Science · 1882–1970
Born: 11 December 1882 · Died: 5 January 1970 · Age at death: 87
Max Born died aged 87. He was born on 11 December 1882 and died on 5 January 1970.
German-British physicist who gave the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics and won the Nobel Prize
Did you know?He is the grandfather of the famous British-Australian singer and actress Olivia Newton-John.
Max Born was one of the founders of quantum mechanics. As a professor at Göttingen in the 1920s, he built one of the great centres of modern physics. With his student Werner Heisenberg he developed matrix mechanics. In 1926 he made a crucial leap: the quantum wave tells us the probability of finding a particle in a given place. That idea became the standard way of reading quantum theory. Forced out by the Nazis in 1933 because he was Jewish, he settled in Edinburgh. He finally won the Nobel Prize in 1954.
Max Born (German:; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German–British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Profile
German-British physicist, 1882–1970
Max Born was born in Breslau on 11 December 1882.
He led physics at Göttingen.
He moved to Edinburgh in 1936.
He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954.
Career highlights
Did you know?Singer Olivia Newton-John was his granddaughter.
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