Comment by srean
1 day ago
I find SN Bose's derivation of quantized distribution of energy levels so much more elegant than Plank's which reads more like a desperate hack to force a predetermined answer.
1 day ago
I find SN Bose's derivation of quantized distribution of energy levels so much more elegant than Plank's which reads more like a desperate hack to force a predetermined answer.
Planck admitted it himself that it was a hack he just postulated that there had to be quants. It was Einstein when he explained 1905 the photoelectric effect that quanta were accepted as "real"
Prof. Partha Ghose in his paper The Story of Bose, Photon Spin and Indistinguishability does a nice walkthrough of Bose's derivation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50195940
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50206459
Wikipedia has a telling quote from the Physicist, Prof. Partha Ghose;
Bose's work stood at the transition between the 'old quantum theory' of Planck, Bohr and Einstein and the new quantum mechanics of Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Born, Dirac and others.
I have always felt that Prof.S.N.Bose never got full credit and acclaim for his achievements maybe because there were so many other greats at that time though Einstein recognized his originality.