History of Physics at Xavier

Quantum Mechanics Conferences

A week-long conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics was held at Xavier during the first week of October, 1962. The conference was sponsored by NASA, the Office of Naval Research, and the Judge Robert S. Marx Foundation, and attended by a number of noteworthy physicists. The main participants included: Boris Podolsky (a Xavier faculty member, pictured right), Yakir Aharonov, Paul Dirac, Nathan Rosen, Eugene Wigner, and Wendell Furry.

Two of the attendants were Nobel Laureates -- Paul Dirac received the award with Erwin Schrodinger in 1933 for "their discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory," and Eugene Wigner received the award in 1963 for "his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles."