1 August 2 marked the 126th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding physicist, one of the "fathers" of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrödinger. For several decades, the "Schrödinger equation" has been one of the basic concepts atomic physics. It is worth noting that it was not the equation that brought real fame to Schrödinger, but the thought experiment he invented with the frankly non-physical name "Schrödinger's Cat". The cat - a macroscopic object that cannot be both alive and dead at the same time - personified Schrödinger's disagreement with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (and personally with Niels Bohr).

Bio pages

Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna; his father, an oilcloth factory owner, was both a respected amateur scientist and president of the Vienna Botanical-Zoological Society. Schrödinger's maternal grandfather was Alexander Bauer, a famous chemist.

After graduating in 1906 from the prestigious Academic Gymnasium (focused primarily on the study of Latin and Greek), Schrödinger entered the University of Vienna. Schrödinger's biographers note that the study of ancient languages, contributing to the development of logic and analytical abilities, helped Schrödinger easily master university courses in physics and mathematics. Fluent in Latin and ancient Greek, he read the great works of world literature in their original language, his English was practically fluent, and, in addition, he spoke French, Spanish and Italian.

His first Scientific research belonged to the field of experimental physics. So, in his graduation work, Schrödinger studied the effect of humidity on the electrical conductivity of glass, ebonite and amber. After graduating from the university, Schrödinger served in the army for a year, after which he began working at his alma mater as an assistant in a physics workshop. In 1913, Schrödinger studied the radioactivity of the atmosphere and atmospheric electricity. For these studies, the Austrian Academy of Sciences will award him the Heitinger Prize seven years later.

In 1921, Schrödinger became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich, where he created the wave mechanics that made him famous. In 1927, Schrödinger accepted an offer to head the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Berlin (after the retirement of Max Planck, who headed the department). Berlin in the 1920s was the intellectual center of world physics, a status which it lost irretrievably after the Nazis came to power in 1933. The anti-Semitic laws passed by the Nazis did not affect either Schrödinger himself or his family members. However, he leaves Germany, formally linking his departure from the German capital with going on a sabbatical. However, the background of Professor Schrödinger's "sabbatical leave" for the authorities was obvious. He himself commented on his departure extremely succinctly: “I can’t stand it when they pester me with politics.”

In October 1933, Schrödinger began working at Oxford University. In the same year, he and Paul Dirac are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1933 "in recognition of merit in the development and development of new fruitful formulations of atomic theory." A year before the outbreak of World War II, Schrödinger accepts an offer from the Prime Minister of Ireland to move to Dublin. De Valera - the head of the Irish government, a mathematician by education - organizes the Institute for Higher Studies in Dublin, and one of its first employees is the Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger.

Dublin Schrödinger leaves only in 1956. After the withdrawal of the occupying forces from Austria and the conclusion of the State Treaty, he returned to Vienna, where he was given a personal position as a professor at the University of Vienna. In 1957 he retires and lives in his house in Tyrol. Erwin Schrödinger died on January 4, 1961.

Wave mechanics by Erwin Schrödinger

Back in 1913 - Schrödinger was then studying the radioactivity of the Earth's atmosphere - the Philosophical Magazine published a series of articles by Niels Bohr "On the structure of the atom and molecules." It was in these articles that the theory of the hydrogen-like atom was presented, based on the famous "Bohr's postulates". According to one postulate, the atom radiated energy only during the transition between stationary states; according to another postulate, an electron in a stationary orbit did not radiate energy. Bohr's postulates contradicted the basic principles of Maxwell's electrodynamics. Being a staunch supporter of classical physics, Schrodinger was very wary of Bohr's ideas, noting, in particular: "I cannot imagine that an electron jumps like a flea."

The French physicist Louis de Broglie helped Schrödinger find his own path in quantum physics, in whose dissertation in 1924 the idea of ​​the wave nature of matter was first formulated. According to this idea, highly appreciated by Albert Einstein himself, every material object can be characterized by a certain wavelength. In a series of papers by Schrödinger published in 1926, de Broglie's ideas were used to develop wave mechanics based on the "Schrödinger equation" - a second-order differential equation written for the so-called "wave function". Quantum physicists thus received the opportunity to solve problems of interest to them in their usual language. differential equations. At the same time, there were serious differences between Schrödinger and Bohr on the question of interpreting the wave function. A supporter of visibility, Schrödinger believed that the wave function describes the undulating propagation of negative electric charge electron. The position of Bohr and his supporters was represented by Max Born with his statistical interpretation of the wave function. According to Born, the square of the modulus of the wave function determined the probability that the microparticle described by this function is located at a given point in space. It is this view of the wave function that became part of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (recall that Niels Bohr lived and worked in Copenhagen). The Copenhagen interpretation considered the concepts of probability and indeterminism an integral part of quantum mechanics, and most physicists were quite satisfied with the Copenhagen interpretation. Schrödinger, however, remained her implacable opponent to the end of his days.

