On this day 120 years ago, December 14 1900, Max Planck presented to the German Physical Society his work on spectral density of black body radiation, and postulated that electromagnetic energy could only be emitted in quantized packets. This date is now widely considered to be the the birth of quantum theory. The work of Planck sparked an explosion of theoretical and empirical work, which resulted in arguably the most intense and transformational periods in the history of science. The discovery of photoelectric effect by Einstein, Bohr’s model of atomic structure, De Broglie’s wave-particle duality hypothesis, discovery of quantum mechanics by Heisenberg and formulation of quantum electrodynamics by Dirac, all followed in the span of the next three decades.
It is quite amazing that I am able to celebrate this special date with a special blog post about quantum programming, that’s part of Q# Advent Calendar 2020. You can find my post on “Creating Q# Compiler Rewrite Steps” on the Q# Community Blog here.
