MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics BY LOUIS DE BROGLIE Memhre de
VInstitut Nobel Pri e Award 192 Professeur la Facultl des Sciences
de Paris TRANSLATED BY W. H. JOHNSTON, B. A. New York W W NORTON CO
- INC Publishers entitled Jtfattere e . Lur ilre was first
published in 1937 T, FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH IN 1939 BY
W - W NORTON COMPANY INC 70, FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK All rights
reserved BINDERY JAM 2 9 1945 990361 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TRANSLATORS NOTE THE Author has in certain places modified the
original French text for the English translation, for the sake of
greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order to
bring them into accord with the results of later research.
Occasional Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The
chapter on The Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special
historical interest of having been delivered as a Lecture on the
occasion of the Authors receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on
Wave Mechanics and its Interpretations was given as an Address at
the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1928. I am
indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the University of Liver pool, for
assistance with the translation and the proofs, and to Dr. C.
Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted for valuable
assistance in dealing with the equations and the more technical
passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE THE
amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to
collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary
Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical
point of view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole,
and can be read by itself. A slight degree ofrepeti tion which the
reader is asked to overlook has been the inevi table result for on
more than one occasion I have been compelled to duplicate a summary
of the great fundamental stages of con temporary Physics, such as
the classification of simple substances, the investigation of the
photo-electric effect and the origin of the Theory of Light Quanta
and of Wave Mechanics the subjects are somewhat technical, and I
cannot well assume that they are common knowledge. But though the
same subject is outlined in several of these Studies, I have tried
to take up a different point of view in each, and have endeavoured
to throw light on different aspects of the essential problems of
Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their importance.
On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe that,
while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will
feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure
of modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the
extreme delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists
have succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts
devised by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a
degree the methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety
during recent years, and how great has been the progress from the
somewhat ingenuous Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of
earlier thinkers. The more deeply we descend into the minutest
structures of Matter, the more clearly we see that the concepts
evolved by the mind in the course of everyday experience especially
those of Time and Space must fail us in an endeavour to describe
the new worlds which we are entering. Onefeels tempted to say that
the outlines of our concepts must undergo a io MATTER AND LIGHT
progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance
of relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and
Space, in other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary
entities individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro
cesses of interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an
older generation of physicists, is forced to yield...
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