Max Born
Born: 11 Dec 1882 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland)
The German physicist Max Born (1882-1970) made his most outstanding
contribution to modern physics in showing the inherently probabilistic
nature of the basic laws of quantum mechanics
Max Born was born into a Jewish family. His
father, Gustav Born, was a distinguished medical
professor of embryology
at the University of Breslau. Max's mother, Margarete Kaufmann, came
from a Breslau family who were in the textile industry. It was from his
mother that Max inherited his love of music, but sadly she died when he
was four years old. Gustav then appointed governesses to look after Max
and his younger sister over the next four years until 1890 when he
married again. The family provided a cultured and academic background
for Max as he grew up but, although Max's new mother looked after the
family well, neither Max nor his sister formed a particularly loving
relationship with her.
Max attended the König Wilhelm Gymnasium
in Breslau, studying a wide range of subjects such as mathematics,
physics, history, modern languages, Latin, Greek, and German. He showed
little promise at school and in particular he showed more interest in
the humanities than in the sciences. Entering the University of Breslau
in 1901 he took a wide range of science subjects, mainly to go along
with his father's wishes (his father had died shortly before Max left
school). The list of courses he took in session 1901-02 was certainly
impressive, including mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, logic,
philosophy, and zoology.
Max's favourite subjects from the ones he studied were mathematics and
astronomy and he thought of specialising in astronomy. Students in
Germany at this time moved from university to university and Born was no
exception spending 1902 in Heidelberg, then 1903 at Zurich. In Zurich
he attended his first course on advanced mathematics, a course by Hurwitz on elliptic functions.
Back in Breslau he talked to his fellow students Toeplitz and Hellinger who told him of the great teachers of mathematics, Klein, Hilbert and Minkowski, at the University of Göttingen. Born was soon in Göttingen attending lectures by Hilbert and Minkowski. He became Hilbert's assistant in 1905, continuing to attend lectures by Klein and Runge on elasticity and a seminar by Hilbert and Minkowski
on electrodynamics. Perhaps the most benefit he derived from his famous
teachers was during walks he would make in the woods with Hilbert and Minkowski
where all manner of fascinating subjects were discussed in addition to
mathematics, such as problems of philosophy, problems of politics, and
social problems. However he annoyed Klein
by only making irregular attendances at his lectures, so Born decided
to substitute astronomy for geometry as one of his doctoral subjects. He
attended Schwarzschild's astronomy lectures and successfully obtained his doctorate in 1907 for a thesis on elastic stability.
In addition to the mathematicians mentioned above, Born was in contact with Courant, Schmidt and Carathéodory
around this period. After the award of his doctorate, Born undertook
compulsory military service, but because he suffered from asthma he
served for much less than the standard period of one year. It was enough
to make him loath all things military, however. After this he visited
Caius College, Cambridge, for six months but made less of Larmor's lectures than he might because he had difficulty with Larmor's Irish accent.
Leaving Cambridge, Born returned to Breslau. Around this time Born read Einstein's 1905 papers on relativity and was immediately captivated. His work on combining ideas of Einstein and Minkowski led to an invitation to Göttingen in 1909 and he began a collaboration with Minkowski who died only weeks after the collaboration had begun [8]:-
In 1912 Born was offered a post in Göttingen and, once on the teaching staff, he began a research project with von Kármán.
This work was on lattice dynamics where they identified the degrees of
freedom of a crystal with the normal modes of vibration of the whole
body. Their work uses three dimensional Fourier analysis and periodic boundary conditions. Born married Hedwig Ehrenberg, the daughter of a Professor of Law at Göttingen, in 1913. They had one son and two daughters.
In 1914 Born was offered a chair at Berlin where he became a colleague of Planck.
Of course this coincided with the start of World War I and, although
Born had already developed a loathing for the military, he had little
choice but to contribute to the war effort. His first contribution was
as a radio operator in the German air force, but soon he was involved in
research in sound ranging in the artillery. This took him away from
active duty, and he continued to request that his former colleagues and
students who were serving on the front join him so that they likewise
could avoid active duty. The war years were ones of exceptional
difficulty for Born, eased by his friendship with Einstein. They shared a love of music and they would play violin sonatas together, Einstein on the violin and Born on piano.
In April 1919 he moved to a chair in Frankfurt-am-Main also becoming
Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics there. Two years later
Born was back in Göttingen as Director of the Physical Institute. In
1921, the year he became Professor at Göttingen, he reformulated the
First Law of Thermodynamics. Beginning in 1926, Born collaborated with Pauli and Heisenberg, who was a student of Born's, on quantum mechanics (the term "quantum mechanics" is due to Born). He recognised Heisenberg's approach to quantum mechanics as being matrix algebra.
Born produced work of fundamental importance in quantum mechanics
beginning with this collaboration. His treatment replaced the original
quantum theory, which regarded electrons as particles, with a
mathematical description representing their observed behaviour more
accurately.
However, as a Jew, Born was forced to flee Germany in 1933 and, after a
short while in the north of Italy, he accepted an offer to became Stokes lecturer at Cambridge [3]:-
He later spoke very warmly of the way in which he had been received and made welcome in [Britain]. For the next few years he and his wife devoted much effort to giving help and advice to others from Germany and Austria who had to emigrate.
After a short time in India, in 1936 he became Tait
professor of applied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in
Scotland. There he introduced a continental style research group
comprising mostly of refugees from Europe. One of his research students
described Born's days in Edinburgh:-
When Born arrived in the morning he first used to make the round of his research students, asking them whether they had any progress to report, and giving them advice, sometimes presenting them with sheets of elaborate calculations concerning their problems which he had himself done the day before. ... The rest of the morning was spent by Born in delivering his lectures to undergraduate honours students, attending to departmental business, and doing research work of his own. Most of the latter, however he used to carry out at home in the afternoons and evenings.
After he retired in 1953 Born returned Germany making his home in Bad
Pyrmont, near Göttingen. Soon after he received his greatest honour when
he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for his statistical studies of wave
functions. During this period he became interested in the philosophy of
science as well as the impact of science on human affairs [3]:-
He was deeply concerned about the danger to the world from future war and mass destruction, and took the initiative in 1955 to get a statement on this subject signed by a gathering of Nobel Laureates.
Born received many honours, far too numerous to name more than a few: he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1939 and awarded its Hughes Medal in 1950:-
... for his contributions to theoretical physics an general and to the development of quantum mechanics in particular.
He received the Stokes
Medal from the University of Cambridge, two German schools were named
after him and he was made an honorary member of academies in Russia,
India, Romania, Peru, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden and the USA.
Born wrote many textbooks and monographs, mostly for students or experts
in the subjects but some are excellent popular accounts of science. His
publication list includes at least 360 items.
He was respected and honoured for many important contributions to his subject and for his wisdom and success as a teacher. He was widely known for his exposition of the ideas of physics to the layman, and he was held in affection by his many colleagues and pupils for the warmth and simple directness of his personality.
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