606 H. C.

HARRIES

this Portuguese-controlled settlement tury might confirm the suspicion that

supplied coconuts to the Spanish island
of Puerto Rico.6 Coconuts were brought
to Sao Tome from the coast of Ethiopia
before 15507 and were taken to Brazil
from the Cape Verdes8 by 1553.9 No
other information has come to light.
Details of the dissemination of the
coconut palm during the sixteenth cen-
6H J. Bruman, "Some Observations on the
Early History of the Coconut in the New World,"
Acta americana, 1944, 2:225, n. 23.
7G. B. Ramusio, "Navigazione da Lisbona all'
isola di San Tome," Navigazioni e viaggi (Venice,
1550), Vol. 1, p. 223.
XBruman,"Some Observations," p. 225, n. 24.
9P. Gomes, Enriqueca com um Coqueiral (Sao
Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos, 1957), p. 6.
coconuts in the Western Hemisphere
have a common origin. The occurrence
of epidemic diseases in West Africa and
the Caribbean, to which the local coco-
nuts are completely susceptible,10fits this
pattern. Agriculturalists and administra-
tors in Central and South America, East
Africa, India, and Sri Lanka would then
know that their coconut palms could be
destroyed if the diseases continue to
spread.
'A. J. Dabek, C. G. Johnson, and H. C. Har-
ries, "Mycoplasmalike Organisms Associated with
Kaincope and Cape St. Paul Wilt Diseases of
Coconut Palms in West Africa," PANS, 1976,
22:354-358.

ERWIN SCHRODINGER'S REACTION TO LOUIS DE BROGLIE'S THESIS

ON THE QUANTUM THEORY

By Paul A. Hanle*

Among the unpublished papers of Al- they show, in the context of Schrodin-
bert Einstein which are on microfilm ger's statistical mechanical papers pub-
deposited since the beginning of 1977 in lished in 1925 and an anomalous work of
the Princeton University Library, there 1922, a development of his ideas that
are thirteen letters of 1925 and 1926 brought him to the threshold of wave
between Einstein and Erwin Schrd- mechanics. The letters are listed below,
dinger, the inventor of wave mechanics. with AE and ES referringto Einstein and
The last four were published in the col- Schrodinger.
lection Letters on Wave Mechanics' and Correspondents Date
are dated in April 1926, after the comple- ES to AE February 5, 1925
tion of two of the four parts of Schro- AE to ES February 28, 1925
dinger's major paper, "Quantization as AE to ES September 26, 1925
an Eigenvalue Problem."2The first nine, ES to AE November 3, 1925
however, are worth special note because ES to AE November 5, 1925
ES to AE November 13, 1925
*National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560. AE to ES November 14, 1925
1 would like to thank the trustees of the estate ES to AE December 4, 1925
of Albert Einstein for providing access to the ES to AE January 21, 1926
Schridinger-Einstein correspondence.
'Letters on Wave Mechanics, Schrddinger,
Planck, Einstein, Lorentz, ed. K. Przibram (Lon-
The letter of November 3, 1925,
don: Vision Press, 1967), trans. and intro. Martin throws considerable light on the still-
J. Klein, pp. 23-30. unanswered question of what Schro-
2Erwin Schr8dinger, "Quantisierung als Eigen- dinger would have found especially note-
wertproblem, I-IV," Annalen der Physik, 1926, worthy in Louis de Broglie's doctoral
79:361-376, 489-527; 80:437-490; 81:109-139. Re-
printed in English translation in Erwin Schro- thesis, and thus on the path that led him
dinger, Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics to construct a dynamics of the hydrogen
(London: Blackie & Son, 1928), pp. 1-40, 62-123. atom in de Broglie's wave picture. The

ISIS, 1977, 68 (No. 244)

