Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A Historical Derivation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Relation is Flawed

This is a rather interesting paper published in the current issue of AJP[1]. It narrates the historical account of the rigorous derivation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and claims that some of the derivation used after Heisenberg's presentation of it may have been flawed.

However, what caught my eye was the single author of this paper. It is John. H. Marburger III. When I checked his affiliation, I was correct. This is THE John Marburger who is currently the embattled "Science Adviser" to President's George W. Bush.

Immediately, 2 things came to my mind. First, at least he still gets to continue to explore scholarly topics, even in the historical sense, while he holds this position. But secondly, he must be bored in his current job to actually have some time to do such in-depth research. :) That last comment, of course, is purely speculative on my part.

Zz.

[1] J.H. Marburger III, Am. J. Phys. v.76, p.585 (2008).

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