Max Born
Compiled by Amira Abadir (aabadir3) on 12/1/2015
Max Born (1882-1970) was a physicist best known for his study of subatomic particles and contributions to quantum mechanics.
Biography
Max Born was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on December 11th, 1882 to Gustav Born, a professor in anatomy and embryologist, and his wife Margarete.
In 1913, Born married Hedwig Ehrenberg, and they had three children.
Born historically had a long-running debate with his friend Albert Einstein on the quantum nature of the universe. The two exchanged several letters about the subject over the years, with Born arguing for indeterminism, the idea that even systems obeying precise laws are capable of sometimes behaving randomly, and Einstein arguing the opposite.
Born died on January 5, 1970 in Göttingen, Germany.
Scientific Contributions
Quantum Mechanics
In 1926, Born published a clarification of the probability density function in Erwin Schrödinger's equation of quantum mechanics.
In 1927, with Robert Oppenheimer, he formulated the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, a calculation in quantum chemistry for determining the energy and wave function of an average-size molecule.
Contribution 2
Other Information
Awards
- As a PhD studnet at the University of Göttingen, Born was awarded the Prize of the Philosophical Faculty in 1906.
- Born was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954, along with Walther Bothe.
Fun Facts
- While Born worked at the University of Frankfurt-on-Main, his assistant was Otto Stern, and the work that Stern started there led to him also earning a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1943.
- Born has a lunar crater named after him.
- Born is the maternal grandfather of actress and singer Olivia Newton-John.
Connectedness
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See also
Further reading
- Albert Einstein
- The Born-Einstein Letters by Albert Einstein and Max Born, 1971