>>39 つづき

Among the "trick or two" Onsager added were results
taken from branches of mathematics almost unheard of in
the theoretical physics of his day?generalized quaternion
algebra and the theory of elliptic functions, as expounded by
his unknowing mentors, Whittaker and Watson. Joseph B.
Hubbard, Onsager's postdoctoral associate thirty years later,
tells how, on suspecting an error in the treatment of analytic
continuation in Modern Analysis, he went to consult Onsager,
who dug out his own copy. The book was a wreck, with notes,
corrections, and extensions jotted all over it. It had disintegrated
into several parts but had never been replaced.
Onsager's solution of the Ising problem was first revealed
as a discussion remark following a paper by Gregory Wannier
at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences on February
18, 1942. It took the world of theoretical physics by
storm:
"The partition function for the Ising model of a two-dimensional 'ferromagnetic'
has been evaluated in closed form. The results of Kramers and
Wannier concerning the 'Curie point' Te have been confirmed, including
their conjecture that the maximum of the specific heat varies linearly with
the logarithm of the size of the crystal. For an infinite crystal, the specific
heat near T = Tc is proportional to -ln|(T - Te)|." (1942,2)

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