handofg0d Posted:

Quantum theory, the branch of physics which is based on quantization, began in 1900 when Max Planck published his theory explaining the emission spectrum of black bodies. In that paper Planck used the Natural system of units he invented the previous year. The consequences of the differences between clbumical and quantum mechanics quickly became obvious. But it was not until 1926, by the work of Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and others, that quantum mechanics became correctly formulated and understood mathematically. Despite tremendous experimental success, the philosophical interpretations of quantum theory are still widely debated.

Planck was reluctant to accept the new idea of quantization, as were many others. But, with no acceptable alternative, he continued to work with the idea, and found his efforts were well received. Eighteen years later, when he accepted the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions, he called it “a few weeks of the most strenuous work” of his life. During those few weeks, he even had to discard much of his own theoretical work from the preceding years. Quantization turned out to be the only way to describe the new and detailed experiments which were just then being performed. He did this practically overnight, openly reporting his change of mind to his scientific colleagues, in the October, November, and December meetings of the German Physical Society, in Berlin, where the black body work was being intensely discussed. In this way, careful experimentalists (including Friedrich Paschen, O.R. Lummer, Ernst Pringsheim, Heinrich Rubens, and F. Kurlbaum), and a reluctant theorist, ushered in a momentous scientific revolution.