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Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics
A fascinating look at the landmark 1932 gathering of the biggest names in physics
Known by physicists as the “miracle year,” 1932 saw the discovery of the neutron and the first artificially induced nuclear transmutation. However, while physicists celebrated these momentous discoveries—which presaged the era of big science and nuclear bombs—Europe was moving inexorably toward totalitarianism and war. In April of that year, about forty of the world’s leading physicists—including Werner Heisenberg, Lise Meitner, and Paul Dirac—came to Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute for their annual informal meeting about the frontiers of physics.
Physicist Gino Segrè brings to life this historic gathering, which ended with a humorous skit based on Goethe’s Faust—a skit that eerily foreshadowed events that would soon unfold. Little did the scientists know the Faustian bargains they would face in the near future. Capturing the interplay between the great scientists as well as the discoveries they discussed and debated, Segrè evokes the moment when physics—and the world—was about to lose its innocence.
Known by physicists as the “miracle year,” 1932 saw the discovery of the neutron and the first artificially induced nuclear transmutation. However, while physicists celebrated these momentous discoveries—which presaged the era of big science and nuclear bombs—Europe was moving inexorably toward totalitarianism and war. In April of that year, about forty of the world’s leading physicists—including Werner Heisenberg, Lise Meitner, and Paul Dirac—came to Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute for their annual informal meeting about the frontiers of physics.
Physicist Gino Segrè brings to life this historic gathering, which ended with a humorous skit based on Goethe’s Faust—a skit that eerily foreshadowed events that would soon unfold. Little did the scientists know the Faustian bargains they would face in the near future. Capturing the interplay between the great scientists as well as the discoveries they discussed and debated, Segrè evokes the moment when physics—and the world—was about to lose its innocence.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2007
About the author
Gino Segrè
16 books24 followersProfessor emeritus who started teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. Pursued with enthusiasm and considerable a career as a high-energy elementary particle theorist with a side interest in astrophysics.
A long-term interest in history led to his first book, a tale of temperature in all its broad ramifications.
A long-term interest in history led to his first book, a tale of temperature in all its broad ramifications.
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October 18, 2016
greek librarians: το βιβλίο υπάρχει στα ελληνικά από τον Τραυλό http://www.biblionet.gr/book/142973/S...
Το βιβλίο είναι η ιστορία της ατομικής βόμβας. Από όσα ξεκίνησαν στο Ινστιτούτο Carlsberg στην Κοπεγχάγη (η συνεισφορά της μπύρας στην πυρηνική φυσική), όπου ο Νιλς Μπορ, είχε μαζέψει τη δεκαετία του '30 όλη την αφρόκρεμα της σύγχρονης φυσικής. Εκεί, οι νεαροί ερευνούσαν τα μυστικά του πυρήνα, έβγαζαν εργασίες (όλοι κατέληξαν νομπελίστες) και περνούσαν όμορφα.
Όμως, ξεκινάει κάτι που λέγεται 2ος Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος. Ο επιστήμονας έχει ένα κοινωνικό πρόσωπο, μια πατρίδα, μια ζωή, μια οικογένεια... Οι περισσότεροι από τους νεαρούς επιστήμονες είναι εβραϊκής καταγωγής, οι άλλοι Γερμανοί πολίτες... Τι κάνεις τότε; Επίσης, αυτό που ερευνάς μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί και για πολεμικούς σκοπούς... Τι κάνεις τότε;
Οι Γερμανοί ξεκινάνε πυρηνικό πρόγραμμα. Ο Μπορ και ο Αϊνστάιν πηγαίνουν στον Κίσιγκερ και τον Τρούμαν να πάρουν χρηματοδότηση για να ξεκινήσουν κι αυτοί έρευνες για τα πυρηνικά όπλα. Οι πολιτικοί τους απορρίπτουν. Αυτοί επιμένουν. Εξάλλου, αν φτιάξουν οι Γερμανοί τη βόμβα, θα τους σκοτώσουν. ΤΙ ΚΑΝΕΙΣ ΤΟΤΕ;
Τελικά παίρνουν τα λεφτά, αλλά μαθαίνουν ότι οι Γερμανοί κολλάνε. Εντάξει, δεν θα σκοτώσουμε και φίλους... Όμως οι πολιτικοί πείστηκαν. Το πρόγραμμα Manhatan ξεκινά. Συμμετέχουν όλοι, γιατί ο φόβος των Γερμανών είναι πάντα στο πίσω μέρος του μυαλού τους. Τα υπόλοιπα γνωστά...
Γραμμένο από το Gino Segre, γιο του νομπελίστα φυσικού Emilio Segre, ο οποίος τα έζησε όλα αυτά από κοντά. Εξαιρετικό, αναδεικνύει τη σύγκρουση ανάμεσα στον επιστήμονα και τον άνθρωπο και τις "ανώμαλες" καταστάσεις που κάνουν τους παλιούς φίλους εχθρούς.
Το βιβλίο είναι η ιστορία της ατομικής βόμβας. Από όσα ξεκίνησαν στο Ινστιτούτο Carlsberg στην Κοπεγχάγη (η συνεισφορά της μπύρας στην πυρηνική φυσική), όπου ο Νιλς Μπορ, είχε μαζέψει τη δεκαετία του '30 όλη την αφρόκρεμα της σύγχρονης φυσικής. Εκεί, οι νεαροί ερευνούσαν τα μυστικά του πυρήνα, έβγαζαν εργασίες (όλοι κατέληξαν νομπελίστες) και περνούσαν όμορφα.
