pilot-wave theory was negatively portrayed as an attempt to restore a classical…
The famous gedanken experiments of quantum mechanics have played crucial roles in developing the Copenhagen interpretation. They are studied here from the perspective of standard quantum mechanics, with no ontological interpretation…
The complementary wave and particle character of quantum objects (or quantons) was pointed out by Niels Bohr. This wave-particle duality, in the context of the two-slit experiment, is now described not just as two extreme cases of wave and…
Most physics textbooks at college and university level introduce quantum physics in a historical context. However, the textbook version of this history does not match the actual history. In this article, the first in a series of articles…
This paper presents correspondence between Albert Einstein and the mathematical analyst J. L. B. Cooper on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox of quantum theory published in 1935. Two letters written by Cooper, and the replies from…