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Physics Interest Group (PIG)
Meeting time: Friday 1:30-3:00 pm, right before the colloquium, except for Friday March 7, when there is no colloquium: we will then meet 2:30-4:00 pm.
Meeting place: East bank in Lind Hall, Rm. 216. All interested parties are welcome to attend. For directions to Lind Hall, see http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/LindH/
This semester the Physics Interest Group of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science will meet on five Friday afternoons. Four of the sessions will be devoted to discussion of the proceedings of the famous 1927 Solvay conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The Solvay proceedings have recently been translated from the French by Guido Bacciagaluppi and Antony Valentini. The book containing these translations with commentary is available on-line:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0609184v1
The central question for PIG will be how the quantum-mechanical concept of a state as a vector in Hilbert space emerged in the context of the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan. The final meeting will be devoted to the theory of optical dispersion (the phenomenon familiar from rainbows and prisms). Here the key issue is whether electromagnetic theories that take potentials rather than fields to be the primary concepts can account for dispersion.
Discussion topics for Spring 2008:
Friday, February 8: Brian Woodcock (Carleton) will give a presentation on the contribution to the 1927 Solvay congress by Born and Heisenberg (pp. 408-441 (pp. 424-457 of the pdf file) of Bacciagaluppi and Valentini).
Below is a link to a recent paper by Bacciagaluppi on the Born-Heisenberg contribution to the 1927 Solvay congress.
http://quantum-history.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/news/workshops/hq1/hq1_talks/interpretation/39_baccia/bacciagaluppi_preprint.pdfBelow is a link to footage of the participants at the congress shot by Irving Langmuir and unearthed recently by Born biographer Nancy Thorndike Greenspan
http://www.maxborn.net/index.php?page=filmnewsFriday, February 22: Further discussion of Born and Heisenberg contribution
Friday, March 7 [NOTE: different time: 2:30-4:00 pm]: Portion of Bacciagaluppi & Valentini (TBA)
Friday, March 28: Portion of Bacciagaluppi & Valentini (TBA)
Friday, April 18: Antigone Nounou will give a presentation on dispersion theory (readings TBA)
For the portion on quantum mechanics, interested parties are advised to check out the website of a new project in the history of quantum mechanics, centered at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin:
http://quantum-history.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/main/
For further information on PIG, contact Antigone Nounou (amnounou@umn.edu) or Michel Janssen (janss011@umn.edu).
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This page maintained by:
Janet McKernan
Created: January 25, 2008
Updated: January 29, 2008
