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Quantum Theory: Albert Einstein
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The year 1926, was a critical turning point in quantum theory, because it witnessed the emergence of two new forms of quantum mechanics. The first, wave mechanics, was a mathematically accessible theory based on Louis de Broglie's idea that matter can behave as waves just as electromagnetic waves can behave as particles. This idea received its strongest support from Einstein, Planck, de Broglie, and the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger. The opposing camp, led by the German physicists Bohr, Max Born, and Werner Heisenberg, as well as the American Paul Dirac, formulated the theory of matrix mechanics. Matrix mechanics was far more mathematically abstract and involved those elements of chance and uncertainty that Einstein found so philosophically troubling.
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While the theory of relativity was largely the work of one man, Albert Einstein, the quantum theory was developed principally over a period of thirty years through the efforts of many scientists. The first contribution was the explanation of black body radiation in 1900 by Max Planck, who proposed that the energies of any harmonic oscillator (see harmonic motion), such as the atoms of a black body radiator, are restricted to certain values, each of which is an integral (whole number) multiple of a basic, minimum value. The energy E of this basic quantum is directly proportional to the frequency nu of the oscillator, or E=hnu, where h is a constant, now called Planck’s constant, having the value 6.63×10-34 joule-second. In 1905, Einstein proposed that the radiation itself is ... quantized according to this same formula, and he used the new theory to explain the photoelectric effect. Following the discovery of the nuclear atom by Rutherford (1911), Bohr used the quantum theory in 1913 to explain both atomic structure and atomic spectra, showing the connection between the electrons’ energy levels and the frequencies of light given off and absorbed.
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In the three decades prior to his death, Einstein's distrust of quantum theory isolated him from the mainstream developments in physics. All of his greatest contributions to science had been made by 1926, and from this point on, he remained a staunch opponent of the theory he had done so much to build in his earlier years. Einstein focused his efforts instead on developing a unified field theory, a theory which would explain both gravity and electromagnetism in one principled mathematical account. He hoped to resolve the conflict between the smooth continuum of space-time described by his general theory of relativity, and the jittery submicroscopic particle-world where quantum theory reigns. Although he never succeeded in this endeavor, in a sense he was simply ahead of his time: throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the primary goal of theoretical physicists has been the formulation of a grand theory of everything, or TOE, that would account for every element of physical reality.
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Quantum mechanics is the language in which physicists describe all the phenomena of nature save one, namely gravity, which is explained by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The two theories � one describing a discontinuous "quantized" reality and the other a smoothly curving space-time continuum � are mathematically incompatible, but physicists look to their eventual marriage, a so-called quantum gravity.
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Erwin Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie developed a quantum theory that appealed to Einstein. He said de Broglie had "lifted a corner of the great veil." But it was soon found that this theory was mathematically equivalent to the Heisenberg theory, which Einstein distrusted.
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Some groundwork was laid as far back as the 1960's by Dr. Wheeler, 89, who has argued quantum theory with both Einstein and Bohr. Even space and time, Dr. Wheeler has pointed out, must ultimately pay their dues to the uncertainty principle and become discontinuous, breaking down at very small distances or in the compressed throes of the big bang into a space-time "foam."
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Albert Einstein