1 Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum

Theory, Part 1: Spectroscopy

David C. Cassidy

One of the topics set for this workshop touches upon the transition from the old quantum
theory to the new quantum mechanicsin particular, how the physics community came
to recognize the limitations of the old quantum theory.1
Some of the answers to this question may be found in one of the most unsettled
periods in the history of quantum physics. These were the years between the end of the
First World War in 1918 and the breakthrough to quantum mechanics in 192527. It
was a period of great difficulty and upheaval, but also remarkable creativityboth for
quantum physics and for European society, Germany in particular.
Paul Forman and others have long recognized the remarkable simultaneity of events
occurring at that time in the realms of physics and society. Equally remarkable is
the appearance during this period of public expressions of a crisis situation within both
realms. For example, while Oswald Spengler prophesied the Untergang des Abendlandes,
a number of physicists, among them Einstein, lamented what he called The present crisis
of theoretical physics.2 In both physics and society those years were indeed, to quote
the title of another book by Spengler, Jahre der Entscheidung.3
What was going on here? What developments inside and outside the old quantum
theory could lead a large number of quantum physicists to doubt the possibility of further
progress using that theory? In what sense and to what extent could this be regarded as
a crisis situation? Was there really any connection between the simultaneous events
occurring within physics and society?
These are all very profound and far-reaching historical questions. But, of course, they
are not new. This year marks not only the 60th aniversary of the passing of Max Planck
in 1947, but also the 40th anniversary of the completion of the Archive for History of
Quantum Physics and the publication of its catalogue in 1967.4
Greatly stimulated in part by the availability of this archive, during the past half
century a large number of historical studies have been devoted to answering many of
the fundamental questions about this fertile period of transition from the old to the new
1

MPIWG, Conference on the history of quantum physics, 26 July 2007, Berlin.

Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1918); Albert Einstein,

Uber
die gegenw
artige Krise der theoretischen Physik, Kaizo (Tokyo), 4 (1922), 18, reprinted, Karl
von Meyenn, ed., Quantenmechanik und Weimarer Republik (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1994), 233239,
quote on 238239. The talk of a crisis was not new in physics. It appeared before the war in, for
instance, Paul Ehrenfest, Zur Krise der Licht
ather-Hypothese (Berlin: Springer, 1913). I thank Sk
uli
Sigurdsson for bringing this to my attention.
3
Oswald Spengler, Jahre der Entscheidung, erster Teil (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1933).
4
Thomas S. Kuhn et al., eds., Sources for history of quantum physics: An inventory and report (Philadelphia: Am. Philosophical Society, 1967).
2

David C. Cassidy
quantum physics.
Looking back over the past decades, two important historiographic works regarding
the crisis in quantum theory immediately spring to mind.

Historiographic Works
1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
For Kuhn, crises entail a rupture between two paradigms, caused mainly by internal
developments within normal science. Kuhn described a crisis situation this way:
Because it leads to large-scale paradigm destruction . . . the emergence
of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity. As one might expect, that insecurity is generated
by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out
as they should.5
2. Paul Forman, Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 19181927,
1972, takes Kuhn one step further regarding the crisis in quantum theory:
While it is undoubtedly true that the internal developments in atomic
physics were important in precipitating this widespread sense of crisis
... nonetheless it now seems evident to me that these internal developments were not in themselves sufficient conditions. The possibility of
the crisis of the old quantum theory was, I think, dependent upon the
physicists own craving for crises, arising from participation in, and
adaptation to, the Weimar intellectual milieu.6
Not until very recently has another work appeared offering a different perspective
on the crisis situation in quantum theory.
3. Suman Seth, Crisis and the construction of modern theoretical physics, March
2007.
According to Seth, Different subgroups within theoretical physics viewed the situation in dramatically different ways, depending upon their differing research
agendas.
Members of the Sommerfeld school in Munich, who saw the task of the
physicist as lying in the solution of particular problems, neither saw a crisis
nor acknowledged its resolution.
Researchers associated with Bohrs institute in Copenhagen, who focused on
the creation and adaptation of new principles, openly advocated a crisis even
before decisive anomalies arose.7
5

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962),
pp. 6768.
6
Paul Forman, Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 19181927: Adaptation by German
Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment, Historical Studies in the Physical
Sciences, 3 (1972), 1115, on 62; German translation in: von Meyenn, note 2, 61179.
7
Suman Seth, Crisis and the construction of modern theoretical physics, British Journal for History
of Science, 40 (March 2007), 2551, on p. 25.

Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum Theory

Historical Works
Historical studies of the crisis period over the past forty years display a similar pattern
an initial flurry of work on the origins and evolution of quantum physics, followed by a
quantum gap as historians turned to other topics, ending with a revival of interest in
recent years. Here are some examples:
M. Jammer. The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, 1966.
P. Forman. The doublet riddle and atomic physics circa 1924, Isis, 59 (1968), 156174.
P. Forman. Alfred Lande and the anomalous Zeeman Effect, HSPS, 2 (1970), 153261.
H. Small. The Helium Atom in the Old Quantum Theory, PhD diss., 1971.
R. Stuewer. The Compton effect: Turning point in physics, 1971.
D. Cassidy. Werner Heisenberg and the Crisis in Quantum Theory, 19201925. PhD
diss., 1976.
D. Serwer. Unmechanischer Zwang: Pauli, Heisenberg, and the Rejection of the mechanical atom, 19231925, HSPS, 8 (1977), 189256.
J. Hendry. Bohr-Kramers-Slater: A virtual theory of virtual oscillators, Centaurus,
25 (1981), 189221.
Gap
O. Darrigol. From c-numbers to q-numbers: The classical analogy in the history of quantum theory, 1992. Chapter 8, A Crisis.
H. Kragh. Quantum generations: A history of physics in the 20th century, 1999. Section: Quantum anomalies.
In addition to these studies, the last few decades have brought us the publications
of the Pauli correspondence, the Born-Einstein letters, the Sommerfeld-Nachlass, and
the collected papers of nearly every major physicist of the era, along with many online
resources.
With the availability of all of these pioneering works and interpretations, and a rich
trove of primary source material, I think we may now be in a position to make the leap
to a new quantum statea re-examination of the quantum crisis at a much deeper level
as both history and historiography, thereby achieving a much fuller understanding of
what happened and why.

Origins of the Crisis

Re-examining the mounting problems arising within quantum theory during the early
1920s, we are soon lead back far earlier than 1918, all the way back to the introduction of the quantum itself by Planck and Einstein beginning in 1900, and to the BohrSommerfeld theory of the atom in 191316.
While the nature of light and the quantum remained persistent problems, it was the
Bohr atom of 1913 and its extensions by Sommerfeld that lay at the foundation of the
later crisis situation in quantum atomic physics. It was a critical situation that reached
an apex ironically with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bohr atom in 1923.
I would like to point out briefly several implications of this theory.

David C. Cassidy

The Bohr Atom

It provided an extraordinarily successful visualizable mechanical model of orbiting
electrons in stationary states obeying classical mechanics but not electrodynamics.
It accounted for stability, optical spectra, and ionization of hydrogen atoms.
Despite this success, many statements appeared over the next decade on the fundamentally unsatisfactory nature of the theory, starting with Bohr himself in 1913.
For instance, James Jeans declared: The only justification at present put forward
for these assumptions is the very weighty one of success . . . It would be futile to
deny that there are difficulties, still unsurmounted, which appear to be enormous.8
Yet the success of the Bohr atom (with extensions by Sommerfeld) set the standard
for over a decade of a successful quantum theory of atomic phenomena.
It became the definition, if you will, of normal quantum atomic science. In this science, what was frequently called eine modellmaige Deutung,a modelbased
interpretation/ explanationof atomic phenomena became the goal of a successful theory, what Heisenberg and Pauli later called a physical explanation.

