José Enrique Moyal
José Enrique Moyal (Hebrew: יוסף הנרי מויאל. Also known as Jo or Joe Moyal; 1 October 1910 Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire – 22 May 1998 Canberra, Australia) was a mathematical physicist who contributed to aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering and statistics, among other fields.
He helped to establish the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics in 1949 by bringing together the ideas of Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, and Hip Groenewold. This formulation is statistical in nature and makes logical connections between quantum mechanics and classical statistical mechanics, enabling a natural comparison between the two formulations.Weyl quantization is a synonym for "Moyal Quantization", or "Phase Space Quantization," and largely avoids use of operators for quantum mechanical observables prevalent in the canonical formulation. Quantum-mechanical evolution in phase space is specified by a Moyal bracket.
He grew up in Tel Aviv, and attended the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium. He studied in Paris in the 1930s, at the École Supérieure d' Electricité, Institut de Statistique, and, finally, Institut Henri Poincaré. His seminal work was carried out in wartime England in the 1940s, while employed at the de Havilland Aircraft company. He was a professor of mathematics at Macquarie University and a colleague of John Clive Ward at the former School of Mathematics and Physics, having previously worked at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
Works
- Moyal, J. E.; Bartlett, M. S. (1949). "Quantum mechanics as a statistical theory". Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 45: 99. doi:10.1017/S0305004100000487.
- J.E. Moyal, "Stochastic Processes and Statistical Physics" Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 11, (1949),150-210.
References
- Ann Moyal, "Maverick Mathematician: The Life and Science of J.E. Moyal," ANU E-press, 2006, ISBN 978-1920942588, accessed by http://epress.anu.edu.au/maverick_citation.html
- C. K. Zachos, D. B. Fairlie, and T. L. Curtright, "Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space" (World Scientific, Singapore, 2005) ISBN 981-238-384-0.
- Curtright, T. L.; Zachos, C. K. (2012). "Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space". Asia Pacific Physics Newsletter 01: 37. doi:10.1142/S2251158X12000069.
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), 273–274. (Bartlett acknowledges how much he gained from Moyal's wide knowledge of the European literature on probability.)
External links
- Maverick Mathematician: The Life and Science of J.E. Moyal
- Obituary by Alan McIntosh and photographs
- Moyal Medal awarded annually by Macquarie University for research contributions to mathematics, physics or statistics
- José Enrique Moyal from the Mathematics Genealogy Project
See also
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