The quantum centennial

摘要

When Max Planck announced his quantum assumption in his talk at the German Physical Society in Berlin on 14 December 1900, nobody, including himself, realized that he was opening the door to a completely new theoretical description of nature. Quantum physics has had unsurpassed success in explaining many phenomena — from the structure of elementary particles, through the essence of chemical bonds or the nature of many solid-state phenomena, all the way to the physics of the early Universe. To date, all experiments magnificently confirm all quantum predictions with impressive precision.