I Admired Bohr Very Much. We Had

I Think It Is The General Rule That The Originator Of A New Idea Is Not The Most Suitable Person To Develop It, Because His Fears Of Something Going Wrong Are Really Too Strong... At Age 69.

It Was Not Until Some Weeks Later That I Realized There Is No Need To Restrict Oneself To 2 By 2 Matrices. One Could Go On To 4 By 4 Matrices, And The Problem Is Then Easily Soluable. In Retrospect, It Seems Strange That One Can Be So Much Held Up Over Such An Elementary Point. The Resulting Wave Equation For The Electron Turned Out To Be Very Successful. It Led To Correct Values For The Spin And The Magnetic Moment. This Was Quite Unexpected. The Work All Followed From A Study Of Pretty Mathematics, Without Any Thought Being Given To These Physical Properties Of The Electron.

Just By Studying Mathematics We Can Hope To Make A Guess At The Kind Of Mathematics That Will Come Into The Physics Of The Future... If Someone Can Hit On The Right Lines Along Which To Make This Development, It May Lead To A Future Advance In Which People Will First Discover The Equations And Then, After Examining Them, Gradually Learn How To Apply Them... My Own Belief Is That This Is A More Likely Line Of Progress Than Trying To Guess At Physical Pictures.

No. I Had Successfully Solved The Difficulty Of Finding A Description Of The Electron Which Was Consistent With Both Relativity And Quantum Mechanics. Of Course, When You Solve One Difficulty, Other New Difficulties Arise. You Then Try To Sove Them. You Can Never Solve All Difficulties At Once.

I Found The Best Ideas Usually Came, Not When One Was Actively Striving For Them, But When One Was In A More Relaxed State… I Used To Take Long Solitary Walks On Sundays, During Which I Tended To Review The Current Situation In A Leisurely Way. Such Occasions Often Proved Fruitful, Even Though (or Perhaps, Because) The Primary Purpose Of The Walk Was Relaxation And Not Research.