David Ferry is a regents' professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering in the Arizona State University (ASU), USA. He joined ASU as director of the Center for Solid State Electronics Research in 1983 and chaired its Department of Electrical Engineering from 1989 to 1992. He was also interim associate dean of Engineering for Research of ASU from 1993 to 1995. Prof. Ferry received his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Texas in Austin, USA, and completed his National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in physics from the University of Vienna, Austria. He has authored or coauthored more than 800 articles in refereed journals and for conferences. While he is an expert especially of quantum transport, he is also a renowned leader in the fabrication and measurements of nanostructured electron devices and has received the IEEE Brunetti Award for this work in 1999.

At the close of the nineteenth century, we stood on the threshold of one of the greatest periods of science, in which the entire world and understanding of science would be shaken to the core and greatly modified. This explosion of knowledge led ultimately to that same information revolution that we live in today. Whether we call it the Copenhagen interpretation, it is the how for the continuing mysticism provided by Mach that is still remaining in quantum mechanics. It is not the why. Why it perseveres and why it was forced on the field in the first place is an important perception to be studied. In this book, I want to trace the development of quantum mechanics and try to uncover the why.