My Points
With the Bohr atom as a background, my argument regarding the crisis in quantum
theory is composed of the following points:
Beginning about 1918, new and more precise data and mechanical calculations
resulted by the early 1920s in an increasing failure to achieve the ideal set by
the Bohr atom. At the same time, new funding strategies during the post-war
economic crisis in Germany provided a boast directly to atomic research.
The failure of the theory magnified the sense of professional insecurity about the
old quantum theory within the community of physicists and mathematicians.
The insecurity reached such proportions by 1923 that it came close to what Kuhn
described as a crisis situation. At the same time, as Seth has suggested, noticeable
differences did appear among different groups. However,
The old quantum theory did in fact work quite well for many other phenomena,
such as molecular band spectra.9
The Forman thesis and related issues regarding the quantum crisis are addressed
in a separate paper.10
8

James Jeans, address to British Association, reported in Nature, 92 (1913), 304309; quoted by Ulrich
Hoyer, introduction to Niels Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1981), 124.
9
For example, Edwin Kemble, The application of the correspondence principle to degenerate systems
and the relative intensities of band lines, Physical Review, 25 (1925), 122.
10
D. Cassidy, Heisenberg, Weimar culture, and the Forman thesis, paper delivered to conference on
35th anniversary of Formans paper, Vancouver, March 2007.

Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum Theory

Three Critical Problems, Three Groups, Three PlacesRoughly Defined

In my rather internal re-examination of this period, I have identified three main problem areas, involving three main research groups in three different places, that caused
increasing trouble.
1. Problem: Multiplet (complex) line spectra of atoms and their anomalous Zeeman
effects. Research group: Sommerfeld school in Munich, including T
ubingen spectroscopists Friedrich Paschen, Ernst Back with theorist Alfred Lande.
2. Problem: Simple 3-body atomic/molecular systems beyond hydrogen atom: H2+ ,
normal He, and excited He. Research group: Born school in Gottingen, including
Pauli and Heisenberg, also Sommerfeld, Kramers, Kemble, and Van Vleck. Both of
these problem areas concerned atomic structure. The third problem area involved
the nature of light.
3. Problem: Interaction of radiation and matter, including dispersion theory and the
existence of light quanta. Research group: Bohr school in Copenhagen, including
Pauli, Heisenberg, Kramers.

Sommerfeld and the Anomalous Zeeman Effect

As also discussed recently by Suman Seth and others, but with somewhat different
interpretation, the problem of the Zeeman effect arose within quantum atomic theory as
early as 1913, when Bohr sent a copy of his first paper on the Bohr atom to Sommerfeld.
Sommerfeld replied immediately: Will you also apply your atomic model to the Zeeman
effect? I would like to concern myself with this.11
Sommerfeld did work on the problem, and in 1916 he published his fundamental
paper Zur Quantentheorie der Spektrallinien, which established the Bohr-Sommerfeld
quantum theory of atomic structure.12 I will list only briefly some of the important
elements of this paper for our purposes:
The Sommerfeld quantum conditions, involving only integral numbers of quanta
a relativistic treatment of the Kepler orbits of the electrons in the Bohr model led
to angular momentum as a degree of freedom, and . . .
two new quantum numbers for the orbital motion of an electron, giving 3 altogether: n the state number; k for azimuthal angular momentum; m for space
quantization, if a z-axis is defined.
Sommerfeld intended to define the z-axis by a weak magnetic field and thus obtain the
Zeeman effect. He did so in a follow-up paper that same year, as did Peter Debye. The
11
12

Sommerfeld to Bohr, 4 Sept. 1913, in Bohr, note 8, vol. 2, 603.

Sommerfeld, Zur Theorie der Spektrallinien, 3 parts, Annalen der Physik, 51 (1916), 194 and 125
167; reprinted in Arnold Sommerfeld, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg
& Sohn, 1968), 172308.

David C. Cassidy
result was the normal Zeeman effect of hydrogen and other singlet line spectra in a weak
magnetic field defining the z-axis.13
E = E0 +

mh eH

= E0 + mhL
2 2me c

where m = 1, 0

where E is the energy of a Zeeman term, E0 is the energy of the unperturbed optical
L term, and vL is the Larmor frequency. This gives the splitting of a singlet line into 3
lines in a weak magnetic field, but the origin of the selection rule was unknown, and the
theory could not account for the more prevalent anomalous Zeeman effect.

