A great success of the tunnelling theory was the mathematical explanation for alpha decay, which was developed in 1928 by George Gamow and independently by Ronald Gurney and Edward Condon. The latter researchers simultaneously solved the Schrödinger equation for a model nuclear potential and derived a relationship between the half-life of the particle and the energy of emission that depended directly on the mathematical probability of tunneling. All three researchers were familiar with the works on field emission, and Gamow was aware of Mandelstam and Leontovich's findings.