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Pp. [83]-272. Contemporary cloth, with original wrappers bound in. A few ink notes or marks in margins. First Separate Edition. SIGNED, PRESENTATION COPY FROM WOLFGANG PAULI TO OTTO LAPORTE. "The discovery of the exclusion principle builds the crowning conclusion to the old quantum theory based on the correspondence principle, which Pauli described in Handbuch der Physik, XXIII (1926). When the article [the so-called "Old Testament"] was published, new developments had already occurred; in rapid succession the fundamental work of Heisenberg, Dirac, and Schrödinger appeared, leading to a proper, mathematically consistent quantum mechanics. Following Dirac's precedent, Jordan, Heisenberg, and Pauli developed the relativistic quantum electrodynamics. . . . "In order to accommodate the new developments, Pauli wrote an article on wave mechanics for the second edition of the Handbuch der Physik (XXIV, pt. 1 [1933]), 'Die allgemeinen Prinzipien der Wellenmechanik.' A student at the time, the author well remembers meeting Hermann Weyl on the street and his saying, 'What Pauli has written on wave mechanics is again completely outstanding!' This judgment of a connoisseur is still valid today: the same article, twenty-five years later, was used unchanged in the new handbook (1958). Pauli's presentation was thoroughly modern and well thought out, considering that such articles frequently become outdated after only a few years. While the work on the Pauli principle and the first Handbuch article--'the Old Testament'--was done in Hamburg, the second article 'the New Testament' was written in Zurich" (M. Fierz in D.S.B. 10: 423). "To Pauli, with his abhorrence for any kind of ambiguity in physical theories, the advent of a rational quantum mechanics, excluding all irrelevant use of classical pictures, was a tremendous relief. . . . The vigour with which Pauli threw himself into the exploration of the new methods, and the mastery of these which he soon acquired, are evidenced by his article on the foundations of quantum mechanics in Handbuch der Physik (1932), which retains a similar position in scientific literature as his old exposition of relativity theory" (Niels Bohr, in Theoretical Physics in the Twentieth Century. A Memorial Volume to Wolfgang Pauli, pp. 2-3). In 1921 the 19-year-old Laporte became a student of Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, having been given an enthusiastic recommendation by Max Born, with whom Laporte had studied the previous year in Frankfurt. The 21-year-old Wolfgang Pauli was then a personal assistant to Sommerfeld. Laporte's first assignment was to discuss at a seminar a new paper by Einstein, but the subject was not familiar to him. Pauli came to his aid. Pauli and Laporte were "fellow sufferers" in Willy Wien's Physikalisches Prakticum. In 1924 Laporte came to the U.S. on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, and in 1926 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan. In 1931 Pauli came to Michigan to lecture at the famous summer school in Ann Arbor, where, in the midst of Prohibition, Laporte was able to satisfy all of Pauli's alcoholic needs, thanks to the proximity of the Canadian border less than 50 miles away. However, one day at Laporte's home, Pauli, in a "slightly tipsy state", tripped on a stair and broke his shoulder. Pauli proceeded to lecture with his left arm high up. George Uhlenbeck, one of Laporte's colleagues at Michigan, wrote formulae on the blackboard for Pauli, so Pauli was able to lecture facing his audience and giving his brilliant lectures (Enz, No Time to be Brief, a Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli, pp. 223-24). Laporte's earliest research was in spectroscopy, where he discovered what is now termed the "Laporte rule". In the 1940s he began research in fluid dynamics. Laporte died in 1971, From 1972-2003 the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics, awarded the Otto Laporte Award annually. Seller Inventory # 15646
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