Fusion by Pseudo-Particles, Part 3 The Future and Lessons of (Quasi-Particle) History

摘要

Each pseudo or quasi-particle had its long fight for acceptance. Though semiconductors were known to exist by the 1880s, and the discovery of their rectification features commenced soon afterward, it was ignored by mainstream physics, meaning classical mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics. Semiconductor research was not even off mainstream, but off-off mainstream. Radioactivity was researched by the enthusiastic Curie couple, in filthy sheds. Even a generation later, in the 1920s, Wolfgang Pauli scorned semiconductors as "physics of dirt." Electron holes as quasi-particles did not storm physics departments. The idea reached industry and society a generation later in the early 1950s.