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José Enrique Moyal (also found as "Jo" or "Joe" Moyal) (b. October 1, 1910 in Jerusalem, Mandate for Palestine, d. May 22, 1998 in Canberra, Australia) was a mathematical physicist, who also contributed to aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering and statistics, established the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics in 1949, by bringing together previous ideas of Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, and Hlbrand ("Hip") Groenewold. His point of view in this formulation is statistical, and helps bridge the culture gap between quantum mechanics and classical statistical mechanics, enabling a natural comparison between the two. Weyl quantization is a synonym for "Moyal Quantization", or "Phase Space Quantization", and largely avoids use of operators for quantum mechanical observables. Quantum-mechanical evolution in phase space is specified by a Moyal bracket in the celebrated "Moyal equation".
[edit] See also
- J.E. Moyal, "Quantum mechanics as a statistical theory", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 45 (1949), 99-124.
- J.E. Moyal, "Stochastic Processes and Statistical Physics", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 11, (1949),150-210.
[edit] References
- C. K. Zachos, D. B. Fairlie, and T. L. Curtright, "Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space" ( World Scientific, Singapore, 2005). Also see, C.K. Zachos, "Deformation Quantization: Quantum Mechanics Lives and Works in Phase-Space", arXiv:hep-th/0110114.
[edit] Obituaries
- J. Gani, "Obituary: José Enrique Moyal", J. Appl. Probab., 35 (1998), no. 4, 1012–1017.
- M.S. Bartlett, "José Enrique Moyal", The Statistician, 48 (1998), 273-4. (Bartlett acknowledges how much he gained from Moyal's wide knowledge of the European literature on probability.)
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