José Enrique Moyal

José Enrique Moyal (also known as Jo or Joe Moyal) (born 1 October 1910 in Jerusalem, then in the Ottoman Empire and soon to devolve to the Mandate for Palestine; died 22 May 1998 in Canberra, Australia) was a mathematical physicist who contributed to aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering and statistics, among other fields. He helped to establish the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics in 1949 by bringing together the ideas of Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, Eugene Wigner, and Hip Groenewold.

This formulation is statistical in nature and makes logical connections between quantum mechanics and classical statistical mechanics, enabling a natural comparison between the two formulations.

Weyl quantization is a synonym for "Moyal Quantization", or "Phase Space Quantization," and largely avoids use of operators for quantum mechanical observables prevalent in the canonical formulation. Quantum-mechanical evolution in phase space is specified by a Moyal bracket.

He was a professor of mathematics at Macquarie University and a colleague of John Clive Ward at the former School of Mathematics and Physics, having previously worked at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

Works

• J.E. Moyal, "Quantum mechanics as a statistical theory", "Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society." 45 (1949), 99-124.
• J.E. Moyal, "Stochastic Processes and Statistical Physics"Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 11, (1949),150-210.

References

• Ann Moyal, "Maverick Mathematician: The Life and Science of J.E. Moyal," ANU E-press, 2006, ISBN 1-920942-99-0, accessed by http://epress.anu.edu.au/maverick_citation.html

• C. K. Zachos, D. B. Fairlie, and T. L. Curtright, "Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space" (World Scientific, Singapore, 2005) ISBN 981-238-384-0.

Obituaries

• J. Gani, "Obituary: José Enrique Moyal," "J. Appl. Probab." 35 (1998), no. 4, 1012–1017.
• M.S. Bartlett, "José Enrique Moyal," "The Statistician," 48 (1998), 273–274. (Bartlett acknowledges how much he gained from Moyal's wide knowledge of the European literature on probability.)

External links

• Obituary by Alan McIntosh and photographs
• Moyal Medal awarded annually by Macquarie University for research contributions to mathematics, physics or statistics
• José Enrique Moyal from the Mathematics Genealogy Project

See also

• Moyal bracket
• Weyl quantization
• Wigner quasi-probability distribution

Persondata
Name	Moyal,Jose Enrique
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1 October 1910
Place of birth
Date of death	22 May 1998
Place of death