Όμως, ξεκινάει κάτι που λέγεται 2ος Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος. Ο επιστήμονας έχει ένα κοινωνικό πρόσωπο, μια πατρίδα, μια ζωή, μια οικογένεια... Οι περισσότεροι από τους νεαρούς επιστήμονες είναι εβραϊκής καταγωγής, οι άλλοι Γερμανοί πολίτες... Τι κάνεις τότε; Επίσης, αυτό που ερευνάς μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί και για πολεμικούς σκοπούς... Τι κάνεις τότε;
Οι Γερμανοί ξεκινάνε πυρηνικό πρόγραμμα. Ο Μπορ και ο Αϊνστάιν πηγαίνουν στον Κίσιγκερ και τον Τρούμαν να πάρουν χρηματοδότηση για να ξεκινήσουν κι αυτοί έρευνες για τα πυρηνικά όπλα. Οι πολιτικοί τους απορρίπτουν. Αυτοί επιμένουν. Εξάλλου, αν φτιάξουν οι Γερμανοί τη βόμβα, θα τους σκοτώσουν. ΤΙ ΚΑΝΕΙΣ ΤΟΤΕ;
Τελικά παίρνουν τα λεφτά, αλλά μαθαίνουν ότι οι Γερμανοί κολλάνε. Εντάξει, δεν θα σκοτώσουμε και φίλους... Όμως οι πολιτικοί πείστηκαν. Το πρόγραμμα Manhatan ξεκινά. Συμμετέχουν όλοι, γιατί ο φόβος των Γερμανών είναι πάντα στο πίσω μέρος του μυαλού τους. Τα υπόλοιπα γνωστά...
Γραμμένο από το Gino Segre, γιο του νομπελίστα φυσικού Emilio Segre, ο οποίος τα έζησε όλα αυτά από κοντά. Εξαιρετικό, αναδεικνύει τη σύγκρουση ανάμεσα στον επιστήμονα και τον άνθρωπο και τις "ανώμαλες" καταστάσεις που κάνουν τους παλιούς φίλους εχθρούς.
November 17, 2011
The Matrix
Werner Heisenberg, whose development of matrix mechanics yielded the uncertainty principle, said that one challenge of quantum theory is that it does not have an adequate language beyond mathematics to describe it. Heisenberg comes close to proposing that poetry is that language in Physics and Philosophy when, after making this statement, he immediately references Goethe’s Faust to describe his understanding of the structure of language. Mephistopheles says that while formal education instructs that logic braces the mind “in Spanish boots so tightly laced,” and that even spontaneous acts require a sequential process (“one, two, three!”):
In truth the subtle web of thought
Is like the weaver’s fabric wrought:
One treadle moves a thousand lines,
Swift dart the shuttles to and fro,
Unseen the threads together flow,
A thousand knots one stroke combines.
Heisenberg, while arguing that science must be as attentive to imagination as to logic, also seems to be suggesting that novel sciences must be described by novel languages. Creative endeavors like poetry have the ability to not only describe novel theories and expressions of physical reality, but also to invent them through its shorthand, “one treadle” moving “a thousand lines,” where a “thousand knots one stroke combines.” As I learned in kevin mcpherson eckhoff’s rhapsodomancy, the alphabets of the future are wormholes. Since the primary concern in theoretical physics today is reconciling quantum mechanics with relativity through proposals such as string theory, poetry can be thought of as an experiment in physics and physics as a field test for poetry.
Physics is the study of physical reality, which, to my mind, includes spacetime, language, poems, people, consciousness, and agency. In literary terms, string theory could be considered to be a critical theory; it not only describes physical elements, including elementary elements, within spacetime, it attempts to describe spacetime itself. Following in the tradition of Western atomic science from Thales to Democritus, physicists consider the multiverse’s subatomic, vibrating membranes of energy—the open and closed strings of string theory—to be elementary constituents of matter.
What is the significance of these open and closed strings in relation to clinamen occurring in not just artistic contexts but in physical reality, as demonstrated by how probability functions in subatomic phenomena of mechanical systems? Poetry, which could be considered a mutation on physical and conceptual reality, replicates through the ricochet of pattern (periodicity, symmetry, order) and swerve (deviation from pattern, chance) toward novelty, or what might be thought of as the poem itself. Along with the expanding and accelerating multiverse, our understanding and experience of physical reality expands and accelerates at varying scales (subatomic, eye level, astronomical). We create and use technology like our microscopes and telescopes to interact more deeply with these scales, and as such technological advances proliferate so do our capacities to perceive, perform, and create through other mediums. Poetry that is attentive to its multiversal form as a novel technology also operates within and beyond these varying scales through the known and unknown dimensions of physical reality.
Dr. Lisa Randall, the particle physicist I saw lecturing on CERN just before the Large Hadron Collider went operational, called herself a model builder. Apologizing for the lack of realism, and asking us to use our imaginations, she presented crude graphs of open and closed strings—in other words, she presented two-dimensional portrayals of eleven-dimensional concepts—to illustrate the hypothesis that our universe is a low-gravity universe while other dimensions in the multiverse, called “branes,” are high-gravity universes. Considering the homophonic relevance of the word “brane,” and taking into account Heisenberg’s notion that an eleven-dimensional science might require an eleven-dimensional language like poetry, I have decided that I, too, am a model builder. Like Christian Bök's Xenotext—a poem encoded into a radio-resistant bacterium that will write poems—I write poems that write me.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle proposes that at the subatomic scale of physical reality, the future position and momentum of a particle cannot be predicted because it is impossible to accurately describe the particle’s present state without ambiguity. Applied to scales at eye level, the notion that the future cannot be predicted with any certainty because it is impossible to describe the present without ambiguity reinforces the idea that time operates outside of conventional notions of linearity. Within the context of a poem, where ambiguity can operate on multiple levels—in meaning, sight, and sound—time as a linear or nonlinear experience can occur or not occur in a recognizable pattern.
