Political Role of Quantum Mechanics

The shift from the old quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr happened with Werner Heisenberg's July 1925  "Reinterpretation" article introducing a new form of matrix mechanics without Bohr's electron trajectories to form the new quantum mechanics.  

Heisenberg was a student of Max Born at the University of Göttingen with the mathematician Hilbert as world authority of mathematical physic acting as Born's mentor. Göttingen mathematical physics was an important part of the "Weimar Renaissance" during the recovery of Germany after the defeat in WWI getting momentum in 1925. 

It is thus possible to give Heisenberg's new quantum mechanics political dimensions stretching into WWII with Heisenberg as leading scientist in Germany's quest for an atomic bomb in the "Uranium Club".  

Planck had a similar role at the height of the German Empire when he in 1900 took on the responsibility to resolve the outstanding open physics problem of black-body radiation, when to avoid failing he resorted to statistics of quanta which resurfaced in Born's interpretation of Heisenbergs new quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg worked as Bohr's assistant in 1925 and Bohr invited Born to Copenhagen in 1926, and so they came to form the Bohr-Born-Heisenberg Copenhagen school setting the agenda for quantum mechanics from its beginning into our time. 

Schrödinger entered in 1926 with his equation showing to be equivalent to matrix-mechanics, but Schrödinger did not accept the Copenhagen Interpretation and so left the field to come back only in 1954 to discover that BBH still controlled the scene. 

After WWII the US took over quantum mechanics still in the spirit of BBH.

All physicists of today say that following the idea of the mathematician von Neumann that the wave function of quantum mechanics lives in a Hilbert space of infinite dimension and most physicists will confess to the Copenhagen Interpretation even if its meaning is unclear. Schrödinger's request of physicality is met with "shut up and calculate". 

What do the Chinese say? Is it time for Schrödinger to come back in the form of RealQM in the "China Renaissance" that is now reshaping the world? It is not impossible since the Chinese are very clever, very organised and result oriented towards a clear plan.

ChatGPT: After completing his doctoral work in Budapest and Zurich, von Neumann spent the academic year 1926–27 at Göttingen. There he

• Studied under David Hilbert, attending Hilbert’s lectures on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics,

• Sat in on Max Born’s seminar on the new quantum theory, and

• Published his first quantum‐mechanical notes out of Göttingen later that year.