Bermerkung uber die Invarianz der kanonischen Vertauschungs-relationen.

In: Zeitschrift fur Physik, Vol. 63, 1930. Berlin:: Julius Springer, 1930., 1930. 232 x 160 mm. 8vo. 574-575 pp. [Entire volume: vii, [1], 868 pp.] Navy cloth, gilt spine. Blind-stamp of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mount Wilson Observatory. Fine. FIRST EDITION. In January 1928 Pauli and Heisenberg began their work on relativistic formulation of quantum electrodynamics which were published in their famous paper in the Zeitschrift fur Physik in 1929 (Vol. 56). In that paper, Pauli and Heisenberg gave a general proof that their formalism is compatible (truncated) with relativity; "their proof appeared to demand that the Hamiltonian satisfy a certain constraint. In 1930 it was shown by Rosenfeld that this conclusion is due to a computational error; there is no such constraint. Much later Rosenfeld told me that he regarded his one-and-a-half-page article as HIS BEST CONTRIBUTION TO PHYSICS. IT IS A PITY THAT THIS PAPER IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE EDITION OF HIS SELECTED WRITINGS." Pais. Leon Rosenfeld was Abraham Pais' doctoral advisor at the University of Utrecht. Rosenfeld became Bohr's closest collaborator during the 1930s. Later, Rosenfeld became a Professor of Physics in the United States. This volume of the Zeitschrift fur Physik also contains a paper by Victor Weisskopf and Eugene P. Wigner, "Berechnung der naturlichen Linienbreite auf Grund der Diracschen Lichttheorie," pp. 54-73. Of this paper, Wigner has remarked: "I wrote a paper with Victor Weisskopf in Gottingen on the natural width of spectral lines. Weisskopf felt that a certain mathematical integral could be made to vanish. I showed him why the integral was infinite. The theory was imperfect then, and even now it is less elegant than it should be. But it served its purpose then, and has held up rather well in all the years since." Wigner, Recollections, p. 113. See: Dresden, H. A. Kramers, p. 360. Pais, Inward bound, p. 342. (Inventory #: S5173)