July 29, 1925

Matrix mechanics

Heisenberg's Umdeutung manuscript received by Zeitschrift für Physik

The famous paper's author list contained one name, not three — and the date usually given as its publication is the day the journal stamped it “received.”

29 July 1925: received, not published

Zeitschrift für Physik recorded receipt of Werner Heisenberg's manuscript “Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen” on 29 July 1925. That is the journal's receipt date: Springer's current record gives an issue date of December 1925, while an American Physical Society historical account says the paper appeared in September.

The submitted paper proposed a quantum-theoretical mechanics based exclusively on relationships between quantities that were, in principle, observable, deliberately discarding pictures of electron paths in favour of quantities tied to observable atomic transitions.

One author, not three

The manuscript was Heisenberg's alone. Max Born and Pascual Jordan were not its coauthors.

Born and Jordan's “Zur Quantenmechanik” was a separate paper, received on 27 September 1925, and the three-author Born–Heisenberg–Jordan paper was yet another work, “Zur Quantenmechanik II,” submitted in November.

Born recognizes the algebra

Heisenberg had written down an unfamiliar multiplication rule without identifying it as matrix multiplication. Born then identified those rules with matrix algebra and, with Jordan, rapidly developed a more explicit mathematical formulation in their separate paper.

The 1925 paper should not be read as already containing Heisenberg's 1927 uncertainty principle or the later general operator formalism.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The event date is securely the journal’s receipt date, not its publication date. Springer’s current record gives an issue date of December 1925, while an American Physical Society historical account says the paper appeared in September; either way, it was not published on 29 July.