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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: back to Park (ID:fanpu2019), author: H. B. G. Casimir, compiled: 1Unip 137

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"Een Vergeten Genie" is an introduction to the simple life and physical contribution of Hugo Martin Tetrode, a talented Dutch physicist, written by Hendrik B. G. Casimir, a famous theoretical physicist. In order to make it easier for readers to read, some key references and appropriate notes that are not available in the original text are attached (the author thanks the editor for his advice and help). To say that Troud is a "forgotten genius" is just that times have changed in the author's context at that time, and it may not seem very "conclusive" today. after all, in the thermodynamics and statistical physics class of the physics department, we will also talk about the Sackur-Tetrode equation independently discovered by him and another German physical chemist, Otto Sackur,1880-1914 (this year also happens to be the 110th anniversary of its birth). But in any case, Trotter and his physical achievements are a little strange to the public, and even physicists. This article is compiled in the hope of bringing its historical role back to public view.

Some time ago, I received a letter from the Spanish historian of science, J. M. Sanchez-Ron, which said:

"I am writing a book for Oxford University Press devoted to the history of the concept of teleaction in physics in the 20th century. One point I would like to talk about is the contribution of the Dutch physicist Hugo Martin Tetrode. His paper in 1922 (on teleaction) first impressed Einstein and Wheeler and Feynman many years later. The problem is that so far I haven't found anything about his life, not even his name (except for some papers he published that mentioned that he lived in Amsterdam). I have to admit that I have contacted universities in many countries about this matter. Nevertheless, I think it is important to include some details about the life of this truly undervalued Dutch physicist, whose research on quantum and classical physics is a lasting contribution to our field. Because I know you are also Dutch, so I regard you as a lifesaver. I would appreciate it if you could provide me with some details or documents about Trotter's life, career and work. "

Starting with a famous formula, such a letter must be answered, but first I know very little about Trotter. I know a famous thermodynamic formula named after him. I remember in 1928 or shortly after, I was shocked by a very professional article he published in Zeitschrift f ü r Physik, Germany. Surprisingly, he does not belong to the usual, very small circle of Dutch theorists. My teacher, Wolfgang Pauli, for whom I worked as an assistant at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in the 1932-1933 academic year, once sighed, "there are some Merkw ü rdige Kauze in your Netherlands. Troud, for example, does an excellent job. But no one knows him, and he doesn't seem to want to know anyone."

Besides, I'm pretty sure he never worked as a physicist in a university or an industrial laboratory. As there was no more information, I had to investigate. I looked up the phone book first and soon found that the name "Tetrode" was very rare (but "Tetterode" was more common). So it's not hopeless to call Trotter's house. I tried it twice and I succeeded. I don't remember exactly why I went to Hilversum, but it turns out that Ms. Trotter, who lives there, still remembers her handsome but lonely cousin. She consulted the family documents at that time and later on my request, and I am very grateful to her. She said that Troud's father was a bank director, which was very helpful to me.

Joh. Professor de Vries) provided me with a great deal of information about the Troud family, who was studying the history of Dutch banking. At the same time, I learned more in other ways. Dr. Kox, who is in charge of publishing the correspondence collection of H. A. Lorentz,1853-1928, stumbled upon a noteworthy letter from Troud to Lorentz. In addition, he noticed that there were some books in the Pieter Zeeman,1865-1943 laboratory in Amsterdam, among which the tickets for the collection were nailed by Trotter. I myself found some of Trotter's notes in the well-organized correspondence of Professor Paul Ellenfester (Paul Ehrenfest,1880-1933) of the University of Leiden.

With these clues, it may not seem too difficult to complete a slightly complete biography, but this expectation is only partially realized. However, my discovery is so amazing that I think it is worth telling. His father, Dr. Pieter Johan Conrad Tetrode (1863-1955), was a well-known figure in the financial world, worked in a number of banks and was a director of ABN AMRO from 1919 to 1934. He has served as a number of supervisors since then. In 1864, he married Charlotte Louisa Gildemeester (1894-1942) and had three children: Hugo, the protagonist of the story (Hugo Martin,1895.3.7-191.1.18), his sister Helena (Helena Maria,1897-1982) and brother Peter (Pieter,1902-1973). Todd never married all his life. His brother and sister both married late and had no children, and their spouses passed away. He was born in a house in Vondelstraat. His family moved to Keizersgracht 573 in 1902 and Herengracht 526 in 1909. They lived here until 1934, after Trotter's death, where they lived, although they later lived mainly in Huize Eggher-monde, in Sosterburg.

Has he graduated yet? I'm not sure whether Trotter has finished his graduation exam, let alone when and where. The municipal archives in Amsterdam only recorded that he did not attend a municipal high school or went to the first HBS Bank. Despite diligent access to references and archives, with one exception, I found nothing from subsequent investigations. But this exception is interesting.