Anomalous Zeeman Effect

The effect was associated with the puzzling appearance of optical multiplet lines: the
splitting of single lines into closely spaced doublets and triplets. The doublet sodium
D-lines are a well known example. (As we know today, they arise from spin-orbit coupling within the atom.) Unlike singlets, which display the normal Zeeman effect, the
multiplet lines split into more than 3 lines or into 3 lines that are not separated by
the Larmor frequency. Furthermore, Paschen and Back had discovered by 1913 the socalled Paschen-Back effect, whereby the anomalous lines all coalesce continuously into
the normal Zeeman triplet as the external magnetic field is increased.14 In 1919 Sommerfeld listed this behavior and the appearance of the anomalous Zeeman effect among the
Schwebende Fragen der Atomphysik (unsettled questions of atomic physics). Question number 1 entailed eine modellmassige Deutung of these phenomena, for which,
he declared, entirely new things were required.15

Sommerfelds Program
With new and more precise data pouring into his Munich institute from T
ubingen,
Sommerfeld set out to find the entirely new things in a program explained in paper
published in 1920. But it entailed an obvious retreat for the author of the relativistic
quantum model of the atom. For Sommerfeld the situation seemed similar to that in
hydrogen spectroscopy before the Bohr atom. As Balmer had done decades earlier,
Sommerfeld undertook analyses of the highly regular Zeeman data in search of empirical
relationships and number harmonies that he hoped would provide clues to the underlying
model interpretation of the data. As Seth has argued, Sommerfeld was solving problems
not seeking new principles, but, like Balmer, he had little choice at this point.16
Sommerfeld soon found what he was looking for. In 1920 he published his famous
Zahlenmysterium, number mystery. It consisted of a table of number harmonies in
13

A. Sommerfeld,Zur Theorie des Zeeman-Effekts der Wasserstofflinien, mit einem Anhang u

ber den
Stark-Effekt, Physikalische Zeitschrift, 17 (1916), 491507; reprinted Sommerfeld, note 12, 309325;
Peter Debye, Quantenhypothese und Zeeman Effekte, Phys. Zs. , 17 (1916), 507512.
14
F. Paschen and E. Back, Normale und anomale Zeemaneffekte, Annalen der Physik, 39 (1912), 897
932. For the phenomena of the Zeeman effect as observed at that time, see A. Sommerfeld, Atombau
und Spektrallinien (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg & Sohn), 1st edition 1919, 3rd edition 1922, 4th edition
1924. The effect is also discussed in the literature cited earlier.
15
A. Sommerfeld, Schwebende Fragen der Atomphysik, Phys. Zs. , 21 (1920), 619620; reprinted in
Sommerfeld, note 12, vol. 3, 496497.
16
A. Sommerfeld, Ein Zahlenmysterium in der Theorie des Zeemaneffktes, Naturwiss., 8 (1920), 6164
on 64; reprinted in Sommerfeld, note 12, vol. 3, 511514.

Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum Theory

which he had traced the observed multiplet lines to combinations of quantum states to
which he assigned empirical inner quantum numbers j. In his scheme, each angular
momentum state k split into two or three states with values of j = k, k 1 for doublets,
j = k, k 1, k 2 for triplets. Thus, for example, the sodium D-lines arise from
downward jumps from k = 2, j = 2 to k = 1, j = 1 (D2 ) and k = 2, j = 1 to k = 1,
j = 1 (D1 ). Sommerfeld believed the inner quantum numbers referred to some unknown
inner rotation and hidden mechanical quantum condition.
We must be clear about what Sommerfeld was doing. He was not really engaging
in number mysticism. Rather, he was attempting to solve a mystery. He was taking
the phenomenological approach because he has no other choice, and he is not happy
about it. Wrote Sommerfeld, The musical beauty of our number table will not hide
the fact that it presently represents a number mystery. In fact I do not yet see any
way to a model-based explanation either of the doublet-triplet data or of their magnetic
influence.17
There is none of the sense of desperation and distress expressed by some others at that
time. But it does seem to me that Sommerfeld was already participating in what Kuhn
called a pronounced professional insecurity about the ultimate success of his program.
This became more acute following the work of theorists Lande and Heisenberg during
the time they participated as collaborators in the Sommerfeld School.

