Born, Max

1882 - Born on the 11th day of December this year in Breslau, Germany.

1908 - Studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

1909 - Settled in as a young academic at Göttingen as a Privatdozent.

1913 - Married Hedwig, née Ehrenberg, who was of Jewish descent (although a practicing Christian), on the 2nd day of August this year; the marriage produced three children including G. V. R. Born. His granddaughter is the British-born Australian singer and actress Olivia Newton-John.

1915 - He was extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin, where he formed a life-long friendship with Albert Einstein.

1919 - Became ordinary professor on the science faculty at the University of Frankfurt am Main.

1921 - Served as professor of theoretical physics and Director of the new Institute of Theoretical Physics at Göttingen.

1922 - He was in the United States lecturing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sent his student Werner Heisenberg to become his assistant.

1925 - He and Werner Heisenberg formulated the matrix mechanics representation of quantum mechanics.

1933 - He had a collaborator with shared views on basic scientific concepts - a distinct advantage for teaching and his research on the developing quantum theory.

1936 - He was a Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.

1939 - Became a British subject and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London this year.

1954 - Retired to Bad Pyrmont (10 km south of Hamelin) in Germany this year.

1956 - Received Hugo Grotius Medal for International Law, Munich.

1970 - Died on the 5th day of January this year in Göttingen, Germany.

• "The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world."
• "Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless."
• "We need to make a world in which fewer children are born, and in which we take better care of them."