physicist Erwin Schrodinger succeeded in finding a more intuitively appealing description. in this approach, de Broglie's waves are solutions of an equation which came to be called the Schrodinger equation. Discrete colors of light emitted by glowing matter reflect the fact that electron waves confined in an atom have specific frequencies, just as sound waves inside a flute can only have discrete frequencies. The birth of the new theory culminated in Schrondinger's amazing proof, in March 1926, that his and Heisenberg's formulations, which appeared so different, are actually mathematically equivalent. Henceforth Quantum Mechanics in either guise, replaced Newtonian mechanics as the correct description of atomic particles. it incorporates wave/particle duality and substitutes probability for certainly in dealing with the building blocks of matter. it broke with classical physics even more radically than Special and General Relativity -- and for three quarters of a century it has passed all experimental tests. Throughout the nineteen thirties, while America struggled with the Great Depression and Adolf Hitler's Nazis rose to absolute power in Germany, physicists quietly quietly continued to collaborate across national boundaries. Quantum mechanics proved to be a reliable framework for the study of solid matter, of molecules, and of atoms. The discovery of the neutron and the invention of particle accelerators launched the new science of nuclear physics. Although the size of the nucleus is 100,000 times smaller than that of an atom, and its internal energy higher by the same factor, quantum mechanics continued to work perfectly. The future of physics looked promising, but in 1939 World Wary II broke out and swept the whole world, including the physics community, into its wake. Physicists and engineers helped to win the air-borne Battle of Britain by developing Radar, and their German counterparts designed the V-2 rockets that t...
