Walter Heinrich Heitler was born on 2 January 1904 inKarlsruhe, Germany, the son of Adolf Heitler, a Jewish engineering professor, and Ottilie Rudolf.[3]
At the time Heitler obtained his doctorate, three Institutes for Theoretical Physics formed a consortium which worked on the key problems of the day, such as atomic and molecular structure, and exchanged both scientific information and personnel in their scientific quests. These institutes were located at theUniversity of Munich, underArnold Sommerfeld; theUniversity of Göttingen, underMax Born; and theUniversity of Copenhagen, underNiels Bohr. Furthermore,Werner Heisenberg and Born had just recently published their trilogy of papers which launched thematrix mechanics formulation ofquantum mechanics.[8][9][10] Also, in early 1926, Erwin Schrödinger, at theUniversity of Zurich, began to publish his quintet of papers which launched the wave mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics[11][12][13][14] and showed that the wave mechanics and matrix mechanics formulations were equivalent.[15] These papers immediately put the personnel at the leading theoretical physics institutes onto applying these new tools to understanding atomic and molecular structure. It was in this environment that Heitler used his Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, leaving Munich and within a period of two years going to do research and study with the leading figures of the day in theoretical physics—Bohr at Copenhagen, Schrödinger at Zurich, and Born at Göttingen.
In Zurich, withFritz London, Heitler applied the new quantum mechanics to deal with the saturable, non-dynamic forces of attraction and repulsion, i.e., exchange forces, of the hydrogen molecule. Theirvalence bond treatment of this problem,[16] was a landmark in that it brought chemistry under quantum mechanics. Furthermore, their work greatly influenced chemistry throughLinus Pauling, who had just received his doctorate and on aGuggenheim Fellowship visited Heitler and London in Zurich. Pauling spent much of his career studying the nature of the chemical bond. The application of quantum mechanics to chemistry would be a prominent theme in Heitler's career.[17][18][19]
While Heitler was at Göttingen,Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. With the rising prominence of anti-Semitism under Hitler, Born took it upon himself to take the younger Jewish generation under his wing.[20] In doing so, Born arranged for Heitler to get a position that year as a Research Fellow at theUniversity of Bristol, withNevill Francis Mott.[21][22]
Heitler was a Research Fellow of the Academic Assistance Council in the H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory. Among other things, he worked onquantum field theory andquantum electrodynamics on his own, as well as in collaboration with other scientific refugees from Hitler, such asHans Bethe andHerbert Fröhlich, who also left Germany in 1933.[23]
With Bethe, he published a paper on pair production ofgamma rays in the Coulomb field of anatomic nucleus, in which they developed the Bethe–Heitler formula forBremsstrahlung (braking radiation).[24]
In 1936, Heitler published his major work on quantum electrodynamics,The Quantum Theory of Radiation, which marked the direction for future developments in quantum theory.[25] The book appeared in many editions and printings and has been translated into Russian.
Heitler also contributed to the understanding ofcosmic rays,[26][27]as well as predicting the existence of the electrically neutralpi meson.[28] While developing the theory of cosmic ray showers in 1937, he became aware of the latest experimental work in the field; the observation of cosmic ray interactions innuclear emulsion by Austrian physicistsMarietta Blau andHertha Wambacher. He mentioned this toCecil Powell, saying that the method appeared so straightforward that "even a theoretician might be able also to do it". This intrigued Powell, and he convinced theoretician Heitler to travel to Switzerland with a batch of llford emulsions and expose them on theJungfraujoch at 3500m. In a letter toNature in August 1939, Heitler and Powell were able to confirm the observations of Blau and Wambacher—thus Heitler had some influence in setting Powell on the first step of his path to the 1950Nobel Prize in Physics "for his development of the photographic method of studying nuclear processes and his discoveries regarding mesons made with this method".[29][30]
Heitler's work withPeng Huanwu on radiation damping theory and themeson scattering process resulted in the Heitler–Peng integral equation.[36][37][38]
In 1942, Heitler married Kathleen Winifred Nicholson, a biologist whom he met inBristol. They lived at 21 Seapark Road,Clontarf (down the road from Schrödinger), and had a son, Eric, in 1946. Heitler became a naturalized Irish citizen the same year.[3][39]
During the 1942–1943 academic year, Heitler gave a course on elementary wave mechanics, during which W. S. E. Hickson took notes and prepared a finished copy. These notes were the basis for Heitler's bookElementary Wave Mechanics: Introductory Course of Lectures, first published in 1943. A new edition was published asElementary Wave Mechanics in 1945. This version was revised and republished many times, as well as being translated into French and Italian and published in 1949 and in German in 1961. A further revised version appeared asElementary Wave Mechanics With Applications to Quantum Chemistry in 1956, as well as in German in 1961.
