Niessen (second from left) at Leiden university

Karel Frederik Niessen (1895 in Velsen[1] – 1967) was a Dutch theoretical physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics and is known for the Pauli–Niessen model.

Education

Niessen began his studies in physics at the University of Utrecht in 1914. In 1922, he received his doctorate under L. S. Ornstein.[1] He was an assistant at the University from 1921 to 1928, except for his postdoctoral study and research at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich under Arnold Sommerfeld, 1925 to 1926 on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He also spent 1928 to 1929 on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[2]

In 1922, Niessen’s doctoral thesis,[3] as well as Wolfgang Pauli’s extended doctoral thesis,[4] dealt with the hydrogen molecule ion in the Bohr–Sommerfeld framework. Their work is referred to as the Pauli-Niessen model.[5] Their works helped to show the inadequacy of the old quantum mechanics, which gave physicists the impetus to explore new paths[6] which led to the matrix mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics by Werner Heisenberg and Max Born in 1925 [7][8][9] and the wave mechanics formulation by Erwin Schrödinger in 1926,[10][11][12][13] which were shown to be equivalent.[14]

Career

Upon Niessen’s return to the Netherlands in 1929, he took a lifelong position as a theoretical physicist at Philips Electronics in Eindhoven.[2]

Selected Literature

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Promotion data". Archived from the original on 2012-02-24. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
  2. ^ a b Author Catalog: Niessen Archived 2007-02-05 at the Wayback Machine – American Philosophical Society
  3. ^ Karel F. Niessen Zur Quantentheorie des Wasserstoffmolekülions, doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht, Utrecht: I. Van Druten (1922) as cited in Mehra, Volume 5, Part 2, 2001, p. 932.
  4. ^ W. Pauli Über das Modell des Wasserstoffmolekülions, Ann. D. Phys. 68 (4) 177-240 (1922). Extended doctoral dissertation; received 4 March 1922, published in issue No. 11 of 3 August 1922.
  5. ^ H. C. Urey The Structure of the Hydrogen Molecule Ion, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 11 618-21 (1925). Johns Hopkins University. Read before the Academy April 27, 1925. Urey – PNAS.
  6. ^ Mehra, Volume 5, Part 2, pp. 850-851.
  7. ^ W. Heisenberg, Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen, Zeitschrift für Physik 33 879-893, 1925 (received July 29, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1 (English title: Quantum-Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations).]
  8. ^ M. Born and P. Jordan, Zur Quantenmechanik, Zeitschrift für Physik 34 858-888, 1925 (received September 27, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1]
  9. ^ M. Born, W. Heisenberg, and P. Jordan, Zur Quantenmechanik II, Zeitschrift für Physik 35 557-615, 1925 (received November, 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor, Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968) ISBN 0-486-61881-1]
  10. ^ Erwin Schrödinger (From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (First Communication), Annalen der Physik 79 (4) 361-376, 1926. [English translation in Gunter Ludwig Wave Mechanics 94-105 (Pergamon Press, 1968) ISBN 0-08-203204-1]
  11. ^ Erwin Schrödinger (From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Second Communication), Annalen der Physik 79 (6) 489-527, 1926. [English translation in Gunter Ludwig Wave Mechanics 106-126 (Pergamon Press, 1968) ISBN 0-08-203204-1]
  12. ^ Erwin Schrödinger (From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Third Communication), Annalen der Physik 80 (13) 437-490, 1926.
  13. ^ Erwin Schrödinger (From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Fourth Communication), Annalen der Physik 81 (18) 109-139, 1926. [English translation in Gunter Ludwig Wave Mechanics 151-167 (Pergamon Press, 1968) ISBN 0-08-203204-1]
  14. ^ Erwin Schrödinger (From the German) On the Relationship of the Heisenberg-Born-Jordan Quantum Mechanics to Mine, Annalen der Physik 79 (8) 734-756, 1926. [English translation in Gunter Ludwig Wave Mechanics 127-150 (Pergamon Press, 1968) ISBN 0-08-203204-1]
Categories