How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories
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Summary
German-American physicist Hans Bethe is celebrated for his “ansatz”, a mathematical starting point that can theoretically capture the complex behaviour of all numbers of quantum particles.
Bethe was attempting to understand how iron becomes magnetised when he developed the theory in the early 1930s, building on the work of Felix Bloch.
Bethe’s work was never applied to explain magnets but it has been used to understand complex quantum systems including ice and black holes.
It can be applied to systems where waves of particles collide in a gentle and orderly fashion, with each wave preserving a multitude of conserved quantities including momentum and energy.
The precise application of Bethe’s theory has captivated theoretical physicists including Richard Feynman, who spoke of an “ambitious dream” to apply it to understand particle collisions.
Today, few areas of theoretical physics remain untouched by Bethe’s work.
