March 12, 1963

Mr. Jeremy Bernstein

The New Yorker Magazine

25 West 43 Street

New York, New York

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

During the production of EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE, I mentioned to you that a friend of mine, Kenneth Snelson, was working on a model of the atom. Some of his ideas have been recent1y published in Industrial Design magazine.

I remember well your skepticism, but you did sy that you would hear him out. For this reason, I am sending you a copy of his article.

I 'm sure that he would appreciate any consideration you would give to his work.

Sincerely,

Audrey Goldenstein

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCE

WASHINGTON SQUARE, NEW YORK 3, N.Y.

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS TELEPHONE: SPRING 7-2000

March 12, 1963

Dear Audrey Goldenstein;

In response to your note, I think the models are very beautiful, but, as far as I can tell, their scientific basis is simply wrong. Mr. Snelson gives a good popular account of the properties of the one electron atom. He gets into trouble beginning in the section entitled electronic dilemma. In a many electron atom the electrons do collide and interact. This is not a violation of the Pauli principle or anything else. There are no exact orbits describable in terms of simple quantum numbers in a many electron atom. There are approximate quantum numbers. But there is an exact equation whose solutions give all of the properties of such an atom. This equation cannot be solved exactly, but it can be solved approximately, on machines. Such solutions describe the properties of the heavy atoms to an desired degree of accuracy. There are, as far as I know, no unsolved problems of principle in this field. It is a matter of solving the equation as best one can. Many electron atoms are very complex. If you don't believe it look at a photograph of the iron spectrum some time. There are no simple Balmer series, but one observes a jungle of lines. It is a fine art to assign any kind of quantum numbers to these literally thousands, of observed lines. I do not see that Snelson model sheds any light whatever on this problem nor on any other problem in quantum theory.

I do not want to discuss this any further.

Yours,

(signed) Jeremy Bernstein

PS: Perhaps his models are useful to chemists. I do not know anything about chemistry and therefore have no opinion. Consult a chemist.

PSS: A colleague of mine just pointed out that Mr. Snelson makes the common mistake of in identifying the 1s state of hydrogen with a circular orbit. The 1s state goes through the nucleus as can he seen from the fact that its wave function does not vanish at the origin.