José Enrique Moyal (sometimes known as "Jo" or "Joe" Moyal) (1 October 1910 in Jerusalem, Palestine – 22 May 1998 in Canberra, Australia) was a mathematical physicist who contributed to aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering and statistics, as well as other fields. He helped to establish the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics in 1949 by bringing together 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. Quantum-mechanical evolution in phase space is specified by a Moyal bracket.
He was a professor of mathematics at Macquarie University and a colleague of John Clive Ward at the former School of Mathematics and Physics. He previously worked at Argonne National Laboratory.
See also
Works
- 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.
References
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.)
External links
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