Preface

Summary

This book is the outcome of my belief, shared undoubtedly by many that, like classical mechanics is taught starting with Newton's laws, so should the teaching of quantum mechanics be based on its postulates, and that since, in contrast with the intuitive appeal of Newton's laws, the quantum laws appear counter-intuitive, therefore, introduction of the postulates of quantum mechanics must be preceded by narrating the fascinating story of their birth. The understanding of the thought process that led to seemingly puzzling but remarkably accurate formulation of the laws of nature can arguably provide greater appreciation and grasp of the essence of radically different and counter-intuitive ideas of the theory. Furthermore, I find that some mathematical techniques, which can significantly simplify the algebra, are generally overlooked in the standard quantum mechanics literature.

The subject is generally introduced by glancing through those phenomena which historically necessitated search for a new theory and by providing the motivation and justification of the new ideas by examples. Making a departure from that approach, drawing upon the papers that formed the foundations of quantum mechanics, this book opens by providing an account of how the new theory took shape. It describes, for example, how Planck came up with the law of black-body radiation. How Heisenberg came up with the idea of representing a dynamical variable x by the set of quantities [x_mnm] labelled by two indices and how he arrived at the law of their multiplication, not knowing that his was the matrix representation of the classical dynamical variables.