According to physicist Gino Segrè’s Faust in Copenhagen, while the mathematics used by Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics was not new, the theory itself was original for developing what Max Born called “symbolic multiplication,” which resulted in illustrating that the commutative law of arithmetic (AB, equals BA, i.e. 4X3 is the same as 3X4) is not valid in subatomic systems. Heisenberg’s symbolic multiplication proposed that in quantum mechanics a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum is not equal to a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position. In other words, a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum (AB) minus a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position (BA) was not zero, as it would be if the product of position and momentum commuted. Instead, in matrix mechanics, a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum minus a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position was proportional to Planck’s constant, a physical constant of subatomic quanta that is nonzero. Since Planck’s constant is always nonzero, uncertainty is at play in measuring observable subatomic phenomenon of the present. By invalidating causality as well as attempts at measuring non-observable subatomic phenomenon, Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics illustrated that the future position and momentum of subatomic particles cannot be calculated because the “determining elements” of the present cannot be known with certainty. This is one way that quantum mechanics conceives of time—and logic—in a novel way. In quantum poetics, such breakthroughs in physics can be applied to physical reality at all of its scales, visible and invisible, including cultural and creative scales, and, more specifically, to language and what I might call its matrix mechanics, poetry.
Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics conceived of space in a novel way, too, offering a new model for how electrons moved within atoms. In contrast to notions that electrons in atoms moved in orbits like planets, matrix mechanics describes the motion of electrons as jumps or leaps from one quantum state to another, reminiscent of clinamen, and evoking the possibility that clinamen could be a physical force like electromagnetism or gravity that exists not only in creative systems but also in physical reality.
How can a poem’s future or present/near-future “meaning” be known with any certainty if its present cannot be described without ambiguity? Conventional notions of meaning are dependent on linear notions of time, as meaning in its conventional iterations is something arrived at, in time, after “comprehension.” Most reading relies on linear notions of time as well, since grammars often follow a progression that occurs before comprehension or examined experience is reached. However, poetry can usurp conventional interactions with reading with the reader experiencing language outside linear notions of time, which might include time slowing, speeding up, or inducing a sense of no time, or a sense of all times at once, where the simultaneity of times can occur between differing or distinct time scales. Perhaps, most importantly, poems can also work in tandem (toward unity and/or disjunction) with space in a way that is attentive to the spacetime of the page, that field that transcends the border of the object or conceptual medium such as the page or screen. In poetry, like in quantum mechanics, the future cannot be forecasted with certainty, and any measurement of its physical reality, including its meaning, might only be described in terms of probability.
Of course, applying discoveries and theories in the natural sciences to sociological, phenomenological, or artistic interpretations of reality can be problematic because correlations sometimes assume a causal relationship between what are conventionally thought of as different modes of inquiry. At the same time, the academic and practical divisions between the natural and human sciences seems to be part of a systemic artifice perpetuated by cultural institutions that serve to protect distinct disciplines from interdisciplinary, and therefore competing, authorities.
To my mind, whatever human consciousness is, it must be partly comprised of electrons—the subatomic material of physical reality—and breakthroughs in describing subatomic or even astronomical phenomenon are also breakthroughs in describing reality at eye level, which is just one, though perhaps our most obvious, encounter with existence. Those attentive to the interactions of clinamatic spacetime of language on human consciousness might notice how fresh iterations of language affect existence within and outside of eye level, which includes language itself and what it means or doesn’t mean to creatively communicate or replicate through mediated or non-mediated sounds and scripts. The cultural and creative dimensions of physical reality are not as distinct from theoretical or experiment-based physics as discipline-specific discourse would have us believe, but seem to be instead linked through ongoing proposals of Alfred Jarry’s imaginary solutions. This exchange between disciplines is not physics or metaphysics; it’s Jarry’s ’pataphysics, and it invites significant communications between disciplines, or what might be thought of as translations.
A great example of successful translation within a discipline is the time in which Faust in Copenhagen focuses, where open, respectful, and rigorous discourse among the practitioners of physics was practiced. The community that Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and others created and maintained in those years before World War II revolved around institutional and personal mentorships, thinking together and debating in both formal and informal settings, and finding ways to disagree and persuade while furthering conversation. I was especially interested in how peaceful the intellectual conflict regarding quantum mechanics between Bohr and Albert Einstein played out. Around the same time that Heisenberg was developing his matrix mechanics, Bohr rejected the existence of Einstein’s “quanta of light,” the photon. Einstein rejected Bohr’s notion that strict causality only holds for the mean value of a particle taken over many measurements, and he also rejected Bohr’s idea that particles don’t conserve energy. Einstein never really came around to quantum mechanics as interpreted by Heisenberg and Bohr, and continuing debates about relativity and quantum mechanics are at the center of theoretical physics today. Bohr and Einstein seemed to both feel deeply about the accuracy of their positions but also seemed to understand the value of inquiry enough to debate without manipulation, aggression, defensiveness, or personal attack.
There seems to be an understanding or belief among poets that the best translators of poems from one language to another are practicing poets, since those who write poetry can often represent challenging or even traditionally un-translatable forms, concepts, sounds, and rhythms using principles and approaches from poetry that a poet would understand in a way that someone who doesn’t write poetry might not. Translation is also a political discourse with its inherent interest in expanding communication and experience between cultures. It also seems to be a conceptual discourse in its iterations where translations occur between distinct creative genres. In other forms, translation is a discourse of imaginary solutions that occurs between disciplines like physics and poetry, computer science and visual art, philosophy and ecology. The ordinary risk of translation in any of these contexts might be that the translation fails at adequately communicating or representing what’s being translated. However, thinking of translation in terms of stark success and failure doesn’t take into account questions about authenticity and whether or not translation is even possible if translation operates at gradations rather than demarcated evaluations of success and failure. Perhaps due to the inescapable result of mistranslation, the act of translation is thus always a creative act, evoking more questions than it can resolve. This is one result of communicating across languages, disciplines, genres, and forms in the multiverse. Imaginary solutions multiply.
Therefore, indefinitely:
POETRY IS THE TANGENTIAL POINT BETWEEN BRAIN AND BRANE.
’Pataphysics is the physics of poetry….
Werner Heisenberg, whose development of matrix mechanics yielded the uncertainty principle, said that one challenge of quantum theory is that it does not have an adequate language beyond mathematics to describe it. Heisenberg comes close to proposing that poetry is that language in Physics and Philosophy when, after making this statement, he immediately references Goethe’s Faust to describe his understanding of the structure of language. Mephistopheles says that while formal education instructs that logic braces the mind “in Spanish boots so tightly laced,” and that even spontaneous acts require a sequential process (“one, two, three!”):
In truth the subtle web of thought
Is like the weaver’s fabric wrought:
One treadle moves a thousand lines,
Swift dart the shuttles to and fro,
Unseen the threads together flow,
A thousand knots one stroke combines.
