Biography:Max Born

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Max Born
Born in the 1930s
Born in the 1930s
Born 11 December 1882
Breslau, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died 5 January 1970
Göttingen, West Germany


Known for Born rule; matrix mechanics; Born approximation; Born-Oppenheimer approximation
Awards Nobel Prize in Physics (1954)

Max Born (1882-1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who made major contributions to quantum mechanics and solid-state physics.

Probability interpretation

Born introduced the probability interpretation of the wavefunction: the squared magnitude of a quantum amplitude gives a probability density. This Born rule became one of the basic postulates of quantum mechanics.

Born also contributed to matrix mechanics and to scattering theory. With J. Robert Oppenheimer, he developed the Born-Oppenheimer approximation for separating electronic and nuclear motion in molecules.

References


Author: Harold Foppele