It seemed as if matrix mechanics were essentially the same as wave functions, but what did physicists make of the mysterious psi? Born claimed that it was probability, challenging determinism, which had been the policy of physics for a long time.

Heisenberg had just developed the new matrix mechanics when Paul Dirac, the English man, noticed something crucial about the math. Developing a new algebra, the shy physicist got his Nobel Prize but didn’t want it.

Pauli’s friend Heisenberg went to Helgoland because of hay fever. He sat on the beach to watch the sun rise and came up with a new mechanics of matrices. He claimed that energy levels do Not exist and we should only deal with observables. However, the maths was very peculiar.

Pauli had a hard time trying to figure out what the fourth quantum number of the electron could represent. Although two young men later came up with the correct answer, he still couldn’t believe that electrons do have a “spin”. The name of this property is indeed misleading, which caused a lot of confusion, nearly scaring two impulsive but lucky boys to death.

Niels Bohr’s atomic model was the basis of the following theories. The problem of why electrons have fixed orbits led to the discovery of Schrödinger’s wave function. This time, another problem of why electrons stay in their orbits rather than fall to lower energy levels led to Pauli, the Austrian genius, discovering the Pauli’s exclusion principle. Even a talented physicist like him got irritated over the Anomalous Zeeman effect, which holds the secret of a missing quantum number. We are still a step away from cracking the whole puzzle.

Erwin Schrödinger had a lot of girlfriends. They were his source of inspiration, but his wife wasn’t exactly happy about it. Amidst all the talking about divorce, Erwin went to Arosa for a few days off and wrote a bunch of Nobel Prize winning papers, accompanied by a former girlfriend of his. The wave function ruled and the physics world greeted him with a burst of applause, despite his affairs.

Why do electrons have fixed orbits? Niels Bohr couldn’t explain. Louis de Broglie came to the rescue. His doctoral paper won him the Nobel Prize, which was excellent, except for the fact that it started the World War of particle or wave again.

Still remember about the 2024 Olympics in Paris? A French physicist is going to fix the problems of Niels Bohr’s atom cake.

I actually visited Denmark this summer and had quite a nice experience. There were plenty of sites related to the twentieth century physics world.

In short, the Danish boy Niels Henrik David Bohr found a quantized version of an atom. Discontinuity, an important characteristic of quantum theory has been introduced to the world. Note: Niels Bohr will pop up continually in the upcoming episodes, so do t forget about him!

There is a revolution waiting ahead. The quantum theory will play a major part in it. The third battle is far from over. Groups of geniuses in the early twentieth century are ready to give us a big surprise, and a brand new physics.

The wave theory is rising! Two geniuses and several experiments quickly changed the trajectory of history. Surprise attacks were launched frequently, soon leaving the corpuscular theory with nothing to hold on to. A century after its dominance, a new king was about to emerge.

What is light? People have thought about this question for centuries. Some considered it a kind of wave and others were determined to prove that its nature is a kind of particle. In the seventeenth century, a major battle between the two sides was started.

How can light stimulate electric currents? Einstein gave us the answer. Planck who was the rebel suddenly turned against his own theory. The age of quantum mechanics was started.

This episode continues in the black body radiation problem and delves into the theory and its impact.