142 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



moments of various atoms in all the possible ways. Some are seeking 

 new phenomena which may result from Stationary States and from 

 transitions, and occasionally they are rewarded with brilliant examples 

 such as that vivid demonstration of the atom-magnets which Gerlach 

 effected, or such as the passage of an atom from one State to another 

 while it transfers the liberated energy to another particle directly 

 and produces a chemical change. Others are finding the processes 

 resulting from the Stationary States manifest on an unearthly scale 

 within the stars. 



The theorists likewise are at work with furious industry. Now and 

 then a set of data hitherto rebellious is suddenly systematized, usually 

 in a manner not quite concordant with the other theories holding 

 other parts of the field. Attempts are made to unify one partial 

 theory with another, usually unsuccessful. Sometimes an authorita- 

 tive thinker, despondent over the continuing contradictions, tries to 

 cut all the knots by declaring that one or another of the conflicting 

 models is entirely fallacious, and that the numerical agreements on 

 which it is founded are a delusion and a snare. Another is driven 

 to concede that the conflicts are destined to endure forever, and 

 accepts all of the partial theories as equally valid, or else paraphrases 

 them in ingenious words which veil the contradictions, yet leaving 

 these essentially unabated. Others, abandoning the general problem, 

 have returned to the question of the hydrogen atom, and for this they 

 are trying to rephrase or reshape the Quantum Conditions in a manner 

 more satisfactory to themselves; sometimes with the aid of new and 

 unfamiliar forms of mathematics, apparently expecting that when 

 these become habitual to the human mind, the mystery of the Quan- 

 tum Conditions will seem simple and clear. That, of course, always 

 remains a possibility — that the human intellect will accustom itself 

 so thoroughly to the new systems of ideas that they will cease to 

 seem incoherent, as the human ear has so accustomed itself to the 

 harmonic innovations of successive generations of musicians that the 

 tones which seemed outrageous discords to the audiences of Beethoven 

 now are to us monotonously sweet. To our minds the various divi- 

 sions of the Atomic Theory are still discordant. It would not be 

 fair to leave any other impression of this strange and fascinating 

 theory; inchoate but full of promise, immature but gathering force, 

 a fantastic assemblage of failures and successes; irreconcilable with 

 all other theories, irreconcilable even with itself, and yet perhaps 

 predestined to refashion all the science of physics in its own image. 