Land
es g-Factors
Alfred Lande managed to take Sommerfelds number mystery one step further. Very
briefly, he associated each multiplet term, j, with a series of Zeeman terms, each characterized by the magnetic quantum number m and an empirical gyromagnetic factor
g.18 But his most controversial innovation was the introduction of half-integer values
for the magnetic numbers m of the doublet states on purely empirical grounds. Half
integers were required in order to achieve an even number of magnetic states for each
value of j, as shown below.
Lande, 1921:
E = E0 + mhL
E = Ei + gmhL

normal Zeeman effect

anomalous Zeeman effect

g=1
g = 2j/(2k 1)

singlets
doublets

1 + 1/k
j=k
1

1/(k
+
1)(k

1)
j =k1
g=

1 1/(k 1)
j =k2
m = 0, 1, 2, . . . , j


m = 21 , 23 , 52 , . . ., j 12
17
18

triplets

triplets, 2j + 1 states, odd

doublets, 2j states, even

Ibid., 64. The number table contained the so-called Runge fractions for the Zeeman terms.

Alfred Lande, Uber

den anomalen Zeemaneffekt (Teil I), Zs. f. Physik, 5 (1921), 231241. Discussed
at length by Forman, Alfred Lande and the anomalous Zeeman Effect, HSPS, 2 (1970), 153261.

David C. Cassidy
Sommerfeld was ecstatic: Bravo, you are able to work miracles! he wrote Lande.
Your construction of the doublet Zeeman types is very beautiful.19 To Einstein he
wrote, Light, or better, dawn really is coming to spectroscopy.20
But Sommerfeld and Lande also acknowledged the lack of a model interpretation of
the empirical g-factors along with their continuing hope for a satisfactory model. A
model interpretation did soon appear, but it made matters only worse. It showed that
the g-factors and all of the empirical number harmonies could be reduced to a model
only if the model was so radical as to force an explicit break with the Bohr-Sommerfeld
idealin particular a violation of space quantization in a field, and the introduction of
actual half-integer angular momenta.
The model was Heisenbergs Rumpf or core model of the atom, submitted in 1921 as
his first published paper while still only a 3 semester student.

Heisenbergs Core Model

Heisenbergs core model arose directly from Sommerfelds latest insight: a derivation of
Landes g-factors from a quantum-theoretical reinterpretation of a classical harmonic
oscillator model of the atom proposed earlier by Woldemar Voigt. In December 1921
Sommerfeld submitted a paper titled: Quantentheoretische Umdeutung der Voigtschen
Theorie des anomalen Zeemaneffektes vom D-Linientypus.21 I believe the title and the
approach of this paper had a direct influence on Heisenbergs Umdeutung paper four
years later. Heisenbergs core model paper was submitted 7 days after Sommerfelds
Umdeutung and published immediately following it in Zeitschrift f
ur Physik.22
In his paper, Sommerfeld had obtained an equation for the energy of a Zeeman term
for doublet lines as a function of the external magnetic field. The equation, shown
in the slide below, yields Landes doublet g-factors for small magnetic field, and it
displays the Paschen-Back effect for the continuous transition to the normal Zeeman
effect as magnetic field increases. (Today, this equation appears as the off-diagonal
matrix elements for the energy operator in quantum mechanics.)
The Sommerfeld-Voigt equation for doublets (1921) reads


1p

2
E = E + hL m
1 + (2m /k ) +
,
2
where E is the energy of the Zeeman term, E the average of the doublet energies and
=

L
H

k = k

1 3
m = , , . . ., k
2 2
19

1
2

j = j
|m | j

1
2

Sommerfeld to Lande, 25 Feb. 1921, published in Forman, note 18, p. 249.

