Ph.D., St John's College.
[Received 19 November, read 21 November, 1927.]
§ 1. Introduction.
On the theory of atomic structure proposed by Bohr, in which the electrons are considered as point charges revolving in orbits about the nucleus, the Orbits being specified by quantum con- ditions, it is well known that both a qualitative and an approximate quantitative explanation of many features of the simpler optical spectra and of X-ray spectra of atoms with many electrons (e.g. Rydberg sequences in optical spectra, term magnitudes in both X-ray and optical spectra) can be given, if the assumption is made that the effects of the electrons on one another can be represented by supposing each to move in a central non-Coulomb field of force*; further, the additional concept of a spinning electron provides a similar explanation of other features of these specbraf (e.g. doublet struoture of terms and magnitude of doublet separation, anomalous Zeeman effect). This assumption of a central field was admittedly a rough approximation made in the absence of any detailed ideas about the interaction between the different electrons in an atom, but in view of its success as a first approximation for the orbital atom model, the question arises whether, the same simple approximations may not give useful results when applied to the new formulation of the quantum theory which has been developed in the last two years.
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