Heisenberg, while arguing that science must be as attentive to imagination as to logic, also seems to be suggesting that novel sciences must be described by novel languages. Creative endeavors like poetry have the ability to not only describe novel theories and expressions of physical reality, but also to invent them through its shorthand, “one treadle” moving “a thousand lines,” where a “thousand knots one stroke combines.” As I learned in kevin mcpherson eckhoff’s rhapsodomancy, the alphabets of the future are wormholes. Since the primary concern in theoretical physics today is reconciling quantum mechanics with relativity through proposals such as string theory, poetry can be thought of as an experiment in physics and physics as a field test for poetry.
Physics is the study of physical reality, which, to my mind, includes spacetime, language, poems, people, consciousness, and agency. In literary terms, string theory could be considered to be a critical theory; it not only describes physical elements, including elementary elements, within spacetime, it attempts to describe spacetime itself. Following in the tradition of Western atomic science from Thales to Democritus, physicists consider the multiverse’s subatomic, vibrating membranes of energy—the open and closed strings of string theory—to be elementary constituents of matter.
What is the significance of these open and closed strings in relation to clinamen occurring in not just artistic contexts but in physical reality, as demonstrated by how probability functions in subatomic phenomena of mechanical systems? Poetry, which could be considered a mutation on physical and conceptual reality, replicates through the ricochet of pattern (periodicity, symmetry, order) and swerve (deviation from pattern, chance) toward novelty, or what might be thought of as the poem itself. Along with the expanding and accelerating multiverse, our understanding and experience of physical reality expands and accelerates at varying scales (subatomic, eye level, astronomical). We create and use technology like our microscopes and telescopes to interact more deeply with these scales, and as such technological advances proliferate so do our capacities to perceive, perform, and create through other mediums. Poetry that is attentive to its multiversal form as a novel technology also operates within and beyond these varying scales through the known and unknown dimensions of physical reality.
Dr. Lisa Randall, the particle physicist I saw lecturing on CERN just before the Large Hadron Collider went operational, called herself a model builder. Apologizing for the lack of realism, and asking us to use our imaginations, she presented crude graphs of open and closed strings—in other words, she presented two-dimensional portrayals of eleven-dimensional concepts—to illustrate the hypothesis that our universe is a low-gravity universe while other dimensions in the multiverse, called “branes,” are high-gravity universes. Considering the homophonic relevance of the word “brane,” and taking into account Heisenberg’s notion that an eleven-dimensional science might require an eleven-dimensional language like poetry, I have decided that I, too, am a model builder. Like Christian Bök's Xenotext—a poem encoded into a radio-resistant bacterium that will write poems—I write poems that write me.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle proposes that at the subatomic scale of physical reality, the future position and momentum of a particle cannot be predicted because it is impossible to accurately describe the particle’s present state without ambiguity. Applied to scales at eye level, the notion that the future cannot be predicted with any certainty because it is impossible to describe the present without ambiguity reinforces the idea that time operates outside of conventional notions of linearity. Within the context of a poem, where ambiguity can operate on multiple levels—in meaning, sight, and sound—time as a linear or nonlinear experience can occur or not occur in a recognizable pattern.
According to physicist Gino Segrè’s Faust in Copenhagen, while the mathematics used by Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics was not new, the theory itself was original for developing what Max Born called “symbolic multiplication,” which resulted in illustrating that the commutative law of arithmetic (AB, equals BA, i.e. 4X3 is the same as 3X4) is not valid in subatomic systems. Heisenberg’s symbolic multiplication proposed that in quantum mechanics a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum is not equal to a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position. In other words, a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum (AB) minus a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position (BA) was not zero, as it would be if the product of position and momentum commuted. Instead, in matrix mechanics, a particle’s position multiplied by its momentum minus a particle’s momentum multiplied by its position was proportional to Planck’s constant, a physical constant of subatomic quanta that is nonzero. Since Planck’s constant is always nonzero, uncertainty is at play in measuring observable subatomic phenomenon of the present. By invalidating causality as well as attempts at measuring non-observable subatomic phenomenon, Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics illustrated that the future position and momentum of subatomic particles cannot be calculated because the “determining elements” of the present cannot be known with certainty. This is one way that quantum mechanics conceives of time—and logic—in a novel way. In quantum poetics, such breakthroughs in physics can be applied to physical reality at all of its scales, visible and invisible, including cultural and creative scales, and, more specifically, to language and what I might call its matrix mechanics, poetry.
Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics conceived of space in a novel way, too, offering a new model for how electrons moved within atoms. In contrast to notions that electrons in atoms moved in orbits like planets, matrix mechanics describes the motion of electrons as jumps or leaps from one quantum state to another, reminiscent of clinamen, and evoking the possibility that clinamen could be a physical force like electromagnetism or gravity that exists not only in creative systems but also in physical reality.
How can a poem’s future or present/near-future “meaning” be known with any certainty if its present cannot be described without ambiguity? Conventional notions of meaning are dependent on linear notions of time, as meaning in its conventional iterations is something arrived at, in time, after “comprehension.” Most reading relies on linear notions of time as well, since grammars often follow a progression that occurs before comprehension or examined experience is reached. However, poetry can usurp conventional interactions with reading with the reader experiencing language outside linear notions of time, which might include time slowing, speeding up, or inducing a sense of no time, or a sense of all times at once, where the simultaneity of times can occur between differing or distinct time scales. Perhaps, most importantly, poems can also work in tandem (toward unity and/or disjunction) with space in a way that is attentive to the spacetime of the page, that field that transcends the border of the object or conceptual medium such as the page or screen. In poetry, like in quantum mechanics, the future cannot be forecasted with certainty, and any measurement of its physical reality, including its meaning, might only be described in terms of probability.
