Too Big for a Single Mind by Tobias Hurter

Author:Tobias Hurter [Hurter, Tobias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615199204
Amazon: 1615199209
Barnesnoble: 1615199209
Publisher: The Experiment
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

33

COPENHAGEN, 1926

A Game with Sharpened Knives

On October 1, 1926, Erwin Schrödinger arrives in Copenhagen by train, his confidence boosted by his visits with Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich and Albert Einstein in Berlin. Niels Bohr, already considered the grand old man of quantum physics at the age of forty-one, is waiting for Schrödinger on the station platform. This is the first time the two men have met. Perhaps it’s too late. Only a few months earlier, they would have been allies in the battle for a wave theory of atomic phenomena. But not anymore. Bohr has lost the faith. Schrödinger remains true to the wave theory. Ever since Max Born reinterpreted his wave equation, Schrödinger has gone from being a defender of quantum mechanics to one of its critics. Bohr would like to hear that criticism from Schrödinger personally.

Bohr keeps the exchange of pleasantries short, and even before they have left the station he launches into a relentless interrogation of Schrödinger. It will be eight days before Bohr gives his guest any respite. On October 4, Schrödinger delivers a lecture on his wave mechanics at the Physical Association of Bohr’s institute. After that, Bohr resumes his onslaught.

Margrethe and Niels Bohr are kind and attentive hosts. They put Schrödinger up in their guest room so that Erwin and Niels can spend as much time as possible together. However, that time is not spent peacefully, but rather in a kind of scientific duel. Schrödinger defends his standpoint of visualizable pictures, while Bohr disputes that very visualizability. Again and again, he tries to shake the foundations of Schrödinger’s standpoint, to pick fault with his reasoning. Schrödinger dodges, counters. Neither will back down. “Science is a game,” says Schrödinger, “but it’s a game with reality, a game with sharpened knives.”

Werner Heisenberg, who has just started his job as Bohr’s assistant, is also present. Heisenberg is four years younger than Schrödinger, but he is always one step ahead of him strategically. That was the case with their theories, and it was the case with Planck and Einstein in Berlin, and now it’s the case with Bohr in Copenhagen. Schrödinger is the hare; Heisenberg, the tortoise.

Heisenberg does not get involved in the dispute between the two men. It’s only been two months since he clashed with Schrödinger in Munich, and that didn’t end well for him, so he simply watches and listens. He hears Schrödinger speculate that it might still be possible to derive Planck’s law on radiation, revealed back in 1900, without resorting to the use of quanta. Impossible, responds Bohr. Quanta are here to stay.

Heisenberg barely recognizes his boss. Normally so kind and considerate, Bohr now seems to Heisenberg almost “like a relentless fanatic, who was not prepared to concede a single point to his interlocutor or to allow him the slightest lack of precision.”

Two of the world’s leading physicists confront each other, but neither gives any ground, not even an inch. Behind the words they relentlessly fling at each other, Heisenberg can hear each scientist’s deep conviction.

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