It was mentioned in Volume 4 of the 1913 edition of the Dutch aristocracy that he was admitted to the University of Leipzig. My letter to a well-known colleague in Leipzig was unexpectedly meritorious. The student registration system of the University of Leipzig survived the two world wars. It turns out that Trotter registered for two years on October 16, during which he studied math, physics and chemistry. He lives in the home of Professor von Oettingen. Did he take the graduation exam? If so, he must skip one or more courses or take the national exam. On August 8, 1912, he received a letter of proof of the lecture and practice he attended. He obviously returned to Amsterdam.

Oddly enough, there are no lectures on theoretical physics and mathematics on the list. There is no evidence that he came back to Leipzig the following year. I doubt this is the case, but in any case he did not attend regular lectures: this has been identified in the registration system.

Miracles now, great miracles have arrived. On March 18, 1912, the editor of the famous physics magazine Annalen der Physik received a manuscript from him. It was quickly published on May 23 (on July 17th the magazine editor received a brief supplement from him correcting some of the minor errors in the previous article) [Note 1].

The famous Sackur-Tetrode equation is an amazing job for a young man under the age of seventeen. This shows that he has studied and understood most of the contents of modern theoretical physics, especially Boltzmann and Gibbs' statistical mechanics, and he is not afraid of fairly advanced mathematics. This is already very rare, but what is more striking is that he introduced two bold hypotheses, almost self-evident, which he could not prove but gave the famous equation (the German physical chemist O. Sackur got the same equation almost at the same time. The theory caused quite a stir, and both Lorentz and Ellen Fester studied it. But both men opposed Trotter's approach, although they admitted that it had led to useful results. With the later development of quantum mechanics, it was only then that people fully understood why Trod was right.

Otto Sackur (1880-1914) and Hugo Tetrode (1895-1931), what did he do after returning home from Leipzig? I suspect that he has been working independently from home. In 1915, he wrote to Ellen Fester, who apparently invited him to attend a discussion class. He regretted that he would not be able to attend that day, but he hoped to visit Ellen Fester in Leiden soon. In a second letter soon after, he thanked Ellen Fester for the copy and said he could learn a lot from it. In 1915, he published a long paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), further elaborating his views on "chemical constants". This was submitted by Lorentz and Zeeman. As the document shows, he exchanged views with Lorentz. So far, I haven't found any details about the relationship with Zeeman, but it's not impossible for Trod and Zeeman to know each other. In any case, Troud then made some contact with other Dutch physicists.

In 1916, Ellen Fester invited him again. He replied that he was unable to participate in the discussion because of poor health and that he did not receive visitors at home. Could this be the first attack of tuberculosis? However, his interest in physics has not disappeared: the same letter also contains criticism of Planck's article.

It was not until 1922 that he spoke again: the paper mentioned in Sanchez-Ron 's letter to me was published in Zeitschrift f ü r Physik [Note 3]. It contains a new mechanical method, which is very novel, very bold, but mathematically accurate. This approach also leads to a special speculative reflection, in his own words: "in the last four pages, we would rather give up thinking about mathematical proof." I would like to quote a few words to translate Trotter's (in my opinion very beautiful) German as authentic as possible:

"causality depends in part on chance. However, this concept did not exist in the human mind at first and was not followed in the past: it is well known that in world events (people) assume completely different interconnections, albeit in a rather childish way."

Among the materials found in the family documents by the cousin mentioned above was a picture of Trotter with the words "Workers at the window of the speaker's house at the first meeting in the summer of 1922" on the back. I haven't decided which meeting it is, but at least it seems that he has recovered and participated in some social activities. In 1924, Troud wrote a long letter to Lorentz explaining that he had been completely caught up in further elaboration of the ideas in the 1922 paper. He is now looking for a solution to the "quantum puzzle" in a completely different direction and hopes to discuss the problem with Lorentz.

I don't know if they really had such a discussion, but in any case, this method has not been proved to be effective so far. The new quantum mechanics, which took place between 1924 and 1928, developed along a completely different path. Trotter must keep a close eye on this development. In fact, in 1928 he published two more articles in Zeitschrift f ü r Physik [Note 4], which contained valuable mathematical supplements to Dirac's theory and showed that he had fully mastered the latest theory of quantum mechanics. The last correspondence with Ellen Fester was also in that year. The latter asked him to send a copy of the paper and invited him to come to Leiden: maybe he would be happy to meet Dirac or Pauli. Troud sent some copies of the paper with a courtesy reply saying that the copy of the old paper was in Amsterdam and that he himself was in Soesterberg. He sent it to Ellen Fester as soon as he returned to Amsterdam, but did not respond to the latter's invitation.

Shut Einstein out. Todd died on January 18, 1931. Shortly afterwards, his sister came to Zeeman's lab to donate his science collection, a scene that one of Zeeman's former employees still remembers clearly. She said that her brother died of tuberculosis and became more and more afraid of seeing people. In the end, she became almost the only one who came into contact with him.