Of course, applying discoveries and theories in the natural sciences to sociological, phenomenological, or artistic interpretations of reality can be problematic because correlations sometimes assume a causal relationship between what are conventionally thought of as different modes of inquiry. At the same time, the academic and practical divisions between the natural and human sciences seems to be part of a systemic artifice perpetuated by cultural institutions that serve to protect distinct disciplines from interdisciplinary, and therefore competing, authorities.
To my mind, whatever human consciousness is, it must be partly comprised of electrons—the subatomic material of physical reality—and breakthroughs in describing subatomic or even astronomical phenomenon are also breakthroughs in describing reality at eye level, which is just one, though perhaps our most obvious, encounter with existence. Those attentive to the interactions of clinamatic spacetime of language on human consciousness might notice how fresh iterations of language affect existence within and outside of eye level, which includes language itself and what it means or doesn’t mean to creatively communicate or replicate through mediated or non-mediated sounds and scripts. The cultural and creative dimensions of physical reality are not as distinct from theoretical or experiment-based physics as discipline-specific discourse would have us believe, but seem to be instead linked through ongoing proposals of Alfred Jarry’s imaginary solutions. This exchange between disciplines is not physics or metaphysics; it’s Jarry’s ’pataphysics, and it invites significant communications between disciplines, or what might be thought of as translations.
A great example of successful translation within a discipline is the time in which Faust in Copenhagen focuses, where open, respectful, and rigorous discourse among the practitioners of physics was practiced. The community that Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and others created and maintained in those years before World War II revolved around institutional and personal mentorships, thinking together and debating in both formal and informal settings, and finding ways to disagree and persuade while furthering conversation. I was especially interested in how peaceful the intellectual conflict regarding quantum mechanics between Bohr and Albert Einstein played out. Around the same time that Heisenberg was developing his matrix mechanics, Bohr rejected the existence of Einstein’s “quanta of light,” the photon. Einstein rejected Bohr’s notion that strict causality only holds for the mean value of a particle taken over many measurements, and he also rejected Bohr’s idea that particles don’t conserve energy. Einstein never really came around to quantum mechanics as interpreted by Heisenberg and Bohr, and continuing debates about relativity and quantum mechanics are at the center of theoretical physics today. Bohr and Einstein seemed to both feel deeply about the accuracy of their positions but also seemed to understand the value of inquiry enough to debate without manipulation, aggression, defensiveness, or personal attack.
There seems to be an understanding or belief among poets that the best translators of poems from one language to another are practicing poets, since those who write poetry can often represent challenging or even traditionally un-translatable forms, concepts, sounds, and rhythms using principles and approaches from poetry that a poet would understand in a way that someone who doesn’t write poetry might not. Translation is also a political discourse with its inherent interest in expanding communication and experience between cultures. It also seems to be a conceptual discourse in its iterations where translations occur between distinct creative genres. In other forms, translation is a discourse of imaginary solutions that occurs between disciplines like physics and poetry, computer science and visual art, philosophy and ecology. The ordinary risk of translation in any of these contexts might be that the translation fails at adequately communicating or representing what’s being translated. However, thinking of translation in terms of stark success and failure doesn’t take into account questions about authenticity and whether or not translation is even possible if translation operates at gradations rather than demarcated evaluations of success and failure. Perhaps due to the inescapable result of mistranslation, the act of translation is thus always a creative act, evoking more questions than it can resolve. This is one result of communicating across languages, disciplines, genres, and forms in the multiverse. Imaginary solutions multiply.
Therefore, indefinitely:
POETRY IS THE TANGENTIAL POINT BETWEEN BRAIN AND BRANE.
’Pataphysics is the physics of poetry….
November 10, 2008
Another chapter in the fascinating relationship between Bohr, Heisenberg et al. Segré centers his account on the legendary gathering of physicists at Bohr's Institute in 1932, the year before Hitler's rise to power would scatter their company across the globe.
The social history is mildly entertaining, and the development of quantum theory and its associated controversies is presented so that even a dilettante like me can follow it, but the "Faustian" drama at its core is minimal. The implicit morality tale feels a bit forced. And for me, every key turn of the story evokes Richard Rhode's magnum opus The Making of the Atom Bomb as well as Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen.
Which of course is unfair to Segré... but I suspect I'm not the only one who reads him in the shadow of those greater works.
The social history is mildly entertaining, and the development of quantum theory and its associated controversies is presented so that even a dilettante like me can follow it, but the "Faustian" drama at its core is minimal. The implicit morality tale feels a bit forced. And for me, every key turn of the story evokes Richard Rhode's magnum opus The Making of the Atom Bomb as well as Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen.
Which of course is unfair to Segré... but I suspect I'm not the only one who reads him in the shadow of those greater works.
March 22, 2024
One more time, with this book, I realise that those prominent figures in quantum physics are like everybody else, full of hopes, dreams and fears. Also, one can have a glimpse of how WWII change their lives and careers.
I enjoyed a lot to read about the development of the field in which I'm working. In some way it is revitalising.
I enjoyed a lot to read about the development of the field in which I'm working. In some way it is revitalising.
October 2, 2017
A well-crafted tour through the beginnings of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, quite accessible and comprehensible, even for those without a scientific bent. The narrative has a deft touch, the over-arching parallel between Goethe's Faust and the lives of the various physics wunderkinds is well chosen and well-emphasized (until a strange moment at the finale - see below).
I do have a negative critique or two: the first (and more minor) would be that the narrative jumps around among time periods rather too much, which can lead to confusion. (Wait, Bohr was where? When? Then how did Heisenberg meet with... etc.). A more streamlined chapter arrangement might have helped, or the inclusion of a comprehensive timeline.
The second point is a larger problem: the near-elision of Heisenberg's decision during the War to head the German attempt to develop an atomic weapon. After building the Faust example and metaphor throughout the book, the strange lack of emphasis on the Faustian-ness of Heisenberg's choice is stark and surprising. Heisenberg's path is briefly remarked upon in the epilogue, but a more thorough examination of the topic would be welcome (especially given what the author previously provided as a sketch of Heisenberg's character). To omit a discussion of Heisenberg's "devil's bargain" from a book literally named for Dr. Faustus seems unconscionable.
