Abstract
THE past fourteen or fifteen months have seen some striking advances and simplifications in theoretical physics. The trench warfare of the preceding three years, which consolidated the ground and marked out slowly the key positions for the new attack, is past. That attack has been launched with almost complete success. The first fury of the advance is perhaps now over. At least it is now possible to survey our older difficulties afresh, to find in many cases that they are no longer formidable. It therefore seems the right moment, and perhaps of general interest, to try to indicate the parts played in this advance by the more striking of the ideas associated with it—in this article the spinning electron. In a later article it may be possible to discuss similarly the other primary conception—the new mechanics, and particularly Schrddinger's equation. Without any assertion of finality in the description of electronic interactions by its means, the importance of the spinning model of the electron can scarcely be over-estimated. Yet the spinning electron has been so lost in the far wider ideas embodied in the new mechanics that it is as yet scarcely appreciated at its full value. It is convenient therefore to devote this article to it alone.
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FOWLER, R. Spinning Electrons. Nature 119, 90–92 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119090a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119090a0