1940/01/01 by Max Born · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Quantum Mechanics and Applications
paper · doi:10.1017/s037016460001230x
openalex publication_date 1940/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Professor A. Landé has kindly sent me a manuscript of a paper in which he develops some most important ideas on the meaning and the value of the number 137. His work is founded on the principle of reciprocity which I recently suggested (Born, 1938). Landé adds to this principle a new assumption about the wave functions, representing an electron, and he finds a linear integral equation for these containing a parameter the value of which may be expected to be 137. It is Landé's great merit to have shown that the reciprocity principle leads to a condition for the Planck constant ћ (the value of which in natural units, c = 1, e = 1, is 137), and to have discovered the root of the peculiar order of magnitude of the number. But some difficulties which I encountered led me to reconsider the problem.