Barring those decisions, however, the book is a satisfying chronicle, well-composed and deftly delivered, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking to grapple with the world's move into the nuclear age.
I do have a negative critique or two: the first (and more minor) would be that the narrative jumps around among time periods rather too much, which can lead to confusion. (Wait, Bohr was where? When? Then how did Heisenberg meet with... etc.). A more streamlined chapter arrangement might have helped, or the inclusion of a comprehensive timeline.
The second point is a larger problem: the near-elision of Heisenberg's decision during the War to head the German attempt to develop an atomic weapon. After building the Faust example and metaphor throughout the book, the strange lack of emphasis on the Faustian-ness of Heisenberg's choice is stark and surprising. Heisenberg's path is briefly remarked upon in the epilogue, but a more thorough examination of the topic would be welcome (especially given what the author previously provided as a sketch of Heisenberg's character). To omit a discussion of Heisenberg's "devil's bargain" from a book literally named for Dr. Faustus seems unconscionable.
Barring those decisions, however, the book is a satisfying chronicle, well-composed and deftly delivered, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking to grapple with the world's move into the nuclear age.
July 10, 2013
I enjoyed getting to know the characters involved in this very revolutionary period in physics. it seems that in theoretical physics, the general rule is that you've got to make your revolutionary discovery by age 25 or not at all (though it is comforting to know that there are exceptions, such as Schrödinger, who made his big discovery at the grand old age of 39),
I have a renewed appreciation for Bohr. Of course his orbital model of the atom is about the first thing you learn about in quantum, along with some mumbo jumbo about complementarity. But perhaps his biggest contribution was not the papers he published but his role in mentoring, encouraging, advocating for and showing hospitality to younger generations of physicists. Not to mention his heroic efforts in securing the safe escape from Nazi occupied Europe of not only many Jewish scientists but also the vast majority of Danish Jews.
I have a renewed appreciation for Bohr. Of course his orbital model of the atom is about the first thing you learn about in quantum, along with some mumbo jumbo about complementarity. But perhaps his biggest contribution was not the papers he published but his role in mentoring, encouraging, advocating for and showing hospitality to younger generations of physicists. Not to mention his heroic efforts in securing the safe escape from Nazi occupied Europe of not only many Jewish scientists but also the vast majority of Danish Jews.
January 26, 2016
Gino Segre’s book, “Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics” (2007), is a delightful narrative on the early development of quantum mechanics. Niels Bohr is the central character in Segre’s refreshing story set in and around the Danish capital in those fruitful interwar years - the 1920s and 1930s. His supporting characters include Wolfgang Pauli and the five others who joined Bohr in that seminal Copenhagen meeting in April 1932 - Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Lise Meitner, Max Delbruck, and Paul Ehrenfest.
Throughout the book, Segre weaves in pertinent quotes taken from the works of Goethe, primarily from his famous work, Faust. In fact, a famous skit put on by the young physicists of 1932 in honor of Bohr and Pauli leans heavily on the main characters in Goethe’s Faust. Segre also skillfully works in the personal changes his characters undergo as they do their work and deal with the external changes swirling all about them.
The year 1932 is considered one of the most significant years in physics because of the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick; proof of Wolfgang Pauli’s daring proposal that a neutrino existed; and Carl Anderson’s detective work to validate Paul. Dirac’s hypothesis that an anti-electron or positron existed.
This meant that the anomalies found in atomic statistics, especially the well-studied element, nitrogen, was corrected for by neutrons; missing energy that violated the conservation of energy tenet in the nuclear beta decay of matter was explained by neutrinos; and the nuclear reactions in stars was better understood as light was produced by electron-positron annihilations as mass is converted to energy and conversely, pair-production is seen as energetic photons collide to produce electrons and positrons, effectively converting energy to mass. These three discoveries led to specialized areas of physics such as nuclear physics, with Chadwick’s uncovering of the neutron, atomic physics, condensed matter physics, and astrophysics to name a few.
The year 1932 also marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, regarded widely as the last true universal genius. This point was not lost on the older physicists of the 1930s, who realized there was too much knowledge to allow one to become a genius across the entire discipline of physics. The evolution of the new physics was one discipline that reinvigorated scientific life in the twentieth century that led to technical innovations that improved the quality of life. some of which I outlined in my book: A World Perspective through 21st Century Eyes:
http://bookstore.trafford.com/Product...
Segre’s narrative covering one of the most dynamic periods of the 20th century, the years between 1918 and 1933, frequently integrates the great changes seen in thought, art, politics, social mores, and science. Prior to the rise of Hitler and his Nazi party in Germany, it was “an era of great optimism and wild experimenting.” Goethe, 100 years earlier, would have been pleased with such a representation of “true eminence of mind and spirit.” These changes affect Segre’s characters as the story unfolds for the struggle to uncover the soul of physics. The tug-of-war between Bohr and Einstein for proof that chance and chaos rule over an absolute universal order is mirrored in the struggle of the physicists living in a world imposing rules on how to conduct themselves in society. Faustian bargains were made by all participants in science as they collectively struggled to deliver the theory and experimental proof for quantum mechanics.
I recommend this book for historians of physics and the technically-inclined general public who is interested in physics. The reader will thoroughly enjoy the interactions of those who regularly met in Copenhagen under the guiding hand of Niels Bohr in a quest to legitimize the emerging field of quantum mechanics. Segre looks at the attendees of the regular Solvay conferences and how their participation and subsequent work led to the fragmentation of the discipline of physics into an array of specialties that remain with us well into the 21st century.
Throughout the book, Segre weaves in pertinent quotes taken from the works of Goethe, primarily from his famous work, Faust. In fact, a famous skit put on by the young physicists of 1932 in honor of Bohr and Pauli leans heavily on the main characters in Goethe’s Faust. Segre also skillfully works in the personal changes his characters undergo as they do their work and deal with the external changes swirling all about them.