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 SCHRODINGER'S REACTION TO DE BROGLIE'S THESIS
last paragraph of this letter brings into
focus the historical issue of what inspired
Schr6dinger to develop wave mechanics.
It reads as follows:
I have read with greatest interest a few
days ago the ingenious thesis of Louis de
Broglie, which I finally got hold of; with
it also ? 8 of your second degeneracy
work has become completely clear to me
for the first time. The de Broglie inter-
pretation of the quantum rules seems to
me to be related in some ways to my note
in the Zs. f. Phys. 12, 13, 1922, where a
remarkable property of the Weyl "gauge
factor" e-fOidxi along each quasi-period
is shown. The mathematical situation
[rechnerischeSachverhalt]is, as far as I
can see, the same, only from me much
more formal, less elegant and not really
shown generally. Naturally de Broglie's
consideration in the framework of his
large theory is altogether of far greater
value than my single statement, which I
did not know what to make of at first.
[Mit gr6sstem Interesse habe ich vor
einigen Tagen die geistvollen Theses von
Louis de Broglie gelesen, deren ich end-
lich habhaft wurde; damit ist mir auch
der ?I8 Ihrer zweiten Entartungsarbeit
erst voll deutlich geworden. Die de Brog-
liesche Interpretation der Quantenre-
geln scheint mir Beziehungen zu haben
zu meiner Note Zs. f. Phys. 12, 13, 1922,
wo eine merkwuArdigeEigenschaft des
Weyl'schen "Massfaktors" e-fidxentlang
jedes quasi-periode gezeigt wird. Der
rechnerische Sachverhalt ist, so viel ich
sehe, derselbe, nur von mir viel umstand-
licher, weniger elegant, und nicht ei-
gentlich allgemein gezeigt. Natuirlich ist
uiberhaupt de Broglies Ueberlegung in
Rahmen seiner grossen Theorie von un-
gleich hoherem Wert als meine Einzel-
feststellung, mit der ich zunachst nichts
anzufangen wusste.]
To fully appreciate the significance of
this quotation, we must turn to the his-
torical literature.
Martin Klein argued in 1964 that
Schrodinger was led to take up de Brog-
lie's idea of associating waves with mat-
ter through his own work in the statisti-
cal mechanics of ideal gases; that it was
Einstein, as "presiding genius [of] and
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607
principal guide" to statistical mechanical
problems and methods, who directed
Schr6dinger's attention to de Broglie's
thesis and encouraged him to take seri-
ously "the de Broglie-Einstein wave the-
ory of moving particles, according to
which the particles are nothing more
than a kind of 'wave crest' on a back-
ground of waves."3 After Schrodinger
had addressed both the quantum statis-
tics of gases and the problem of the
hydrogen atom, Klein recalled, Schro-
dinger acknowledged, "The considera-
tions concerning the atom reported
above could have been presented as a
generalization of this work on the gas
model." Klein concluded, "Einstein'sgas
theory, and the 'short but infinitely far-
seeing remarks' that it suggested form
the link between de Broglie's matter
waves and Schr8dinger's wave mechan-
iCS."4Subsequent essays on the discovery
of wave mechanics have either supported
or not challenged Klein's account in its
essentials,5 with one notable exception.
In their 1969 paper V. V. Raman and
Paul Forman took issue with Klein's
interpretation, disputing the role of sta-
tistical mechanics in leading SchrOdinger
to treat the hydrogen atom, associating
3Martin J. Klein, "Einstein and the Wave-
Particle Duality," The Natural Philosopher, 1964,
3:3-49, quoting, with emphasis added (on p. 43),
Erwin Schrodinger, "Zur Einsteinschen Gastheo-
rie," Physikalische Zeitschrift, 1926, 27:95.
4Klein, "Einstein and the Wave-Particle Dual-
ity," p. 46.
5Johannes Ulrich Gerber, "Geschichte der Wel-
lenmechanik," Archive for History of Exact
Sciences, 1969, 5:349-416; Friedrich Hund, The
History of Quantum Theory, trans. Gordon Reece
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974), pp. 141-153
(published in German in 1967); Max Jammer, The
Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 236-280;
Fritz Kubli, "Louis de Broglie und die Entdeckung
