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(title
17 of
U.S.
code)
governs
the
reproduction
and
redistribution
of
copyrighted
material.
THE
OLD
QUANTUM
THE0
Copyright
@
1967
Pergamon
Press
Ltd.
First edition
1967
Library
of
Congress Catalog Card
No.
66-29628
BY
D.
TER
HAAR
University Reader in Theoretical Physics and
F
ellow
of
Magdalen
College, Oxford
Printed in Great Britain
by
Blackie
&
Son
Ltd. Bishopbriggs,
Glasgow
This book is sold subject to the conditionthat it shall not, by way
of
trade, be lent,resold, hired out, or otherwise disposed
of
without the publisher’s consent,in any form
of
binding or coverother than that in whichit is published
(3046/67)
PERSAMON
PRESS
OXFORD
*
LONDON EDINBURGH NEW YORKTORONTO
*
SYDNEY
*
PARIS
*
BRAUNSCHWEIG
3
On
a
Heuristic Point
of
View
aboutthe
Creatidn
and Conversion
of
Light?
A.
E
I
N
STE
I
N
THERE
exists an essential formal difference between the theoreticalpictures physicists have drawn of gases and other ponderablebodies and Maxwell’s theory
of
electromagnetic processes inso
-
called empty space. Whereas we assume the state of a body tobe completely determined by the positions and velocities of an,’albeit very large, still finite number
of
atoms and electrons, we usefor the determination of the electromagnetic state in space con
-
tinuous spatial functions,sothat a finite number of variablescannot be considered to be sufficient to fix completely the electro
-
magnetic state in space. According to Maxwell’s theory, theenergy must be considered to be a continuous function in spacefor all purely electromagnetic phenomena, thus also for light,while according to the present-day ideas of physicists the energyof a ponderable body can be written as a sum over the atoms andelectrons. The energy of a ponderable body cannot be split intoarbitrarily many, arbitrarily small parts, while the energy
of
alight ray, emitted by a point source
of
light is according toMaxwell’s theory (or in general according to any wave theory) of light distributed continuously over an ever increasing volume.functions in space has been excellently justified for the representa
-
tion
of
purely optical phenomena and it is unlikely ever to bereplaced by another theory. One should, however, bear in mindthat optical observations refer to time averages and not
to
The wave theory
of
light which operates with continuous
6
?Ann.
Physik
17,
132
(1905).
91
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