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Quantum Mechanics

Nobel Lectures Index

Nobel lectures let you hear how participants later explained their work. They can make a difficult historical question approachable, but a retrospective account may use ideas developed after the discovery. Read the original paper alongside the lecture when the order of ideas matters.

For an accessible start, choose de Broglie on matter waves, Davisson and Thomson on electron diffraction, or Born on probability. The primary-papers index links to the earlier publications.

Lectures on the early quantum theory

Section titled “Lectures on the early quantum theory”

Dates in the first column give prize year / lecture year when these differ. Otherwise the lecture was delivered in the prize year. These are not the dates of the original discoveries.

Laureate and prize / lecture year Lecture or collection What to look for
Max Planck (1918 / 1920) The Genesis and Present State of Development of the Quantum Theory Retrospective on the radiation problem and the emergence of the quantum of action.
Albert Einstein (1921 / 1923) Fundamental Ideas and Problems of the Theory of Relativity The prize citation highlighted the photoelectric law; this later lecture concerns relativity. Use the 1905 paper for the light-quantum argument.
Niels Bohr (1922) The Structure of the Atom Explains the old-quantum-theory route through atomic structure and spectra.
James Franck (1925 / 1926) Transformation of kinetic energy of free electrons into excitation energy of atoms by impacts Gives a participant’s account of collision evidence for discrete atomic excitation.
Gustav Hertz (1925 / 1926) The Results of the Electron-Impact Tests in the Light of Bohr’s Theory of Atoms Compare Hertz’s account of collision experiments with Franck’s lecture and the original interpretation.
Arthur H. Compton (1927) X-Rays as a Branch of Optics Places Compton scattering inside the experimental case for photon momentum.
Louis de Broglie (1929) The wave nature of the electron Clear retrospective on matter waves and the wavelength-momentum relation.
Werner Heisenberg (1932 / 1933) The Development of Quantum Mechanics How correspondence arguments and transition quantities led toward a general mechanics.
Erwin Schrödinger (1933) The Fundamental Idea of Wave Mechanics Gives Schrödinger’s own presentation of wave mechanics and its motivating ideas.
P. A. M. Dirac (1933) Theory of Electrons and Positrons Shows the relativistic and algebraic extension of quantum mechanics toward antiparticles and field theory.
C. J. Davisson (1937) The Discovery of Electron Waves Participant account of reflection electron diffraction.
G. P. Thomson (1937) Electron Diffraction Participant account of transmission electron diffraction.
Wolfgang Pauli (1945 / 1946) Exclusion Principle and Quantum Mechanics Pauli’s retrospective on exclusion, spectra, and quantum numbers.
Max Born (1954) The Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Central retrospective on probability interpretation and scattering amplitudes.

Later lectures on fields, matter, and control

Section titled “Later lectures on fields, matter, and control”
Laureate and prize year Lecture or collection What to look for
Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (1965) Physics 1965 prize page Useful for the bridge from quantum mechanics to quantum electrodynamics.
Klaus von Klitzing (1985) The Quantized Hall Effect How quantized Hall resistance became a precision measurement; distinguish the integer effect from the fractional effect.
Eric Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, and Carl Wieman (2001) Physics 2001 prize page Useful for Bose–Einstein condensation as a modern controlled quantum-statistical system.
Serge Haroche and David Wineland (2012) Physics 2012 prize page Useful for the transition from thought experiments to controlled individual quantum systems.
Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger (2022) Physics 2022 prize page Useful for Bell tests, entanglement experiments, and quantum information history.

Read a lecture against its earlier paper

Section titled “Read a lecture against its earlier paper”

Born’s 1954 lecture looks back on the statistical interpretation developed in 1926. The earlier collision paper ties probabilities to outgoing scattering waves. By 1954, the broader state-and-measurement formalism had long been available. Comparing the two helps explain both the original problem and the generality of the later theory; the Born-rule history supplies that comparison.

Einstein’s case shows why the prize citation and lecture title must be read separately. His 1921 prize was awarded in 1922, and the lecture reproduced by the Nobel archive was delivered in Gothenburg on 11 July 1923. It addresses relativity. It is therefore a source for Einstein’s presentation of relativity, not a replacement for his 1905 light-quantum paper.

Awards also select particular people and contributions. To recover collaborators and experimental details, follow the people index and the references in the relevant experiment page.

Exercise

Section titled “Exercise”

A lecture delivered in 1954 explains a 1926 result using a concept introduced in 1932. Does the passage establish that the author already used that concept in 1926? What would you need to check?

Solution

No. It establishes how the author explained the result in 1954. To establish the earlier reasoning, examine the 1926 publication and, where relevant, dated drafts or correspondence. A later concept may express the result more clearly without having been available when it was first obtained.

References

Section titled “References”

The tables link directly to the Nobel archive. The dated lectures below support the comparisons in the text.