Is there a good book which covers the historical development of quantum theory (in the 1900-1930's period) along-with the in depth technical exposition? Reading either independently does not provide the kind of engagement which can be provided with a combined exposition.
> the historical development of quantum theory (in the 1900-1930's period) along-with the in depth technical exposition
Unfortunately, those are two completely different things because the history of the development of QM is a story of people stumbling around in the dark and making tons of mistakes, some of which still weigh down QM pedagogy to this day. So you can have historically accurate, or you can have technically clear, but you cannot have both at the same time. (It is, ironically, a sort of wave-particle duality with respect to quantum theory itself.)
The biggest disconnect between the history and the technical reality is that, historically, entanglement was treated as not much more than a side show, an intellectual curiosity, but not really worthy of a central role in an exposition of QM. Today we know that entanglement is absolutely central to QM. It is in fact what QM is really all about, the thing that really distinguishes it from classical mechanics. And the reason for the long-standing intellectual disconnect is that entanglement doesn't manifest itself until you have two particles (obviously) but the vast majority of the heavy lifting in the early days was analyzing systems consisting of a single particle. Starting out that way incredibly misleading because it hides the distinction between physical space (where particles live) and configuration space (where the wave function lives). When you have only one particle, physical space and configuration space are the same. But that is just a very special case, one which leads you badly astray when you try to understand what is really going on under the QM hood. That's the reason it took so long to figure it out.
I strongly recommend understanding the technical side first, which is really not all that hard if presented properly (which, unfortunately, it very rarely is). But once you understand the technical side in a modern light, the history becomes much easier to grok.
Not to be too contrary, but I disagree with this sentiment. First let me say I'm assuming that the OP wants to involve a historical narrative to gain a deeper conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics.
Under that assumption, the interesting thing about QM is that there is very little inherent conceptual justification for the technical descriptions we have of quantum systems other than that 'they work'. Or more precisely, understanding why QM systems are mathematically described in the way they are is still an active area of research.
Therefore, often the closest you can come to a deeper understanding is by tracing how someone stumbled into, or was forced into, using a particular mathematical approach. At least then you are left at the same precipice of knowledge over which experts have been dangling for nearly 100 years now.
I hope that one day we can give deeper explanations for why we have Hilbert spaces and what-not, but until then, learning the history is the closest you can get to understanding why things ended up the way they are on a technical level. And assuming a decent mathematical background, there's no reason you can't also learn the technical detail itself for the first time right along with that historical narrative.
> there is very little inherent conceptual justification for the technical descriptions we have of quantum systems other than that 'they work'.
That's true of all scientific theories when you reach their roots. That does not change the fact that QM pedagogy is generally a disaster because it follows the historical development and emphasizes the single-particle case and de-emphasizes entanglement and decoherence, which makes the measurement process appear deeply mysterious and incomprehensible when in fact it is quite simple and straightforward. It's still very weird and unintuitive, but it is far from incomprehensible, as Feynman famously claimed. It is simply not true that "no one understands quantum mechanics" and it hasn't been true for a very long time.
The best of what's available at the moment is (IMHO):
David Z. Albert, "Quantum Mechanics and Experience"
Tim Maudlin, "Philosophy of Science: Quantum Mechanics" (Space and Time is also a good read.)
But I'm actually contemplating writing a book of my own because I think there's still a pretty significant gap insofar as none of these books get into quantum information theory at all, which I think is crucial to having a really solid understanding.
though it's a tad pricey, but it's actually a really good mix of technical and historical content because it describes the experiments that were done to show that the many unintuitive predictions of QM are actually true.
There are some translation/copy-writing issues but don't let that put you off. It has a solid coverage of quantization of Hamiltonian mechanics in both matrix mechanics and wave mechanics, and then the unification of the two - all following the historical narrative.
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I know. There was an amusing article a while back showing autopricers from two merchants fighting with each other. I think one of the lessons was that you can pretend to have your own copy for sale, then keep lowering the price. The bot will follow you all the way down to almost zero—then you buy the book.
Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll came out recently and fits what you're describing. While I enjoyed it a lot of it went over my head so I may not be the best guide here.
He also has a podcast that's pretty good called Mindscape.
The definitive history is Abraham Pais' treatise _Inward Bound_. He was a particle physicist who turned to writing history. Had the advantage not having been there and known the players.
Since a lot of general intros to QM are being suggested (rather than technical/historical texts), then here's another recommendation which is not technical nor historical, but comes as close as you can get to a proper understanding of QM without mathematical detail:
Helge Kragh's biography of Dirac is sort of a subset of what you want. It goes past the 1930s and it focuses on Dirac, but Dirac's most famous works were in the 1920s and 1930s, and it covers them pretty well.
I'm a fan of biographies. The first half of Walter Isaacson's Einstein biography fits this. Helped me appreciate how unobvious certain things were prior to discovery.
From the title, I thought it was going to be an article about the present day. Sort of a “surprise! -it’s right now” kind of feel, and then talk about the second quantum revolution etc etc.
Do younger physicists still come up with revolutionary discoveries in physics anymore. Most of the recent Nobel prizewinners have been in their 40's or older.
Einstein was about 41 when he got the Prize. Usually it’s awarded many years after the work that it’s awarded for. And most of the Prizes were not for “revolutionary discoveries”, just important work.
von Neumann gave a mathematically rigorous treatment of QM, synthesizing the work by physicists that had previously gotten a confused reaction from mathematicians. In that way he explained QM and also made a mathematical platform for others to build on. It was absolutely brilliant work. But I think he didn't exactly advance QM. He took the physics version that made mathematicians say wtf, and created a mathematician version that made physicists say wtf. I think physicists mostly used Dirac's book "The Principles of QM" (1930), which went through 5 or 6 later editions and may still be in print.