A thought experiment in which actors”are microscopic objects (radioactive atoms) and a completely macroscopic object - a living cat - Schrödinger came up with to most clearly demonstrate the vulnerability of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The experiment itself was described by Schrödinger in an article published in 1935 by the journal Naturwissenschaften. essence thought experiment consists of the following. Let there be a cat in a closed box. In addition to it, the box contains a certain amount of radioactive nuclei, as well as a vessel containing poisonous gas. According to the conditions of the experiment atomic nucleus within one hour with a probability of ½ decays. If the decay has occurred, then under the influence of radiation a certain mechanism is activated that breaks the vessel. In this case, the cat inhales poisonous gas and dies. If we follow the position of Niels Bohr and his supporters, then, according to quantum mechanics, it is impossible to say about an unobservable radioactive nucleus whether it has decayed or not. In the situation of the thought experiment we are considering, it follows that - if the box is not open and no one is looking at the cat - it is both alive and dead at the same time. The appearance of a cat - no doubt a macroscopic object - is a key detail of Erwin Schrödinger's thought experiment. The fact is that in relation to the atomic nucleus - which is a microscopic object - Niels Bohr and his supporters admit the possibility of the existence of a mixed state (in the language of quantum mechanics, a superposition of two states of the nucleus). In relation to a cat, such a concept clearly cannot be applied, since there is no intermediate state between life and death. From all this it follows that the atomic nucleus must also be either decayed or undecayed. Which, generally speaking, contradicts those assertions of Niels Bohr (with regard to the unobservable nucleus, it is impossible to say whether it has decayed or not), which Schrödinger opposed.

It consists of a nucleus around which electrons revolve. An atom resembles a structure solar system. The distance between the Sun and the planets in relation to their size is approximately the same as between the nucleus and the electron. If the nucleus is enlarged to the size of a soccer ball, then the electrons would revolve around it at a distance of 50 kilometers. This in itself is surprising, because it turns out that matter mainly consists of emptiness. Then it turned out that the nucleus is far from being elementary. It consists of smaller particles with different properties.

In the end, it was found that all particles are not solid material objects, but can go into a state electromagnetic wave. At that level, matter becomes energy. Scientists have tried to trace the moment when a material particle turns into a wave and back. This is where the researchers ran into fundamental paradoxes. It turned out that it is possible to create such experimental conditions where an electron behaves like a wave, it is possible to create conditions where it behaves like a particle, but it is impossible to create such conditions where one could observe the transition from one state to another. If we try to follow the particle, hoping to see the moment of transition, then we will either never wait for this moment, or the moment of transition will always fall out of observation. Observing one parameter, we always lose another.

Two conclusions were made.
1. When moving to a new quality, there is always a moment of uncertainty.

2. An electron simultaneously has the properties of a particle and a wave, but we can only observe one property, and this depends on which experiment we choose. Consequently, the state of the particle depends on the choice of the experimenter, that is, on the will of the person.

At the moment when the observation is not carried out, the particle is in uncertainty, potentially carrying any state, and at the moment of observation, the particle is "defined". The same process is observed during the transition of an electron from orbit to orbit. At the moment of transition, the electron "disincarnates", and then materializes in a new place, making the so-called "tunnel transition" through the subspace. Scientists have been analyzing the results of experiments for a long time. Some of their conclusions were as follows:

1. “The simplest and most honest explanation for quantum paradoxes is that the universe we see is the creation of those who observe it.”

2. "The observer creates the Universe and himself as a part of the Universe."

3. "The world changes entirely in the past, present and future at the moment of observation."

4. "Consequently, consciousness is the way in which emptiness knows itself."

5. “The observer and the Universe cannot exist without each other. There is only the universe that is observed."

6. These statements of the great physicists of the twentieth century, based on the discoveries of quantum mechanics. They are no different from sayings made several thousand years ago.