der Materiewelle," Arch. Hist. Exact Sci., 1970,
7:26-68; William T. Scott, Erwin Schr8dinger, An
Introduction to His Writings (Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press, 1967), pp. 22-26, 43-67.
Linda Wessels of Indiana University has kindly
allowed me to read a draft of a paper titled "Schro-
dinger's Route to Wave Mechanics," in which she
essentially agrees with Klein's account. See also
Armin Hermann, "Erwin Schrodinger," Dictionary
of Scientific Biography, Vol. XII (New York:
Scribners, 1975).
608 PAUL A. HANLE
"Schrodinger's point of entrance into de
Broglie's ideas" with Schrodinger's previ-
ous work on a relativistic explanation of
the quantum conditions for the hydrogen
atom, and adding external factors to the
reasons for his receptivity to de Broglie.6
On the second point, they argued in
essence that Schrodinger recognized in
de Broglie's interpretation of the Bohr-
Sommerfeld quantum condition a for-
mal similarity with Schrodinger's at-
tempt of 1922 to link the quantization of
the orbit of a single electron to a peri-
odicity of the "tract factor" appearing in
Hermann Weyl's extension of the general
theory of relativity.7 Thus Schrodinger
would have been inclined to examine de
Broglie's thesis closely, especially that
part on constructing the Bohr atom in a
phase-wave picture. And they cited evi-
dence that he did begin to construct such
an atomic model in early November
1925.8 Raman and Forman concluded
their paper with the following statement:
"We suggest that this prior work [em-
ploying the tract], if not a decisive factor
in Schrodinger's initial assessment of de
Broglie's ideas, nonetheless determined
the starting point for Schrodinger's ef-
forts to develop them into a wave me-
chanics."
Schrodinger's work of 1922 was one of
three papers he published on quantum-
theoretical models of the atom.9 It was
less in the model-building tradition of
Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, and
6V. V. Raman and Paul Forman, "Why Was It
Schrodinger Who Developed de Broglie's Ideas?"
Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 1969,
1:291-314. Schrfodinger'sprevious work was "Uber
eine bemerkenswerte Eigenschaft der Quantenbah-
nen eines einzelnen Elektrons," ZeitschriftfuirPhy-
sik, 1922, 12:13-23.
7Hermann Weyl, Raum, Zeit, Materie (4th ed.;
Berlin: J. Springer, 1921).
8This is indicated in a letter to Alfred Lande on
Nov. 16, 1925, Archive for History of Quantum
Physics, Microfilm No. 4, translated in Raman and
Forman, p. 313.
9The other two were "Versuch zur modelmassi-
gen Deutung des Terms der scharfen Nebenserien,"
Z. Phys., 1921, 4:347-354, and "Die Wasserstoff-
ahnlichen Spektren vom Standpunkt der Polari-
sierbarkeit des Atomrumpfes," Ann. Phys., 1925,
77:43-70.
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their disciples (which Raman and For-
man called one of "theoretical spectros-
copy") than were his other two works, if
only because he used a general relativis-
tic magnitude to determine the quantum
condition. Nevertheless, Schrodinger
had worked in the old quantum theory,
and Raman and Forman built a plausi-
ble argument that it was not only out of
statistical mechanics that Schrodinger
found motive to develop wave mechan-
ics. His interests (and his "programmatic
prejudices") determined that he was one
of few who might appreciate de Broglie's
ideas. The validity of their more restric-
tive assertion that "it was qua theoretical
spectroscopist that he developed de
Broglie's ideas into a wave mechanics"
remained a subject of controversy.
In fact, even the question remained:
had Schrodinger ascribed any signifi-
cance before wave mechanics to the
formal similarity of de Broglie's work
with his? Raman and Forman claimed
that he had. They cited as evidence a
letter of December 1926 (a year after
Schr6dinger derived the wave equation),
in which Fritz London also noted the
similarity and asked if Schr'odingerhad
not "had the resonance character of the
quantum postulate in [his] hands long
before de Broglie...."10 Forman could