The year 1932 is considered one of the most significant years in physics because of the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick; proof of Wolfgang Pauli’s daring proposal that a neutrino existed; and Carl Anderson’s detective work to validate Paul. Dirac’s hypothesis that an anti-electron or positron existed.
This meant that the anomalies found in atomic statistics, especially the well-studied element, nitrogen, was corrected for by neutrons; missing energy that violated the conservation of energy tenet in the nuclear beta decay of matter was explained by neutrinos; and the nuclear reactions in stars was better understood as light was produced by electron-positron annihilations as mass is converted to energy and conversely, pair-production is seen as energetic photons collide to produce electrons and positrons, effectively converting energy to mass. These three discoveries led to specialized areas of physics such as nuclear physics, with Chadwick’s uncovering of the neutron, atomic physics, condensed matter physics, and astrophysics to name a few.
The year 1932 also marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, regarded widely as the last true universal genius. This point was not lost on the older physicists of the 1930s, who realized there was too much knowledge to allow one to become a genius across the entire discipline of physics. The evolution of the new physics was one discipline that reinvigorated scientific life in the twentieth century that led to technical innovations that improved the quality of life. some of which I outlined in my book: A World Perspective through 21st Century Eyes:
http://bookstore.trafford.com/Product...
Segre’s narrative covering one of the most dynamic periods of the 20th century, the years between 1918 and 1933, frequently integrates the great changes seen in thought, art, politics, social mores, and science. Prior to the rise of Hitler and his Nazi party in Germany, it was “an era of great optimism and wild experimenting.” Goethe, 100 years earlier, would have been pleased with such a representation of “true eminence of mind and spirit.” These changes affect Segre’s characters as the story unfolds for the struggle to uncover the soul of physics. The tug-of-war between Bohr and Einstein for proof that chance and chaos rule over an absolute universal order is mirrored in the struggle of the physicists living in a world imposing rules on how to conduct themselves in society. Faustian bargains were made by all participants in science as they collectively struggled to deliver the theory and experimental proof for quantum mechanics.
I recommend this book for historians of physics and the technically-inclined general public who is interested in physics. The reader will thoroughly enjoy the interactions of those who regularly met in Copenhagen under the guiding hand of Niels Bohr in a quest to legitimize the emerging field of quantum mechanics. Segre looks at the attendees of the regular Solvay conferences and how their participation and subsequent work led to the fragmentation of the discipline of physics into an array of specialties that remain with us well into the 21st century.
June 12, 2015
One of the most intimate-seeming physics histories I've ever read (Segrè's uncle was Emilio Segrè). Also helped me understand Einstein's relationships with the major figures. The meandering and serpentine structure would have made it very difficult to index (I imagine), but did make rewarding reading.
July 9, 2008
The Faust component of the book was minuscule and the struggle for the soul of physics (whatever that might be) was to my eyes illusory. The book was, for the most part, a series of anecdotes- most of which have been more coherently told elsewhere. I was disappointed.
April 21, 2020
One of those books that turns out to be much better than you expected. Outstanding history of the early years of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.
Read
May 30, 2017Faust in Copenhagen vertelt min of meer het standaardverhaal over het begin van de kwantummechanica. Een aantal zaken zijn (iets) anders. Ten eerste is de schrijver een natuurkundige (dit is niet anders) en komt een beetje uit een familie met natuurkundigen. Een oom van de schrijver is ook natuurkundige en heeft de roemruchte bijeenkomsten in Kopenhagen meegemaakt, iets later dan de bijeenkomst die het onderwerp van dit boek is, de bijeenkomst in het jaar 1932, het normale jaar, voordat de politieke situatie in Europa verandert.
De schrijver betrekt zijn familiegeschiedenis (Duits/Italiaans/Joods) in het verhaal. Op zich is dat misschien niet erg geslaagd, maar zijn Italiaanse roots leveren een iets ander focus op. Zo komt Fermi meer in beeld (de schrijver heeft met zijn vrouw net een biografie over hem geschreven.) Fermi berekende de kracht van de eerste atoombom ontploffing door wat papiersnippers in de lucht te gooien en de afstand te meten die deze aflegden onder invloed van de drukgolf. Elegant, diep en misschien niet waar.
Een ander punt waarin dit boek verschilt van andere verhalen is dat het tijdsperspectief iets is opgeschoven, iets meer recentere ontwikkelingen en personen komen aan bod. In 1932 werd het neutron ontdekt, de drager van de kettingreacties in atoombommen en kerncentrales. Heisenberg was een established figuur, evenals Pauli.
Het verhaal wordt opgehangen aan een toneelopvoering die ter afsluiting van de conferentie werd gegeven. Het werd een satirische bewerking van Goethes Faust (1932 was het honderdste sterfjaar van G.) De bedoeling was om de voornaamste figuren uit Faust te laten staan voor bekende natuurkundigen uit die tijd. Gretchen, geliefde van Faust, was het neutrino. De Heer was Bohr. De rol van Einstein was problematisch. Hij was zonder twijfel de grootste natuurkundige van de twintigste eeuw, misschien wel de grootste sinds Newton. Maar hij had zich afgekeerd van de kwantummechanica en ging zijn eigen weg die niet erg vruchtbaar was. Hij werd de (vlooien)koning. De tragische held Faust werd Ehrenfest (die altijd aan zijn eigen capaciteiten twijfelde). Niemand kon weten hoe tragisch zijn einde zou zijn (september 1933) vlak na de Kopenhagen conferentie van het jaar daarop.
Het boek is goed geschreven en vertelt de problemen die speelden rond 1930 op een niet-technische manier. Het boekt geeft vooral een goed beeld van de sfeer van Kopenhagen waar 'iedereen' kwam en in een sfeer van informaliteit en vrijheid van denken met elkaar omging.