7. "God incarnates himself in matter to know himself through observation." (Buddhist treatises.) "God becomes the world in order to become God again." (Upanishads.)

8. "Does the sound of the surf exist if there is no one to listen to it?" (Zen Buddhist koan.)

One psychiatric client used to say, “I am God. I created you. You live while I live." He was right, because a person's reality exists only as long as he is aware of it.

The law of the quantum leap through uncertainty applies to all levels of existence. The world is a continuous sequence of quantum moments passing through a state of uncertainty. This has been confirmed in recent experiments by neurophysiologists. They discovered that a person, after very short periods of time, for microseconds, falls out of reality into unconsciousness. Thus, consciousness is transformed from a continuous process into a discontinuous series of realizations. It naturally seems to us that the flow of reality is continuous.

At one time, the great mathematician Kantor tried to find the transition point in a continuous sequence of numbers on the number line. In an attempt to trace where one number passes into another, he was faced with the fact that this happens at infinity. In the same way, he was looking for the moment where the largest mathematical number. As a result, he came to the conclusion that there is a certain point Aleph, located at every point in space and at every instant of time, in which there are simultaneously past, future, present and all possible events. For the 17th century, not familiar with quantum mechanics, this was not a bad achievement.

True, some time after that, Kantor went mad. The nature of the infinite is mysterious, and it was not for nothing that Kantor called the infinite the abyss of abysses.

Already in the 20th century, Nobel Prize winner D. Nash, who mathematically investigated game theory based on the concept of an infinite number of strategies, also almost ended up in a mental hospital. It is impossible to comprehend infinity with the mind, uncertainty cannot be realized. Infinity is far away and always near, it is in every moment of life, in every point of space and in every event of our world.

The most gifted explorers, whether in scientific inquiry or meditation, are always on the verge between the definite and the infinite, between reason and madness. Geniuses are always out of this world. But it is there that they draw knowledge that advances humanity. About such knowledge, the father of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger, said: “Before you crazy idea. The question is, is she crazy enough to be true."

In Japan, quantum mechanics is studied from elementary grades. And that's great. Although the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics becomes clear only after serious preparation, its philosophical principles are accessible to any person, regardless of age and education. To understand quantum mechanics, it is necessary, along with conceptual and logical thinking, to have figurative and intuitive thinking, the ability to catch the elusive and indefinite, and children are fully endowed with the latter.

Despite all the successes of quantum mechanics, for most adult physicists with purely linear thinking, it causes a feeling of vague dissatisfaction. A university professor told his students: “Quantum mechanics is impossible to understand. But you can get used to it." It is really difficult to understand it with one logic. To do this, it is necessary to understand how the world is both matter and spirit at the same time, in which way, obeying physical laws, it can still be changed by consciousness. You need to understand that you can create any event in life, but it will not look like a miracle at all, like a materialization out of thin air. Everything will happen according to the laws of physics and logic, according to which, however, this could not happen.

rational and logical thinking person says: "I believe only in what I see," and quantum mechanics leads to what Christ and other great Teachers taught: "Man sees only what he believes." Not every materialist is able to comprehend this clash with the Spirit. Therefore, many great scientists were spiritual people, inclined to mystical teachings. The founder of materialistic physics Newton, the author of the theory of relativity Einstein, the fathers of quantum mechanics Schrödinger, Bohm, Heisenberg, Bohr and Oppenheimer considered their scientific work to be fully compatible with mystical understanding. All these people believed that the universe is material, but its origin cannot be explained by material causes. They were clearly aware that the laws they discovered were merely the embodiment of laws of a higher order and only brought us a little closer to the truth, most of which is still not known. "I want to know how the Lord God arranged this world." (Einstein.)

Interestingly, one of Newton's biographers called him not a great scientist, but a great magician. Records left after Newton's death included:

A) scientific materials, the volume of a million words;
b) alchemical research and records of the divine - 2,050,000 words;

C) biography, letters, miscellaneous - 150,000 words.
Newton's alchemical and theological researches were considered eccentricities of a great mind. Only now are all the facets of his activity becoming clear: from attempts to create a single religion to the philosophy of matter, which he perceived as part of a holistic picture of the world. He believed that the physical and mathematical constants- these are just isolations from the grandiose divine context.

