LASZLO TISZA, Professor of
Physics, Emeritus
Research Interests
Professor Tisza's current interest is to construct a simple algebraic
chain between classical and quantum physics.
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Biographical Sketch
Professor
Tisza's first encounter with quantum mechanics was in 1928 when
as a mathematics student in Budapest he transferred to the University
of Gottingen and attended Max Born's course. There, he was delighted
to see modern mathematics applied to experience and switched his
major to physics. Yet, he was not quite happy, feeling that the
connection between the physics and mathematics was not clear enough.
This was to become the beginning of a life-long search.
Later,
Tisza worked in Leipzig under Werner Heisenberg, and with Teller
wrote his first paper on molecular spectra. The same theme developed
into a Ph.D. thesis, submitted in Budapest. Tisza then joined Landau's
group in Kharkov and was much influenced by Landau's integration
of thermodynamics into modern physics. In 1937, Tisza was associated
with Fritz London in Paris, who established the connection between
Bose-Einstein statistics and liquid helium. Tisza developed this
into an early version of the two-fluid model of superfluidity that
became standard for describing experiments.
In 1941,
Tisza emigrated to the United States to join the MIT physics department.
His first line of work was to set up a rigorous but intuitive course
of thermodynamics and statistical physics. More recently, Tisza
is focused upon the longstanding search to connect concepts and
algebra in quantum mechanics.
[top] Selected Publications
The Thermodynamics of Phase Equilibrium. Annals
of Physics 13, 1-92 (1961).
With P. M. Quay, Statistical Thermodynamics of Equilibrium.
Ibid. 25, 49-90 (1963).
Generalized Thermodynamics, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press
(1966).
The Reasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural
science, in Experimental Metaphysics. R. S. Cohen
et al. (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers (1997).
Resolve the Paradoxes of the Begining, Part I, Fall
1999; Part II, December 1999. SPS Newsletter, Society of Physics
Students.
Integration of Classical and Quantum Physics, Physical
Review A 40, 6781-6790 (1989).
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