Subject: quotation

From: Dudis Douglas S Civ AFRL/MLBP <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 08:42:37 -0400

Simple request.  I am looking for the exact quotation (preferably with a reference) for
the quote that goes along the lines:

'... the laws governing most of physics, and all of chemistry, are now known ...'

Help much appreciated.
Doug Dudis

-------------------------------
Douglas S. Dudis, Ph.D.
Research Leader - Polymers
Air Force Research Laboratory
Materials and Manufacturing Directorate
2941 P St., Bldg. 654, Ste. 347
Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433-7750
Phone: (937) 255-9148
FAX: (937) 255-9157
e-mail:[email-masked]

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From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 09:14:14 -0400 (EDT)

Try CCL archive search:

http://server.ccl.net/htdig/

and try 
dirac citation

or
http://server.ccl.net/cgi-bin/ccl/message.cgi?2001+03+15+013

Jan
(I am abroad, please do not send me e-mail unless you have to).

> '... the laws governing most of physics, and all of chemistry, are now known ...'

Jan K. Labanowski            |    phone: 614-292-9279,  FAX: 614-292-7168
Ohio Supercomputer Center    |    Internet: [email-masked] 
1224 Kinnear Rd,             |    http://www.ccl.net/chemistry.html
Columbus, OH 43212-1163      |    http://www.ccl.net/

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From: Jamal Uddin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 08:37:47 -0500 (CDT)

Dr. Dudis,

This was written by P. A. M. Dirac:

"The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a
large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely
known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws
leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble."

- P. A. M. Dirac, Proc. Roy. Soc. 123, 714 (1929)

(Note: This is not taken from the original reference)

Cheers,

Jamal Uddin

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Dudis Douglas S Civ AFRL/MLBP wrote:

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From: "Alexandre Hocquet" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 16:45:06 +0200

> '... the laws governing most of physics, and all of chemistry, are now
known ...'

Hi Doug,

Your quotation might be "The underlying physical laws necessary for the
mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry
are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the application
of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble".
It has been extracted from : "Quantum mechanics of many-electron systems"
Dirac PAM (1929) Proc R Soc Lond Ser A 123: 714
It has been commented in : Kutzelnigg W, Theoretical Chemistry Accounts,
103, (2000), 182-186
And also : Hocquet, A ECCC7 Poster #10: "The Epistemological Status of
Computational Chemistry: A Tentative Sociological Study" at
http://eccc7.cooper.edu/
You may also have a look at : Simoes A and Gavroglu K : " the Americans, the
Germans, and the beginnings of quantum chemistry : the confluence of
diverging traditions ", Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological
Sciences, 25 (1994), 47-110

Hope this helps,

Alexandre Hocquet