Lucy Mensing: Time in Göttingen
SEP 16, 2025
Lucy Mensing circa 1928, after her time in Göttingen.
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Mensing Collection, Gift of Dr. Dorothea Roloff.
Mensing won an award for her doctorate and used the money to spend a year in Göttingen. She arrived there in April 1925, right around the time when Max Born and his young collaborators Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan were taking the first steps toward matrix mechanics, the first incarnation of the new quantum mechanics.
During her year in Göttingen, she wrote three important papers, applying the new quantum mechanics to puzzles left unsolved by the old quantum theory.
Cite this resource
Michel Janssen and Gernot Münster, “Lucy Mensing,” American Institute of Physics, 2025. http://www.aip.org/history/lucy-mensing.