Theodore Ducas begins the lecture event, held at MIT on November 21, 1977, by introducing Victor Weisskopf, who, in turn, introduces his longtime collaborator and friend, Hans Bethe.
Bethe's lecture covers his experiences with early quantum mechanics. Subjects include: The limited early understanding and teaching of quantum mechanics at the University of Frankfurt in the 1920s; Bethe's eventual transfer to the University of Munich where he continued to develop his understanding of quantum mechanics with Arnold Sommerfeld; How his education was influenced by Erwin Schrödinger’s work; Werner Heisenberg’s matrix theory; Louis de Broglie’s wave theories; P.A.M. Dirac’s conclusions about light waves and light quanta; Bethe's thesis work on electron scattering. Other scientists mentioned are Enrico Fermi, Felix Bloch, Wolfgang Pauli, and Paul Peter Ewald. At the end of his lecture, Bethe takes questions from the audience and Weisskopf tells a story about Max Planck.
This video recording contains the second lecture of two in the Quantum Mechanics series, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s.
The series was organized by Theodore Ducas, (Professor of Physics emeritus, Wellesley College). The series titles are as follows:
Part 1: “My Life as a Physicist,” Victor Weisskopf, January 13, 1977;
Part 2: “My Relation to the Early Quantum Mechanics,” Hans Bethe, November 21, 1977.