Fritz London: A Scientific Biography

Superfluidity: How Quantum Mechanics Became Visible

“…But in November 1937, a conference took place in Amsterdam in honour of van der Waals (Johannes Diderik van de Waals was born 100 years before, on November 23, 1837 in Leiden). Fritz London was there (Gavroglu 1995 ) and he must have heard discussions including Ehrenfest and Kramers about the thermodynamic limit in connection with phase transitions, also that Uhlenbeck had withdrawn his argument against BEC. This must be what triggered London's interest in Einstein's forgotten paper on BEC (Griffi n 1999).…”

“…Fritz London was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) in 1900 and he had started studies in philosophy before switching to physics (Gavroglu 1995 ). He was educated at the universities of Bonn, Frankfurt, Göttingen and Munich where he graduated in 1921.…”

“…London's new ideas created considerable interest (Gavroglu 1995 ;Griffi n 1995 ), in particular from Laszlo Tisza. Laszlo Tisza told me in 2001 that they liked discussing physics together during long walks.…”

Theories: Tools versus models

“…First is the rich history they tell from the Londons' papers and the studies by Kostas Gavroglu (1995) and P.F. Dahl (1989).…”

Quantum Chemistry and the Quantum Revolution

“…During the 1930s, the quantum field theoretical demonstration that the electromagnetic interactions between charged particles could be explained as due to photon exchanges, 30 Fermi formulated of a field theory of β-decay and Yukawa suggested that in analogy to electromagnetic forces the short range nuclear forces between nucleons could be generated by the exchanges between them of a hitherto unobserved massive particle, 31 a novel conceptualization of physics began 27 For a thorough account of these developments see Gavroglu (1995). 28 Upon receiving the 1993 Orsted medal for his contributions to the teaching of physics, Bethe in his acceptance speech stated "that there is a certainty principle in quantum theory and that the certainty principle is far more important for the world and us than the uncertainty principle.…”