Sommerfeld to Einstein, 17 Oct. 1921, published in Einstein and Sommerfeld, Briefwechsel, ed. Armin
Hermann (Basel: Schwabe, 1968), p. 94.
21
Sommerfeld, Zs. f. Physik, 8 (1922), 257272; reprinted in Sommerfeld, note 12, vol. 3, 609624.
22

W. Heisenberg, Uber
quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen,
Zs. f. Physik, 33 (1925), 879893; idem, Zur Quantentheorie der Linienstruktur und der anomalen
Zeemaneffekte, Zs. f. Physik, 8 (1922), 273297.
20

Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum Theory

Heisenberg managed to derive this equation for E from his core model, and to obtain
the triplet g-factors as well. The following concerns only the doublet factors.23
1. Heisenberg noted that doublet atoms are single-valence, while triplet atoms are
double valence. A single valence atom, such as sodium, contains a nobel-gas core
of filled electron shells, with one valence electron in the outer shell.
2. The basic idea of Heisenbergs model is that the half-integer numbers arise from
actual half-integer angular momenta. They are 12 integral because the valence
electron for some reason shares 12 unit of angular momentum with the core, leaving
the valence electron with k 21 units of momentum.
3. This reproduces what we now recognize as spin-orbit coupling. The valence electron sets up an internal magnetic field at the site of the core. The doublet term
structure arises from the parallel or anti-parallel alignment of the core, resulting
in a total angular momentum of j units, where


j = k 12 + 12 = k ,


j = k 12 12 = k 1 .
4. When an external magnetic field is applied, the motion of the valence electron is
space quantized, but the core is NOT. It simply aligns itself along the total field
vector, changing direction continuously as the external field varies. This results in
Sommerfelds square-root factor with its continuous transition from the anomalous
to the normal Zeeman effect.
Despite Landes repeated objections in letters to Heisenberg at that time, Heisenberg
held to these and other violations of quantum and classical principles, mainly because the
model worked. When Pauli objected, too, Heisenberg responded with his now famous
Machiavellian motto: Der Erfolg heiligt die Mittel.Success sanctifies the means.24

The Response
And success it was, but at what a cost! Bohr, expressing his own agenda at that time,
rejected the model for its violation of integral quantization of angular momenta. His
newly successful building-up principle (Aufbauprinzip) of the periodic table required
integers. Bohr complained to Lande in May 1922:
My viewpoint is this: that the entire manner of quantization (half integer quantum
numbers etc.) does not appear reconcilable with the basic principles of the quantum
theory, especially not in the form in which these principles are used in my work on
atomic structure.25
23

Further discussed in D. Cassidy, Heisenbergs first core model of the atom: The formation of a
professional style, HSPS, 10 (1979), 187224; and Olivier Darrigol, From c-numbers to q-numbers:
The classical analogy in the history of quantum theory (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1992), chapt.
8.
24
Heisenberg letters to Lande (AHQP Mf 6, 2); Heisenberg to Pauli, 19 Nov. (1921), published in W.
Pauli, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. A. Hermann, K. v. Meyenn, V. F. Weisskopf, vol. 1 (Berlin:
Springer, 1979), p. 44.
25
Bohr to Lande, 15 May 1922 (Bohr Scientific Correspondence, Mf 4, 2).

David C. Cassidy
Sommerfeld, on the other hand, once again expressed amazement and delight (and
thus approved publication), but he was also perplexed. He wrote to Einstein on 11
January 1922, a now famous statement:
I have in the meantime uncovered wonderful numerical laws for line combinations in
connection with the Paschen measurements and presented them in the third edition of
my book. A pupil of mine (Heisenberg, 3rd semester!) has even explained these laws
and those of the anomalous Zeeman effect with a model (Z. f. Ph., in press). Everything
works out but yet in the deepest sense remains unclear. I can pursue only the technique
of the quanta, you must make your philosophy... Set yourself to it!26
This was a remarkable statement for the co-author of the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantum
atomic theory. As with the Bohr atom earlier, not only is he fully aware that something
is wrong with quantum atomic theory in the deepest sense, but also he has now given
up the search for a model interpretation as too difficult and is pursuing instead the
engineering of empirical data. Pauli and Heisenberg began referring to Sommerfelds
approach as one seeking formal connections as opposed to physical clarification.