find no reply to London's query, and he
rested his case with the additional fact
that London's evaluation did not change
in papers he submitted for publication
several months later. Apparently Schro-
dinger had not repudiated London's sug-
gestion.
Now the letter of November 3 provides
convincing evidence, stronger even than
Raman and Forman had sought, that
Schrodinger noticed the similarity and
found it interesting, because SchK8dinger
wrote the quoted paragraph to Einstein
without prompting and before he derived
the wave equation. All but the first sen-
tence is an acknowledgment of the im-
portance of de Broglie's idea of resonat-
'?Fritz London to Erwin Schrodinger, about
Dec. 10, 1926, Archive for History of Quantum
Physics, Microfilm No. 41, Sec. 9, translated in
Raman and Forman, p. 304.
 SCHRODINGER'S REACTION TO DE BROGLIE'S THESIS
ing phase waves in the atom and of the
affinity of this picture to Schrodinger's
earlier work. Schr'odinger'sinvestigation
of resonance may have led him to a dead
end in 1922, but in the context of de
Broglie's larger discussion he was now
inspired to construct a model of the one-
electron atom. This we may state, for
thirteen days later he wrote to Alfred
Landd that, stimulated by de Broglie's
thesis, he was attempting such a con-
struction. By then, however, he had
passed on to a different mode of think-
ing, and there was no mention to Lande
of the Weyl tract factor. Hence this letter
to Einstein confirms Forman's hypothe-
sis of the special origin of Schrodinger's
sympathy with de Broglie's interpreta-
tion of the quantum rule.
But the first sentence of the paragraph
is also revealing of Schrodinger's sympa-
thies. It agrees with Klein's account that
Schrfodinger acquired and pursued the
thesis in following Einstein's new theory
of the monatomic ideal gas. Indeed, all
nine letters discuss essentially how one
should quantize the ideal gas and thus
they indicate that SchrLdingerwas work-
ing on this problem through early
December-that is, several weeks after
he attempted to build a model of the
atom using de Broglie's phase waves.'2
Furthermore, it is evident that Schro-
dinger continued to study de Broglie's
"'Schrodinger to Lande, Nov. 16, 1925.
'20n Dec. 4 Schrodinger wrote Einstein that he
was then busy with Einstein's "undulatory theory
of gases" and had already arrived at several results
that he would report in "ZurEinsteinschen Gasthe-
orie."
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609
thesis in large measure to analyze Ein-
stein's statistical mechanics of ideal
gases. A reading of the thesis discloses
that Schrodinger found a rich source of
ideas in its last chapter, the culmination
of the essay, in which de Broglie general-
ized his picture from single-particle dy-
namics to the (statistical) physics of
many bodies.'13 There SchroSdingerfound
the explanation of Paragraph 8 of Ein-
stein's work, to which he referred in the
letter, and much of the detailed method
he would use to develop the new theory
of the monatomic ideal gas in the wave
picture. He submitted a paper on this
theory on December 15, 1925, a month
after he wrote Lande that he had at-
tempted to construct an atomic model
with phase waves. 14 Thus he pursued
quantum statistics and the atomic model
simultaneously for a time. But the corre-
spondence and the record say nothing of
whether it was in analogy to the wave
picture of a gas, as Klein implies, or out
of his model-building efforts, as Raman
and Forman assert, that Schr5dinger
was moved to derive the wave equation
that he presented in the paper he submit-
ted for publication in late January 1926.
'3Louis de Broglie, "Recherches sur la the'orie
des quanta," Annales de Physique, 1925, 3:22-128;
Ch. 7, 104-125. A more thorough analysis of this
chapter of de Broglie's thesis and of the
Schrodinger-Einstein correspondence will appear
in a future publication.
141 have discussed this paper in the context of
earlier work in the quantum statistics of gases, in
"The Coming of Age of Erwin Schrodinger: His
Quantum Statistics of Ideal Gases," Arch. Hist.
Exact Sci., 1977, 17:165-192.