Modern science was not founded by materialists at all. The achievements of Ancient Greece, from which modern science came, were only a cast from ancient Egyptian science, and all the knowledge of Ancient Egypt was based on mystical traditions. Aristotle's teacher Plato and the great mathematician Pythagoras were trained for many years by ancient Egyptian and Chaldean priests. Pythagoras, whose formulas we study today in school, was the greatest mystic who talks about his travels in past lives. He even organized a religious order of believers in rebirth.

2400 years ago great commander Alexander the Great, being among the luxury and untold riches of Persia he conquered, wrote to the great scientist and philosopher Aristotle: “Alexander Aristotle wishes well-being. Master, you have done wrong in divulging a teaching meant to be given to individual initiates. How will we be different from the rest if this knowledge becomes public domain? I would like to have superiority over others ... ”(Quoted by Sinelnikov.) If the most powerful person on Earth was afraid of the dissemination of this knowledge, then they had serious practical value.

Medicine will also surprise us. Hippocrates (460-370 BC), who was known as a pure materialist and argued that the disease must have a material cause that can be found, was a minister of the temple mysteries. Avicenna (980-1037), ibn Sina Abu Ali Hussein ibn Abdallah - a physician, scientist, poet and philosopher spent the second half of his life trying to prove the futility of the discoveries made in the first. But it is thanks to the discoveries of the first half of his life that he is today considered a medical luminary.

Paracelsus (1493–1541), a physician and naturalist who critically re-examined the ideas of ancient medicine, was one of the first to use chemicals in treatment, was a student of Arab magicians and an expert on the teachings of Indian Brahmins. The founder of modern astronomy (not to be confused with astrology), Kepler was a famous occultist. "Divine wisdom turns into many kinds of knowledge." (Maxim the preacher.)

Of course, God, in the understanding of great scientists, is not a powerful old man looking at us from heaven and indulging our desires, and not a harsh judge punishing us for sins. This is an overly simplistic understanding. Some say to me: “Why do you use the word God? It's not modern. It is necessary to talk about altered states of consciousness, about the Universal mental field of the Universe, the Absolute creative principle or the primary Unconscious. But to explain the understanding of God from the standpoint of today's knowledge is just as impossible as it was impossible to do in ancient times. Whatever we call it, we cannot add anything to what has been said before us.

"Having no attributes, no beginning, no end, no time, no space."

"The one that has millions of faces but cannot be identified, that has millions of names but cannot be named."

"The whole world, all energies embody its infinite, omnipresent and always incomprehensible."

"The existence of the non-existent".
“He is not known by the mind. How to explain it?
"The spoken Tao is no longer Tao."
"There are things we cannot know, so it is impossible to know what those things are."

What matters is the level of understanding, not what words to call God. You can call it like this: "Superposition is a state that cannot be observed, but from which any state of the material world can be formed."

Zeno's paradoxes, which are more than three thousand years old, will help to get closer to understanding quantum mechanics.

Achilles has to catch up with the tortoise. There are a hundred meters between them. He runs ten times faster than she crawls. When Achilles runs these hundred meters, the tortoise crawls away from the previous place for ten meters, when Achilles overcomes these ten meters, the tortoise crawls another meter. When Achilles runs this meter, the tortoise will crawl away from him another ten centimeters. No matter how fast Achilles travels the remaining distance, the tortoise will crawl away from him during this time by one tenth of the way. Logically, Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise. Second paradox. There is a grain, next to it is a pile of thousands of grains. One grain is not a heap, a thousand grains is a heap. Let's take the grain from the pile and shift it to one grain. Two grains is still not a heap, but 999 grains is a heap. Let's move one more grain. And so on. It is necessary to determine exactly the moment when the heap ceases to be a heap.

AT real life Achilles, of course, will overtake the tortoise, and the heap will cease to be a heap, but if we try to trace the course of events in detail, we will never find the exact and definite moment when this happens. As long as we track reality linearly, it does not change its quality. The change happens through a quantum leap at a moment that we cannot track with consciousness. A new state can be reached only through a state of uncertainty.

Mathematicians found a formula and calculated that in our case, Achilles will catch up with the turtle after 111, 111 ... meters. The answer is an infinite fraction, a number that can be refined indefinitely, but which will never reach a definite and final value! I talked to a physicist who thought Zeno's paradoxes were primitive. He said the solution is very simple. If, they say, we put ourselves in the turtle frame of reference, then everything will become simple and logical. But the question is that we are solving the problem in our frame of reference, in our reality. Here it is necessary to solve it. After all, solving our life tasks, we must change our own reality.

