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The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (International Series of Monographs on Physics)
P.A.M Dirac
Publisher: Cambridge University Press(1982-02-04) | ISBN:0198520115 | DJVU | 4.5 Mb | 314 pages
A meticulous account by a man who was there This wonderful book lays out the thought process by which Dirac's formulation of quantum mechanics, with its much-handwaved-about "bra" and "ket" notation, came to be. Dirac makes minimal assumptions about the reader's prior education (appropriate, since the first edition was published in an age when a thorough scientific education comprised Homer, Virgil, Euclid, and Newton), so there are none of those annoying allusions of the form, "from which, of course, the insights of [famous name X] allow us to conclude that ..." In fact, there are extremely few footnotes of any kind, and they are not needed, as this work is neatly self-contained. Dirac is marvelously careful in calling attention to the guesses he makes along the way, so the careful reader can see what Dirac's premises are as well as what can be logically derived from them.