{"id":224395,"date":"2025-11-02T13:10:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T19:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/history-of-quantum-mechanics"},"modified":"2025-11-02T13:10:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T19:10:50","slug":"history-of-quantum-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/history-of-quantum-mechanics","title":{"rendered":"History of quantum mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/history-of-quantum-mechanics2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The history of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quantum_mechanics\" title=\"Quantum mechanics\">quantum mechanics<\/a> is a fundamental part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_physics#20th_century:_birth_of_modern_physics\" title=\"History of physics\">history of modern physics<\/a>. The major chapters of this history begin with the emergence of quantum ideas to explain individual phenomena\u2014blackbody radiation, the photoelectric effect, solar emission spectra\u2014an era called the Old or Older quantum theories.<sup id= cite_ref-Whittaker_1-0 class= reference><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_quantum_mechanics#cite_note-Whittaker-1\"> [ 1 ]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Building on the technology <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_classical_mechanics\" title=\"History of classical mechanics\">developed in classical mechanics<\/a>, the invention of wave mechanics by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger\" title=\"Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger\">Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger<\/a> and expansion by many others triggers the \u201cmodern\u201d era beginning around 1925. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Dirac\" title=\"Paul Dirac\">Paul Dirac<\/a>\u2019s relativistic quantum theory work led him to explore quantum theories of radiation, culminating in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quantum_electrodynamics\" title=\"Quantum electrodynamics\">quantum electrodynamics<\/a>, the first <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quantum_field_theory\" title=\"Quantum field theory\">quantum field theory<\/a>. The history of quantum mechanics continues in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_quantum_field_theory\" title=\"History of quantum field theory\">history of quantum field theory<\/a>. The history of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Quantum_chemistry\" title=\"Quantum chemistry\">quantum chemistry<\/a>, theoretical basis of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chemical_structure\" title=\"Chemical structure\">chemical structure<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chemical_reaction\" title=\"Chemical reaction\">reactivity<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chemical_bond\" title=\"Chemical bond\">bonding<\/a>, interlaces with the events discussed in this article.<\/p>\n<p>The phrase \u201cquantum mechanics\u201d was coined (in German, <i>Quantenmechanik<\/i>) by the group of physicists including <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Max_Born\" title=\"Max Born\">Max Born<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Werner_Heisenberg\" title=\"Werner Heisenberg\">Werner Heisenberg<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wolfgang_Pauli\" title=\"Wolfgang Pauli\">Wolfgang Pauli<\/a>, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen\" title=\"University of G\u00f6ttingen\">University of G\u00f6ttingen<\/a> in the early 1920s, and was first used in Born and P. Jordan\u2019s September 1925 paper \u201cZur <i>Quantenmechanik<\/i>\u201d.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-2\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_quantum_mechanics#cite_note-2\"> [ 2 ]<\/a> <\/sup><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-3\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_quantum_mechanics#cite_note-3\"> [ 3 ]<\/a> <\/sup><sup id=\u201d cite_ref-4\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/History_of_quantum_mechanics#cite_note-4\"> [ 4 ]<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The history of quantum mechanics is a fundamental part of the history of modern physics. The major chapters of this history begin with the emergence of quantum ideas to explain individual phenomena\u2014blackbody radiation, the photoelectric effect, solar emission spectra\u2014an era called the Old or Older quantum theories. [ 1 ] Building on the technology developed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}