José Enrique Moyal

José Enrique Moyal (also known as "Jo" or "Joe" Moyal) (1 October 1910 in Jerusalem, Mandate for Palestine – 22 May 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 Hilbrand ("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".

He was professor of mathematics, at Macquarie University, and a colleague of John Clive Ward at the former School of Mathematics and Physics. He also worked previously at Argonne National Laboratory.

See also

• Geometric quantization
• Moyal bracket
• Weyl quantization
• Wigner quasi-probability distribution

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

• Ann Moyal, "Maverick Mathematician: The Life and Science of J.E. Moyal", ANU E-press, 2006, ISBN 1-920942-99-0, accessed by [1]

• C. K. Zachos, D. B. Fairlie, and T. L. Curtright, "Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space" (World Scientific, Singapore, 2005) ISBN 981-238-384-0.

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

• 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

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