There is an anecdote about Trotter. Einstein and Ellen Fester once tried to visit him, but were thanked by his servant at the front door: "Sir does not entertain guests." This story that I have heard many times may sound incredible, but it is consistent with what I have found so far. What emerges in front of us is a truly talented person, but in poor health. Because of his financial independence, he can continue his research in illness, but it may be this economic independence that leads to a growing loneliness.

In any case, he is obviously not keen to participate in meetings and discussions. Maybe he thought it would be enough if he could occasionally communicate with his peers by publishing papers. I am not entirely satisfied with this myself. I'd like to know more about this outstanding person's way of life, way of thinking and method of work. This is also one of the reasons why I wrote this essay.

Annotation

1. See reference [2] for details. In an article published on May 23, Troud gave a heuristic derivation of entropy. He assumed that the size of the basic unit lattice was (zh) ^ n. He used the vapor pressure data of liquid mercury to fit the parameter z. Due to some numerical errors, he got z ≈ 0.07. In the subsequent corrigendum to the previous article, Troud corrected his mistake and got the correct result of Zhon1. See Ref. [9] for details.

two。 For details, see Ref. [3pr 4].

3. That is, the article begins with the "super-distance action" paper mentioned by the Spanish historian of science, J. M. Sanchez-Ron, see Ref. [5,6]. Electrodynamics can be described as interparticle super-distance interaction (Action at a distance)-that is, without introducing a field-to distinguish it from (Maxwell) field theory. This leads to the Tetrode-Fokker-Schwarzchild action integral. This is H. Tetrode's contribution to the study of electrodynamics. The idea of long-range action in electrodynamics is older than the concept of "field", even about half a century after Maxwell's field theory was confirmed by experiments, that is, at the end of the 1940s. Feynman and Wheeler are still trying to explain it with the so-called "absorber" super-distance effect.

4. See Ref. [7. 8].

reference

[1] http://www.marceltettero.nl/ mtettero / Tetrode.htm, the original article was published in NRC Handelsblad, 1984.2.23.

[2] H. Tetrode, Die chemische Konstante der Gase und das elementare Wirkungsquantum (The chemical constant of gases and the elementary quantum of action), Ann. Phys. 38434-442 (1912); Berichtigung zu meiner Arbeit: "Die chemische Konstante der Gase und das elementare Wirkungsquantum" ︁ (Correction to my work: The chemical constant of gases and the elementary quantum of action), ibid., 39,255-256 (1912).

[3] O. Sackur, Die Anwendung der kinetischen Theorie der Gase auf chemische Probleme (The application of the kinetic theory of gases to chemical problems), Ann. Physik. 36958-980 (1911).

[4] O. Sackur, Die universelle Bedeutung des sog. Elementaren Wirkungsquantums (The universal significance of the so-called elementary quantum of action), Ann. Physik. 40, 67-86 (1913).

[5] H. Tetrode, ber den Wirkungszusammenhang der Welt. Eine Erweiterung der klassischen Dynamik (On the interdependencies of the world. An extension of classical dynamics), Zeitschrift f ü r Physik, vol.10, 317328 (1922).

[6] A. D. Fokker, Ein invarianter Variationssatz f ü r die Bewegung mehrerer elektrischer Massenteilchen (An invariant set of variations for the movement of multiple electrical mass particles), Zeitschrift f ü r Physik vol. 58386-393 (1929).

H. Tetrode, Der Impuls-Energiesatz in der Dirachsen Quantentheorie des Elektrons (The impulse-energy theorem in Dirac's quantum theory of the electron), Zeitschrift f ü r Physik, vol. 49,858-864 (1928).

H. Tetrode, Allgemein-relativistische Quantentheorie des Elektrons (General-relativistic quantum theory of the electron), Zeitschrift f ü r Physik, vol. 50,336-346 (1928).

[9] W. Grimus, On the 100th anniversary ofthe Sackur-Tetrode equation, arXiv:1112.3748 [physics.hist-ph].

A brief introduction to the author

Hendrik B. G. Casimir (1909-2000), namely H. Casimir is a famous theoretical physicist and industrial research leader in the Netherlands. Born in the Hague on July 15, 1909, he entered the University of Leiden in 1926 to study theoretical physics with Ellen Fester. Later, he became a graduate student at Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. He completed his doctoral thesis on quantum mechanics and group theory in 1931 and began to make a figure in the field of quantum mechanics. Casimir worked as an assistant for Pauli in Zurich from 1932 to 1933, and this experience had a lasting and profound impact on him. In 1948, he and Dik Polder discovered the famous Casimir effect. Casimir's other role is as a leader in industrial research. He joined the management of Philips Lab in the late 1950s and was responsible for the laboratory's global research activities. Casimir likes food, literature and art, Hiking in the mountains, and playing the violin in his daily life.

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