Born

Max Born

Born: 11 Dec 1882 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland)
Died: 5 Jan 1970 in Göttingen, Germany

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Max Born became Hilbert's assistant in 1905, and attended lectures by Minkowski. He also attended lectures by Klein and Runge. He began a collaboration with Minkowski who died in 1909, shortly after the collaboration had begun.

Born produced fundamental publications on relativity, specific heat and quantum theory. In 1921, the year he became professor at Göttingen, he reformulated the First Law of Thermodynamics. He collaborated with Heisenberg, who was a student of Born's, in 1926. Born was forced, as a Jew, to flee Germany in 1933 and became Stokes lecturer at Cambridge.

In 1936 he was appointed to a chair in Edinburgh. He returned to Göttingen, Germany when he retired in 1953 and was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for his statistical studies of wave functions. His treatment replaced the original quantum theory, which regarded electrons as particles, with a mathematical description representing their observed behaviour more accurately.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Born's work on quantum theory

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. V Frenkel, Max Born, Ideen des exakten Wissens 1972, 289-298.
  4. James Franck und Max Born in Göttingen (Göttingen, 1983).
  5. F Hund, H Maier-Leibnitz and V F Weisskopf, Max Born, James Franck, Physiker in ihrer Zeit (Berlin, 1982).
  6. J Lemmerich, Science and conscience : the world of two atomic scientists, Max Born (1882-1970), James Franck (1882-1964) : an exhibition from the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin-West (London, 1983).
  7. Obituary, Yearbook of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Session 1969-71 (1971-2), 23-26. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996