Schrödinger resigned as Director of the School for Theoretical Physics in 1946, but stayed at DIAS, whereupon Heitler became Director.
In 1949, Heitler accepted a position as Ordinarius Professor for Theoretical Physics and Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at theUniversity of Zurich, where he remained until his retirement in 1974.[7][33][34]
In 1958, Heitler held the Lorentz Chair for Theoretical Physics atLeiden University.[40]
Walter HeitlerEléments de Mécanique Ondulatoire (Presses Universitaires de France, PUF, Paris, 1949, 1964)
Walter HeitlerElementi di Meccanica Ondulatoria con presentazione di R.Ciusa (Zuffi, Bologna,1949)
Walter HeitlerElementary Wave Mechanics With Applications to Quantum Chemistry (Oxford University, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1969)
Walter HeitlerThe Quantum Theory of Radiation [Russian Translation] (Moscow, 1956)
Walter HeitlerLectures on Problems Connected with the Finite Size of Elementary Particles (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Lectures on mathematics and physics. Physics) (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1961)
Walter Heitler and Klaus MüllerElementare Wellenmechanik (Vieweg, 1961)
Walter HeitlerElementare Wellenmechanik. Mit Anwendung auf die Quantenchemie (Vieweg Friedr. & Sohn Ver, 1961)
Walter HeitlerWahrheit und Richtigkeit in den exakten Wissenschaften. Abhandlungen der mathematisch- naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse. Jahrgang 1972. Nr. 3. (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Mainz, Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1972)
Walter HeitlerÜber die Komplementarität von lebloser und lebender Materie. Abhandlungen der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrg. 1976, Nr. 1 (Mainz, Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Kommission bei F. Steiner, 1976)
^M. Born and P. Jordan,Zur Quantenmechanik,Zeitschrift für Physik34 858–888, 1925 (received 27 September 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor,Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968)ISBN0-486-61881-1]
^M. Born, W. Heisenberg, and P. Jordan,Zur Quantenmechanik II,Zeitschrift für Physik35 557–615, 1925 (received November 1925). [English translation in: B. L. van der Waerden, editor,Sources of Quantum Mechanics (Dover Publications, 1968)ISBN0-486-61881-1]
^Erwin Schrödinger(From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (First Communication),Annalen der Physik79 (4) 361–376, 1926. [English translation in Gunter LudwigWave Mechanics 94–105 (Pergamon Press, 1968)ISBN0-08-203204-1]
^Erwin Schrödinger(From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Second Communication),Annalen der Physik79 (6) 489–527, 1926. [English translation in Gunter LudwigWave Mechanics 106–126 (Pergamon Press, 1968)ISBN0-08-203204-1]
^Erwin Schrödinger(From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Third Communication),Annalen der Physik80 (13) 437–490, 1926.
^Erwin Schrödinger(From the German) Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem (Fourth Communication),Annalen der Physik81 (18) 109–139, 1926. [English translation in Gunter LudwigWave Mechanics 151–167 (Pergamon Press, 1968)ISBN0-08-203204-1]
^Erwin Schrödinger(From the German) On the Relationship of the Heisenberg-Born-Jordan Quantum Mechanics to Mine,Annalen der Physik79 (8) 734–756, 1926. [English translation in Gunter LudwigWave Mechanics 127–150 (Pergamon Press, 1968)ISBN0-08-203204-1]
^Fröhlich, H.; Heitler, W.; Kemmer, N. (1938). "On the Nuclear Forces and the Magnetic Moments of the Neutron and the Proton".Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences.166 (924):154–177.Bibcode:1938RSPSA.166..154F.doi:10.1098/rspa.1938.0085.
^W. Heitler, C. F. Powell & G. E. F. Fertel,Heavy Cosmic Ray Particles at Jungfraujoch and Sea-Level, Nature volume 144, pages 283–284 (1939)
^Owen LockHalf a century ago - The pion pioneers CERN Courier vol. 37 no. 5 June 1997 pages 2-6.
L. O'Raifeartaigh and G. Rasche: Walter Heitler 1904–81, inCreators of Mathematics, The Irish Connection, ed. Ken Houston, University College Dublin Press, 2000.
Mehra, Jagdish, andHelmut RechenbergThe Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 5 Erwin Schrödinger and the Rise of Wave Mechanics. Part 1 Schrödinger in Vienna and Zurich 1887–1925. (Springer, 2001)ISBN0-387-95179-2
Jammer, MaxThe Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics (McGraw-Hill, 1966)
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