One of the hypotheses of modern physics says that every moment in the Universe everything is realized. possible options events, but for our world only one event is embodied. An infinite number of possibilities turns into one actually happened option. From such moments, a linear sequence of events is created. And only the will and consciousness of the observer are responsible for the transition of a probabilistic state into a certain event in our world. What kind of event materializes depends on the state of consciousness. "According to your faith, be it to you."

Many scientists are known to the world not only for their achievements, but also for their oddities. In the end, you need to perceive the world in a completely different way in order to believe in what others consider impossible.

Albert Einstein

The hairstyle of this brilliant physicist seems to scream: “Crazy scientist!” - perhaps because Einstein himself was often called too "out of this world." Besides the fact that his theory of relativity turned physics on its head and showed people that there is still a lot of unknown around them, Einstein's work contributed to the development of theories about gravitational fields and quantum physics and even mechanics. His favorite pastime on a quiet, windless day was to launch his sailboat "to defy nature."

Leonardo da Vinci

In addition to creating beautiful works of world painting and developing the theory of art, this genius and inventor of the High Renaissance was known for his eccentricity. Leonardo's scientific notes and his journals with drawings and sketches were written in a mirror image, according to some sources, it was easier for him to write. Many of his drawings and ideas were several centuries ahead of the development of science and mechanics, such as a sketch of a bicycle, helicopter, parachute, telescope and searchlight.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born, as befits a man who "tamed" electricity in a terrible storm. One of the most eccentric, brilliant and productive scientist-inventors of his time, Tesla is just the kind of person who was never afraid of electricity, even when a current flowed through his own body, and sparks flew from the transformer he invented in all directions.

James Lovelock

This modern environmental scientist and independent researcher is the author of the Gaia hypothesis that the Earth is a macroorganism that controls the climate and chemical composition. Initially, his theory was accepted with hostility by almost all existing scientific communities, but after most of his predictions and forecasts regarding climate and environmental changes came true, colleagues began to listen to this eccentric scientist, who does not tire of making radical predictions about the fate of humanity as a species.

Jack Parsons

In his free time on the basis of the world's first laboratory jet propulsion Parsons was engaged in magic, the occult and called himself the Antichrist. This unique engineer had a bad reputation and no formal education, but neither the first nor the second did not prevent him from creating the basis of rocket fuel and getting into the backbone of scientists who provided space achievements USA.

Richard Feynman

This genius began his career in the Manhattan Project among scientists developing the atomic bomb. After the end of the war, Feynman became a leading physicist and made a significant contribution to the development of quantum physics and mechanics. AT free time he played music, spent time in nature, deciphered Mayan hieroglyphs, and cracked locks and safes.

Freeman Dyson

The "father" of quantum electrodynamics and an outstanding theorist, Dyson writes a lot and in an accessible way about physics and, in his free time, ponders over hypothetical inventions of the distant future. Dyson is absolutely sure of the existence extraterrestrial civilizations and looking forward to the first contact.

Robert Oppenheimer

The scientific director of the Manhattan Project was nicknamed "the father of nuclear bomb”, although he himself was categorically anti-militarist. His sentiments and calls to limit the use and distribution nuclear weapons served as the reason for his removal from secret developments and the loss of political influence.

Wernher von Braun

American Founding Father space program and an eminent rocket scientist was brought to the US as a prisoner of war after the end of World War II. At the age of 12, von Braun set out to break Max Vallier's speed record and attached a lot of fireworks to a small toy car. Since then, the dream of high-speed jet engines has not let go of him.

Johann Conrad Dippel

This 17th century German alchemist was born in Frankenstein Castle. His labors and experiments included boiling body parts, trying to transfer the soul from one body to another, and creating an elixir of immortality. It is not surprising that it was he who became the prototype of Victor Frankenstein - the hero of the gothic novel by Mary Shelley. But thanks to Dippel, the first synthetic paint appeared in the world - Prussian blue.

Quantum theory is applied in a variety of fields - from mobile phones to physics elementary particles, but in many ways still remains a mystery to scientists. Her appearance was a revolution in science, even Albert Einstein doubted her and argued with Niels Bohr almost all his life. The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli publishes the book Seven Etudes in Physics by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, which has been translated into more than 40 languages ​​and in which he tells how discoveries in physics in the 20th century changed our knowledge of the universe. Theories and Practices publishes an excerpt.

