Notable Papers in the Development of Modern Physics

Some Notable Papers in the Development of ModernPhysics

Additional Contributors:

David N. Williams

The following list is under construction. It is an incomplete list of papers which are recognized to be important milestones in the development of post-classical physics. Often, it has been my experience that the original papers present a clearer picture of a significant development than do the less-detailed descriptions in textbooks. This is so because in many cases the motivation of the researcher and the context of the preceeding work is better stated in the original research paper. When they exist, links are provided to the journal abstract pages for the corresponding papers. Most of the links are to PROLA, the Physical Review Online Archives, which is one of the greatest treasures available to anyone with an interest in the study of modern science. Unfortunately, the actual article content in PROLA is not free, and to download an article, one must either have a subscription or pay for each downloaded article. Fortunately, many public university libraries (in the U.S.) will have collections of the Physical Review journals available for free access to the public.

J. C. Slater, 1929, The Theory of Complex Spectra, Physical Review, 34, 1293.
I. I. Rabi, 1937, Space Quantization in a Gyrating Magnetic Field, Physical Review, 51, 652.
E. P. Wigner, 1939, On Unitary Representations of the Inhomogeneous Lorentz Group, The Annals of Mathematics, 40, 149.
W. E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford, 1947, Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method, Physical Review, 72, 241.
Bethe, H. A., 1947, The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels, Physical Review, 72, 339.
R. Hanbury-Brown and R. Q. Twiss, 1956, Nature, 178, 1447.
A. L. Schawlow and C. H. Townes, 1958, Infrared and Optical Masers, Physical Review, 112, 1940.