Digital Essays in the History of Quantum Physics

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IntroductionThis project will develop a new type of digital publication for scholarly research, the digital essay. The digital essay is not simply an adaptation of standard printed articles to the technology of the browser with hyperlinks and tabbing. Rather, it is the creation of a fully supplied environment that includes access to primary and secondary sources on the given topic; a bibliographic data base; multiple views of the totality of sources; tutorials on theory, experiment, and historiography; and a collection of modular interpretive articles that are written from a variety of points of view for diverse audiences and that can be traversed via multiple pathways rather than in a fixed linear ordering. Intellectual MeritTwo closely related topics have been chosen for development into digital essays. They are central to the Project in History and Foundations of Quantum Physics, an international cooperation of researchers interested in the history and foundations of quantum physics initiated jointly by the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. The first topic is the birth, development, and transformation of the so-called Correspondence Principle. The second is the transition from dispersion theory in the old quantum theory to matrix mechanics (with special attention to the contributions of American physicists Slater and Van Vleck). From these elements emerge the intellectual merits of this project. It will provide new perspectives on the transition from the old quantum theory to modern quantum mechanics by permitting unlimited depth and breadth of analysis, immediate and complete access to the relevant source materials, and, for the novice, a graded, yet honest and rigorous initiation (because of the heavy use of primary sources) leading all the way up to the current state of the art.Potential Broader ImpactsBecause the very idea of the digital essay in the sense outlined above and the attendant digital tools are innovative and versatile, the project can be expected to have a transformative impact not only in providing an unprecedented richness of organized resources but also in terms of encouraging others to begin to explore the possibilities of this new mode of scholarly publication, which is likely to facilitate collaborations between researchers on new and already existing digital projects in a broadly interdisciplinary manner. It may also lead to the development of entirely new methods for conducting scholarly research and transmitting results that will be applicable to a wide diversity of fields of inquiry.