A Magnetic Study of the Metallic State and the Fermi-Dirac Statistics

It was a signal contribution to the chance of an experimental test of the Fermi-Dirac statistics when Bloch¹ included the interaction of the electrons and the lattice in the representation of a metal. This representation is much nearer to actual metals than an abstraction such as a free electron gas. Fortu nately, the theory leads to a paramagnetism of the metal electrons, which does not differ radically from the paramagnetism of free electrons, approximating the latter as the binding between the positive ions and electrons becomes weaker.