Willis Lamb

thumb|Willis Lamb Willis Eugene Lamb, Jr. (July 12, 1913 – May 15, 2008) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum". Quotes In his 1930 book, Dirac took for granted that measurements could be made, but was very vague about what was actually involved. W. E. Lamb, Sequential measurements in quantum mechanics, in Quantum Measurements and Chaos, E. R. Pike and S. Sarkar, eds. (Plenum, New York, 1987) pp. 183-193. Neither Dirac nor von Neumann discussed his measurements in physical terms. W. E. Lamb, Classical measurements on a quantum mechanical system, Nuclear Phys. B 6, 197-201 (1989). At the first of the 1960's Rochester Coherence Conferences, I suggested that a license be required for use of the word photon, and offered to give such license to properly qualified people. W. E. Lamb, Anti-photon, Appl. Phys. B 60, 77-84 (1995). I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems. W. E. Lamb, Super classical quantum mechanics: the best interpretation of non relativistic quantum mechanics, Am. J. Phys. 69, 413-422 (2001). In fact, there really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out. relating his experimental confirmation of the fine structure spectrum of hydrogen, as reported by Jagdish Mehra The historical development of quantum theory Springer 2001 0387950869 1037 Quotes about Lamb A rare theorist turned experimentalist. D. Kaiser Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics The University of Chicago 2005 0226422666 37 A gifted experimentalist, and theoretician, in the best Newtonian tradition... His contributions to quantum measurements, and elucidative teachings on quantum mechanics, have not yet received the attention they deserve. F. J. Duarte Laser Physicist Optics Journal 2012 9780976038313 100 External links Category:Physicists from the United States Category:Nobel laureates in Physics Category:2008 deaths Category:People from Los Angeles Category:Nobel laureates from the United States Category:National Medal of Science laureates Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Stanford University faculty Category:University of Oxford faculty Category:Yale University faculty