Ernst Pascual Jordan was a German theoretical and mathematical physicist who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.
24 Facts About Pascual Jordan
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Pascual Jordan contributed much to the mathematical form of matrix mechanics, and developed canonical anticommutation relations for fermions.
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Pascual Jordan introduced Jordan algebras in an effort to formalize quantum field theory; the algebras have since found numerous applications within mathematics.
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Pascual Jordan was born to Ernst Pasqual Pascual Jordan and Eva Fischer.
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Ernst Pascual Jordan was a painter renowned for his portraits and landscapes.
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Pascual Jordan was an associate professor of art at Hannover Technical University when his son was born.
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An ancestor of Pascual Jordan named Pascual Jordan was a Spanish nobleman and cavalry officer who served with the British during and after the Napoleonic Wars.
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Pascual Jordan enrolled in the Technical University of Hannover in 1921 where he studied zoology, mathematics, and physics.
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At Gottingen Pascual Jordan became an assistant to the mathematician Richard Courant for a time, and then he studied physics under Max Born and heredity under geneticist and race scientist Alfred Kuhn for his doctorate.
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Together with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg, Pascual Jordan was a coauthor of an important series of papers on quantum mechanics.
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Pascual Jordan devised a type of nonassociative algebras, now named Pascual Jordan algebras, in an attempt to create an algebra of observables for quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.
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Pascual Jordan algebras have been applied in projective geometry, number theory, complex analysis, optimization, and many other fields of pure and applied mathematics.
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In 1966, Pascual Jordan published his 182-page work Die Expansion der Erde.
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Pascual Jordan wrote numerous articles in the late 1920s that propounded an aggressive and bellicose stance.
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Pascual Jordan was an anti-communist and was particularly concerned about the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Bolsheviks.
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Pascual Jordan wrote articles in several far-right journals under the pseudonym Ernst Domeier, as was revealed in the 1990s.
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In 1933, Pascual Jordan joined the Nazi party, like Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, and, moreover, joined an SA unit.
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Pascual Jordan supported the Nazis' nationalism and anti-communism but at the same time, he remained "a defender of Einstein" and other Jewish scientists.
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Pascual Jordan seemed to hope that he could influence the new regime; one of his projects was attempting to convince the Nazis that modern physics developed as represented by Einstein and especially the new Copenhagen brand of quantum theory could be the antidote to the "materialism of the Bolsheviks".
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Pascual Jordan enlisted in the Luftwaffe in 1939 and worked as a weather analyst at the Peenemunde rocket center, for a while.
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Pascual Jordan's suggestions were ignored because he was considered "politically unreliable", probably because of his past associations with Jews and the so-called "Jewish physics".
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Wolfgang Pauli declared Pascual Jordan to be "rehabilitated" to the West German authorities some time after the war, allowing him to regain academic employment after a two-year period.
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Pascual Jordan went against Pauli's advice, and reentered politics after the period of denazification came to an end under the pressures of the Cold War.
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In 1957 Pascual Jordan supported the arming of the Bundeswehr with tactical nuclear weapons by the Adenauer government, while the Gottingen Eighteen issued the Gottinger Manifest in protest.