10 Unknown Facts About Physicist Max Born

Max Born (1882 - 1970) was a German British physicist and mathematician who was one of the pioneers in quantum mechanics. Born was also a great teacher and was doctoral advisor to physicists like Robert Oppenheimer and Maria Goeppert Mayer.

Born's work involving wave function is cool because it shows how the universe can be unpredictable and mysterious at its smallest scales, yet we can still make sense of it with mathematics. Born rule opened the door to discoveries that power modern gadgets like laser, LED and microprocessors.

10 hidden facts about Max Born

⚛️ 1. Max Born started his academic journey with mathematics. He was more interested in abstract mathematical ideas than physics. However, this changed when the quantum revolution began in Europe and Max went on to work on wave function, a key element in quantum physics.

🎓 2. Max Born was classmates with Albert Einstein's future wife and mathematician, Mileva Maric, who is said to have collaborated with Einstein on special relativity. Born and Mileva studied together at ETH Zurich.

💡 3. Max Born co-invented matrix mechanics with physicist Werner Heisenberg, but rarely gets credit for his work. Born was the first to realize the mathematics involved was non commutative matrices.

🏆 4. Max Born won the Nobel prize in 1954, for work he did in 1920s. It took nearly 25 years for the scientific community to recognize Born rule, which provides the probability of finding a particle in a specific state when a measurement is made.

Born is second from the right in the second row, between Louis de Broglie and Niels Bohr.

✈️ 5. Being a Jewish, Max Born fled Nazi Germany as he was politically vocal against the government. He escaped to Cambridge, with only one suitcase.

🎵 6. Born was a talented painter and musically gifted. He used to collab with other scientists including Albert Einstein. They played sonatas together, Einstein on violin and Born on piano.

📜 7. Born wrote letters to Einstein challenging determinism. He defended quantum indeterminacy, while Einstein famously replied, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

☮️ 8. Max Born was a strong advocate of peaceful use of science. After world war 2, he became a critic of nuclear weapons and signed Russel Einstein manifesto aiming for global disarmament.

🧳 9. Born never returned to Germany even after the second world war was over. He became a British citizen and chose to stay in the UK.

🧬 10. Musical genius ran in the family as Max Born's granddaughter is British Australian singer Olivia Newton-John, who sold over 100 million records.

5 quotes of Max Born

🔬 1. I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

🧪 2. In science, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

🌍 3. The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.

🪐 4. Science is not only the basis of technology but also the material for a sound philosophy.

🧠 5. Physics as we know it will be over in six months.