The Bohr-Festspiel
The unsettled situation in the old quantum theory by 1922 became more unsettled
following one of the most important events of the period in quantum theoryBohrs
series of lectures on atomic structure in Gottingen in June 1922, known as the BohrFestspiel.
The hostilities of the world war did not cease with the Armistice in 1918. Because
many German scientists had openly supported the German cause during the war, French
and British scientists attempted a boycott of German science after the war. While
Einstein and Curie worked through the League of Nations to end the boycott, Bohr
openly defied it by traveling to Germany on several occasions and inviting German
scientists to Copenhagen. In 1922 he accepted an invitation to deliver the Wolfskehl
Lectures in G
ottingen. The Bohr festival became a turning point. It set the standard
for success in quantum atomic theory and thereby rendered the failure to achieve that
standard all the more obvious and unsettling.
Over a period of ten days in June 1922, Bohr presented seven lectures on Die Theorie
des Atombaus.27 In these lectures he systematically developed what we now view as
the old quantum theory of atomic structure. The audience consisted of nearly every
major and minor German quantum theorist. Bohrs systematic approach in his lectures
was so impressive that it immediately reenforced at least two research efforts that fall.
The first of these, undertaken by Born and Heisenberg in Gottingen, entailed the second
problem-area noted earlier: a rigorous and systematic application of celestial mechanics
to quantum models of highly excited helium atoms. With the inner electron shielding the
+2 charge of the nucleus, the outer electron should give the spectral lines and ionization
potential of a perturbed hydrogen atom. The goal was to determine if, under rigorous
mechanical calculation, the quantum atomic theory did or did not yield the observed
26
27

Sommerfeld to Einstein, 11 Jan. 1922, in Einstein and Sommerfeld, note 20, 9697.
Bohr, Sieben Vortr
age u
ber die Theorie des Atombaus, 1222 June 1922 (Bohr Manuscripts, MF
10); published in Bohr, note 8, vol. 4, 341419.

10

Re-Examining the Crisis in Quantum Theory

results. In the end it did not, but I will leave that for another occasion.28
The second research program to arise from the Bohr-Festspiel was undertaken by
Bohr and Pauli in Copenhagen. Bohr explained it to Lande in March 1923: It was
... a desperate attempt to remain true to the integer quantum numbers, in which we
hoped to see even in the paradoxes a hint for the way in which we might seek the
solution of the anomalous Zeeman effect.29 The attempt also proved to be a complete
failure, and they never published the work. Faced with the inconsistent use of half
integers by other theorists, Pauli had had enough. He complained to Bohr in February
1924 that physicists in Germany were using integer and half-integer quantum numbers
as they pleased, depending on whether or not they could get the result to agree with
experiment. I myself have no taste for this kind of theoretical physics and retire from
it to my heat conduction in solid bodies.30
In light of both of these failures, Max Born summed up the desperate situation for the
public in his now famous statement in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bohr
atom in a special issue of Die Naturwissenschaften, published in Bohrs honor (probably
in gratitude for his support of German science) in July 1923: It is becoming ever more
probable that not only new assumptions in the usual sense of physical hypotheses will
be necessary, but rather that the entire system of concepts of physics must be rebuilt
from the ground out.31
Born and Heisenberg began the search for what Born was now calling a new quantum
mechanics.

Conclusion
Even though I have not yet discussed the other two problem-areas to any extent, it is
already clear that by mid-1923 the crisis in quantum theory was in full swing. As Seth
has suggested, different people and their collaborators reacted to the situation in different
ways. While Pauli resigned, Sommerfeld and Lande continued analyzing the data for
numerical harmonies, Bohr maintained his consistency, and Born and Heisenberg began
the search for a new quantum mechanics. Whatever their response, all appeared to be
experiencing, in Kuhns words, a pronounced professional insecurity ... generated by
the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to come out as they shouldin
other words, a crisis in quantum theory.

28

The failure is discussed in several of the works cited earlier in the text, especially those by Small,
Darrigol, and Cassidy.
29
Bohr to Lande, 3 March 1923 (AHQP Mf 4, 1).
30
Pauli to Bohr, 21 Feb. 1924; published in Pauli, note 24, 147148.
31
M. Born, Quantentheorie und St
orungsrechnung, Naturwiss., 11 (6 July 1923), Heft 27: Die ersten
zehn Jahre der Theorie von Niels Bohr u
ber den Bau der Atome, pp. 537542, on 542. See also, A.
Lande, Das Versagen der Mechanik in der Quantentheorie, Naturwiss., 11 (24 Aug 1923), 725726,
letter dated 15 July 1923.

11