Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German
physicist and
mathematician who was instrumental in the development of
quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to
solid-state physics and
optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s. Born won the 1954
Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function".