Max Born was a German-British 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 1930s. Born was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function".

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the behavior of nature at and below the scale of atoms. It is the foundation of all quantum physics, which includes quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.