From jsl@virgil.ruc.dk Wed Sep 4 11:53:07 1996 Received: from emma.ruc.dk for jsl@virgil.ruc.dk by www.ccl.net (8.7.5/950822.1) id LAA22904; Wed, 4 Sep 1996 11:40:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from virgil.ruc.dk by emma.ruc.dk (4.1/JBA-1.18) id AA25498; Wed, 4 Sep 96 17:44:37 +0200 Received: from VIRGIL/MAILQUEUE by virgil.ruc.dk (Mercury 1.21); 4 Sep 96 17:38:38 +0100 Received: from MAILQUEUE by VIRGIL (Mercury 1.21); 4 Sep 96 17:38:36 +0100 From: "Jens Spanget-Larsen" Organization: Roskilde Universitetscenter To: chemistry@www.ccl.net Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 17:38:31 +0100 Subject: CCL: Dirac's famous statement Priority: normal X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.23) Message-Id: <326D845C86@virgil.ruc.dk> To the CCL community: The following statement by the great British theoretician P. A. M. Dirac is frequently quoted in textbooks and papers: "The underlying physical laws necessary for the matematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are ... completely known" He should have made this statement in 1928 (or 1929), and, according to my notes, he should have continued: "The difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum maechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of atomic systems without too much computation" I would like to read the original source of these interesting remarks, apparently made only some months after the birth of quantum mechanics. But where did Dirac publish his famous statement? Yours, Jens >--< =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- JENS SPANGET-LARSEN Department of Chemistry Phone: +45 46757711 Roskilde University (RUC) Fax: +45 46757721 POB 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark E-Mail: JSL@virgil.ruc.dk =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-