Born, Max 1882-1970
German physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Breslau (Wrocjaw, Poland) and educated at the universities of Breslau, Heidelberg, Zurich and G�ttingen, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at G�ttingen University (1921-33), lecturer at Cambridge (1933-36) and Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University (1936-53). In 1925, with his assistant Pascual Jordan, he built upon the earlier work of Werner Heisenberg to produce a systematic quantum theory. He used Erwin Schr�dinger's wave equation to show that the state of a particle (eg its energy or position) could only be predicted in terms of probabilities, deducing from this the existence of quantum jumps between discrete states. This led to a statistical approach to quantum mechanics. He shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for physics with Walther Bothe for their work in the field of quantum physics.

Bibliography: My Life and Views (1968)