It is commonly said that quantum mechanics was born exactly in 1900, effectively ushering in an age of intense thought. The German physicist Max Planck calculated the electric field in a hot box in the state thermal equilibrium. To do this, he resorted to a trick: he imagined that the energy of the field was distributed in "quanta", that is, concentrated in packets, portions. This contrivance led to a result that perfectly reproduced the measurements (and therefore was necessarily correct to some extent), but was at odds with everything that was then known. It was believed that energy was constantly changing, and there was no reason to treat it as if it were made of small bricks. To imagine energy composed of limited packets was a kind of computational trick for Planck, and he himself did not fully understand the reason for its effectiveness. Once again, Einstein realized five years later that "energy packets" were real.

Einstein showed that light consists of portions - particles of light. Today we call them photons. […]

Einstein's work was at first regarded by colleagues as a clumsy attempt at writing by an exceptionally gifted youth. It was for this work that he later received the Nobel Prize. If Planck is the father of theory, then Einstein is the parent who brought it up.

However, like any child, the theory then went its own way, not recognized by Einstein himself. Only the Dane Niels Bohr laid the foundation for its development in the second and third decades of the 20th century. It was Bohr who realized that the energy of electrons in atoms can only take on certain values, like the energy of light, and, most importantly, that electrons can only “jump” between one atomic orbit and another with fixed energies, emitting or absorbing a photon during the jump. These are the famous "quantum jumps". And it was at the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen that the brightest young minds of the century came together to study these mysterious behaviors in the world of atoms, to try to bring order to them and build a consistent theory. In 1925, the equations of the theory finally appeared, replacing all of Newton's mechanics. […]

The first to write equations new theory, based on unimaginable ideas, was a young German genius - Werner Heisenberg.

“The equations of quantum mechanics remain enigmatic. Because they do not describe what happens to a physical system, but only how a physical system affects another physical system.

Heisenberg suggested that electrons exist not always. But only when someone or something is watching them - or better said, when they are interacting with something else. They materialize in place, with a computable probability, when they collide with something. Quantum jumps from one orbit to another are the only way to be "real" at their disposal: an electron is a set of jumps from one interaction to another. When nothing disturbs him, he is not in any particular place. He's not in the "place" at all.

As if God did not depict reality with a clearly drawn line, but only outlined it with a barely visible dotted line.

In quantum mechanics, no object has a definite position, except when it collides head-on with something else. To describe it in the middle between one interaction and another, we use an abstract mathematical formula that does not exist in real space, only in abstract mathematical. But there is something even worse: these interaction-based jumps, by which each object moves from one place to another, do not occur in a predictable way, but by and large random. It is impossible to predict where the electron will reappear, one can only calculate probability with which it will arise here or there. The question of probability leads to the very heart of physics, where everything, as it seemed before, is regulated by strict laws, universal and inevitable.

Do you think this is ridiculous? Einstein thought so too. On the one hand, he nominated Heisenberg for the Nobel Prize, recognizing that he understood something fundamentally important about the world, while on the other hand, he did not miss a single opportunity to grumble that Heisenberg's statements did not make much sense. .

The young lions of the Copenhagen group were confused: how is it possible that Einstein thought so? Their spiritual father, the man who first showed the courage to think the unthinkable, now retreated and feared this new leap into the unknown, a leap he himself had brought about. The same Einstein, who showed that time is not universal and space is curved, now said that the world cannot be so strange.

Bohr patiently explained new ideas to Einstein. Einstein raised objections. He came up with thought experiments to show the inconsistency of new ideas. “Imagine a box filled with light, from which one photon flies out ...” - this is how one of his famous examples begins, a thought experiment on a box of light. In the end, Bohr always managed to find an answer that overturned Einstein's objections. Their dialogue continued for years - in the form of lectures, letters, articles ... […] In the end, Einstein admitted that this theory is a giant step forward in our understanding of the world, but remained convinced that everything cannot be as strange as it suggests, - that "behind" this theory there should be the following, more reasonable explanation.

A century later, we are all in the same place. The equations of quantum mechanics and their consequences are used daily in various fields - physicists, engineers, chemists and biologists. They play an extremely important role in all modern technologies. Without quantum mechanics, there would be no transistors. Yet these equations remain mysterious. Because they describe not what happens to a physical system, but only how a physical system affects another physical system. […]

When Einstein died, his archrival Bohr found words of touching admiration for him. When Bohr died a few years later, someone took a photo of the blackboard in his office. It has a drawing on it. A box of light from Einstein's thought experiment. Until the very end - the desire to argue with oneself in order to understand more. And until the last - doubt.

On September 29, 2006, the NCC Kazan hosted the ceremony of presenting the Evgeny Zavoisky International Prize, which this year was awarded to Professor Jan Schmidt of the Leiden University (Netherlands).

The ceremony was held as part of the next International scientific conference « Modern development magnetic resonance (EPR). So we have an informational reason to once again remember Evgeny Konstantinovich Zavoisky, in whose honor once a year his colleagues are honored - physicists from all over the world, who continue the work he started in Kazan during the war years of the last century.

Head of the Kazan Department state academy of veterinary medicine Ruslan BUSHKOV submitted to the editors interesting materials about why Zavoisky did not receive the Nobel Prize. He was told about this by the daughter of an outstanding scientist - NATALIA ZAVOYSKAYA.

As Sergei Leskov reported in the Izvestiya newspaper in October 2003, since 1917 only 12 Russian scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize. The Americans received about 150 awards, the British - 70, the Germans - about 60. This is largely explained by the fact that Soviet science was closed, for ideological reasons there was no cooperation with the Nobel Committee. But there were cases when the prize was not awarded even after the presentation, although the nominee had significant services to world science. Perhaps, a scientist from Kazan Evgeny Zavoisky belongs to their number.

The most annoying thing is that in 1952 the Americans Bloch and Purcell received the prize for a discovery in the same direction, made two years later.

N. Zavoiskaya notes that the success of American scientists who became Nobel laureates was achieved by using the measurement technique proposed by a Kazan colleague back in 1944. The discovery of Associate Professor Zavoisky, made by him in 1944, was an outstanding event in world science. It marked the beginning of a new branch of physics - magnetic radio spectroscopy. On the basis of EPR, a new field of knowledge emerged - quantum electronics.

"Kazan stories" wrote about this discovery, in particular, that the device, with the help of which it was possible to see the phenomenon of paramagnetic resonance, was designed by Evgeny Konstantinovich himself. As Natalya Evgenievna clarifies, he used the Dubois magnet.

In 1939-1941. Zavoisky, together with S. Altshuler and B. Kozyrev, searched for nuclear magnetic resonance, but the war prevented them from completing this work - they had to dismantle the installation with which they observed the first signals. S. Altshuler subsequently recalled that the low quality of the “old-fashioned electromagnet” prevented success: “Had Zavoisky another 2-3 months of time for experiments, he would no doubt have found the reason for the poor reproducibility of the results.”

Evgeny Konstantinovich continued his research during the war and in May 1944 submitted his dissertation to the Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. They did not attach due importance to his discovery, and then the scientist turned to the Institute physical problems. Academician P. Kapitsa gave him the opportunity to assemble an EPR installation and conduct his own experiments.

At a meeting at the IFP on December 27, 1944, 49 scientists listened to the report of the Kazan scientist - the flower of Soviet physical science. “However, even then the idea of ​​​​the father and his experiments were called into question,” writes Natalya Zavoyskaya. Nevertheless, on January 30, 1945, at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Zavoisky defended his dissertation for the competition degree Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. A transcript of this defense has been preserved in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Alas, when reading it, one gets the impression that only very few people understood what EPR is.

In the essay about Semyon Altshuler (KGU, 2002), one can find indirect evidence of the rejection of works in nuclear physics. It was considered a worthless science, since the research had no practical application.

In 1946, Zavoisky's work on the EPR was nominated for the Stalin Prize, but no positive decision was made. The archive of economics (RGAE) preserved a review by I. Kikoin, which says: "If this hypothesis really turns out to be true, then physicists will receive a powerful and fairly simple method for determining magnetic moments."

In 1994, when the 50th anniversary of Zavoisky's discovery was celebrated, Kazan hosted the 27th International Ampère Conference of Physicists. Among the participants was the Swiss scientist Richard Ernst, the founder scientific school on paramagnetic resonance, which developed the Zavoisky method in chemistry. Of course, he could not miss the opportunity to see the laboratory where his colleague made the discovery, and was extremely surprised at how, in such primitive conditions, with what technique this discovery was made.

In her letters to Bushkov, Natalya Evgenievna described the terrible conditions in which the outstanding scientist lived at that time. The Zavoisky family lived in a service apartment in the university courtyard. There were two rooms, but in winter one was not heated. The dampness was incredible: water flowed along the walls ...

