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The Quantum Physicists: And an Introduction to Their Physics

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The Quantum Physists is the best book ever written about quantum mechanics. The amazing thing is that it was actually written by a chemist who wanted to explain how the birth and evolution of quantum mechanics occurred because all of modern chemistry and all the miracles it has produced began with the birth of quantum mechanics. He actually details and shows you and explain all of the seemingly bizarre mathematical equations that the quantum physists of the early and mid-twentieth century had to deal with in order to understand the incredible and unbelievable way that atomic and sub-atomic particles actually behave. I was a physics major at the University of Virginia in the mid-80's. At the beginning of my first day in my first quauntum mechanics class the professor said "If you throw a rubber ball at a wall, you know with certainty it will bounce back at you. But if you throw the ball at the wall quadrillions of time over a period of trillions of years you will eventually see the rubber ball pass through the wall and vanish. Quantum mechanics proves it, and once it was understood man began creating miracles like the transistor, the integrated circuit, the laser, and who knows what will come in the future?" If you want to enter this new modern world, there is no better place to start than reading The Quantum Physicists.

I also first came upon this book as assigned reading for my undergraduate modern physics course. In addition to providing a very palatable overview of quantum mechanics, Cropper places the discoveries of the founders of this discipline in a human context. He lays out the folklore of quantum physics as well as its foundations. The great debate between the ever cautious Erwin Schrodinger and the hubristic Niels Bohr is put on stage--with Schrodinger resisting Bohr (with the unfortunate cat of Schrodinger's famous gedanken experiment as one of his last bullworks) until agreement seems the only way to banish Bohr from his beside so that he can finally get some sleep! Einstein had his own disagreements with Bohr--with one argument ending with Bohr using Einstein's own theory of general relativity to prove his point! One chapter is devoted to "beautiful equations" and the wonderful elegance and economy of notation characterizing the equations of Schrodinger and Dirac. As I look though this book again, I find that I can hardly put it down!