Most likely, it was for this reason that the wife of the scientist became very seriously ill. According to Natalya Evgenievna, her father was nominated for the Nobel Prize at least twice: the first time - in 1964, the second - in 1975. In the book published by her, the text of the presentation from Academician S. Vonsovsky is given, in her father's archive she found presentation on behalf of Academician A. Alexandrov. The 2003 Nobel laureate Academician Vitaly Ginzburg recalled in an interview that he was once the initiator of the nomination. Versions of why he never became a laureate were given a variety of.

First, the conditions of secrecy - but EPR research did not have them.

Secondly, the transition of Evgeny Konstantinovich to work on defense topics - which supposedly should not happen in the life of a Nobel laureate.

Thirdly, the short duration of the study of this problem ...

As is known, Zavoisky's later life was connected with other scientific areas. Zavoyskaya considers these versions to be shallow. In addition, there is a significant experience of awarding the Lenin Prize to a scientist in 1957, which was preceded by a rather scandalous story that erupted literally on the eve of the decision.

Although the discussion in the Committee on the Lenin Prizes took place confidentially, nevertheless, there were rumors about a letter against Zavoisky sent by J. Dorfman (who he was, it was not possible to find out - Ed.) to the Committee, could not help reaching the nominee.

It is good that Zavoisky was completely indifferent to the promotion and "removal". As Zavoiskaya writes, it was “an extremely ugly and unfair attack from around the corner: “So I think the “one-dimensional” reasons for not awarding the Nobel Prize are too simple.

It is necessary to search for the answer to the “mystery of the century” in the archives of the Russian Scientific Center, the Academy of Sciences, the Presidential Archive and, possibly, in the Nobel Committee. If the documents reached the committee at all.”

During the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Kazan University, a monument to the outstanding scientist was solemnly opened in front of the building of the Faculty of Physics. The absence of the Nobel Prize did not in the least detract from his services to world science. Especially in the Soviet Union. In 1969 he was awarded the title of Hero Socialist Labor, had three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. He was awarded, in addition to the Lenin Prize, the State Prize (1949).

Abroad, Zavoisky's discovery was marked by the posthumous award of the prize of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance. Now in scientific world There is also an award in his name. It was established in 1991 by the Physico-Technical Institute of the Kazan scientific center Russian Academy Sciences, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan and Kazan state university. Awarded to physicists for outstanding contributions to the development of EPR techniques. Despite its small size - 1000 US dollars - the award has won the status of a prestigious international award. In 2004, the 60th anniversary of the EPR discoveries was celebrated.

Natalya Evgenievna Zavoiskaya donated to Kazan University the last of 12 albums dedicated to her father and his scientific work. These are photographs taken by Evgeny Konstantinovich, Natalya Evgenievna, donated to the scientist, as well as clippings from newspapers and magazines, numerous documents. For several years she systematized her father's archive, working in many Russian archives. Being a literary critic, a specialist in German literature of the 18th-19th centuries and having no specific knowledge in the field of physical sciences, she collected unique material, “scattered everywhere drop by drop”. She studied the work on EPR not only in Russia, but also abroad. She analyzed Russian-American relations in this scientific direction. Compiled an index of 200 names. Albums are now in the department rare books and manuscripts Scientific Library KSU named after Lobachevsky.

“Do you know how hard it is to part with them? - Natalya Evgenievna wrote to Bushkov. - As soon as there is a desire to send at least volume I, your heart skips a beat: what if it disappears in the mail? When they asked me how much I value one album, I answered (I figured out what and how in the mail) that it is priceless. And there is. Almost everything is in one copy, so the loss will be forever.

In addition, Natalya Evgenievna worked on the book "The History of a Discovery", in which she planned to tell how her father did not become Nobel Laureate. She worked in the main Russian libraries and archives. Carried away by archival searches, Natalya Evgenievna tried to find data on her pedigree from her father. Their ancestors (until 1810 they bore the surname Kurochkin, and then split into three branches: the Zavoiskys (beyond the Voya River), the Razsvetovs and the Zakharovs) lived in the village of Rozhdestvenskoye.

In 1996 she visited small homeland and saw the house where the Zavoiskys lived. There was also a church in which the Kurochkin priests served. Natalya Evgenievna also wrote about the history of the village. When a person tastes the sweetness of archival search, he will have a craving for this work all his life ...

"Kazan stories", No. 8, 2006

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