De schrijver betrekt zijn familiegeschiedenis (Duits/Italiaans/Joods) in het verhaal. Op zich is dat misschien niet erg geslaagd, maar zijn Italiaanse roots leveren een iets ander focus op. Zo komt Fermi meer in beeld (de schrijver heeft met zijn vrouw net een biografie over hem geschreven.) Fermi berekende de kracht van de eerste atoombom ontploffing door wat papiersnippers in de lucht te gooien en de afstand te meten die deze aflegden onder invloed van de drukgolf. Elegant, diep en misschien niet waar.
Een ander punt waarin dit boek verschilt van andere verhalen is dat het tijdsperspectief iets is opgeschoven, iets meer recentere ontwikkelingen en personen komen aan bod. In 1932 werd het neutron ontdekt, de drager van de kettingreacties in atoombommen en kerncentrales. Heisenberg was een established figuur, evenals Pauli.
Het verhaal wordt opgehangen aan een toneelopvoering die ter afsluiting van de conferentie werd gegeven. Het werd een satirische bewerking van Goethes Faust (1932 was het honderdste sterfjaar van G.) De bedoeling was om de voornaamste figuren uit Faust te laten staan voor bekende natuurkundigen uit die tijd. Gretchen, geliefde van Faust, was het neutrino. De Heer was Bohr. De rol van Einstein was problematisch. Hij was zonder twijfel de grootste natuurkundige van de twintigste eeuw, misschien wel de grootste sinds Newton. Maar hij had zich afgekeerd van de kwantummechanica en ging zijn eigen weg die niet erg vruchtbaar was. Hij werd de (vlooien)koning. De tragische held Faust werd Ehrenfest (die altijd aan zijn eigen capaciteiten twijfelde). Niemand kon weten hoe tragisch zijn einde zou zijn (september 1933) vlak na de Kopenhagen conferentie van het jaar daarop.
Het boek is goed geschreven en vertelt de problemen die speelden rond 1930 op een niet-technische manier. Het boekt geeft vooral een goed beeld van de sfeer van Kopenhagen waar 'iedereen' kwam en in een sfeer van informaliteit en vrijheid van denken met elkaar omging.
August 25, 2018
This amazing book follows the history of the development of Quantum Mechanics. Every year Niels Bohr would invite physicists and their students to attend a conference at his institute in Copenhagen. Older guys like Bohr, Einstein, Planck, etc., and youngsters like Heisenberg, Pauli, Ehrenfest, Born, etc., would all attend and discuss ideas. Imagine being there and just listening to Bohr and Einstein argue for a couple of days, each trying to convince the other (and failing). Basically, every 20th century physicist you ever heard of was working together with these guys at some time. At one point they're all looking at atoms like a mini solar system, using something called Matrix Algebra to try to figure out how it's all working, and Schrodinger, out of the blue, releases a paper describing how it all works with waves. I can't say I can explain quantum mechanics to anyone, but I did learn a lot more about it from this excellent book. The author, Gino Segre, is a physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and his uncle Antonio Segre won the Nobel prize for physics.
April 3, 2019
The great physicist Neils Bohr used to invite all the great physicists to his home in Copenhagen every year to socialize, laugh, put on skits, as well as share information and develop ideas together. In Faust in Copenhagen, Gino Segrè (himself an accomplished physicist) uses the 1932 gathering to explain the wild personalities involved (Einstein, Heisenberg, Curie, Bohr, Pauli, etc.) in the heady days of great discoveries in nuclear physics, as well as putting the discoveries and their implications into historical context. There wouldn't be another conference like this, as world politics would soon separate them and ultimately lead to World War II. It's not a long book, but it is beautifully written, often quite funny, and surprisingly accessible. It's also bittersweet at times, as these brilliant minds can see the geopolitical trouble brewing and they know this golden era of physics was coming to an end. I can't recommend this book enough.
April 26, 2019
A very easy to read material about very serious things. I bought the book as a part of preparation for my coming trip to Copenhagen. Even though there is less than 5% to learn about Copenhagen, the book nonetheless gave me a lot of knowledge in the areas previously never covered, namely development of nuclear physics, stories about people who stood at its origin, the atmosphere of the scientific world in the 30s of the last century. I am as far from the sciences as many but found the book very easy to understand, even though it introduces not so light ideas and concepts. I'd love to read a similar book about the events and developments of the physics nowadays
April 26, 2019
A very easy to read material about very serious things. I bought the book as a part of preparation for my coming trip to Copenhagen. Even though there is less than 5% to learn about Copenhagen, the book nonetheless gave me a lot of knowledge in the areas previously never covered, namely development of nuclear physics, stories about people who stood at its origin, the atmosphere of the scientific world in the 30s of the last century. I am as far from the sciences as many but found the book very easy to understand, even though it introduces not so light ideas and concepts. I'd love to read a similar book about the events and developments of the physics nowadays
February 29, 2020
Always have been fixated on so called "Faustian" stories...not because of any mystical predisposition, far from that, in fact. But the notion of what it would take to get someone or some thing to sell a soul, the most central parts of any identity. What would it take to get someone to sell that? It gets very interesting when a great writer stretches this notion into new territory. In this case, what would it take to get Theoretical Physics to sell its soul? What IS a soul in this rendition of the old story line? The year is 1932 and the soul is up for auction. Will it sell and if so, to whom, and for what price?
November 11, 2023
L'autor integra tots els protagonistes de la física de partícules i quàntica del s. XX en el fil narratiu del llibre, creant una atmosfera de camaraderia molt maca. Potser la fragmentació dels esdeveniments, que no segueixen l'ordre natural, em va confondre, però això ha permès al text centrar-se en els científics d'un en un, explicar-ne misèries i alegries i que el lector empatitzi molt més amb ells. M'ho he passat genial.
January 26, 2023
A very nice interweaving of the personal stories of the people who generated the quantum physics revolution with the physics as it unfolded centering on the life and personality of Neil’s Bohr and the convivial atmosphere of collaborative competition he created that lead to a rich cross-pollination among European and American physicists.
December 10, 2018
I really couldn’t figure out what this book is about, and I suspect that’s because it’s not really about anything. The organization is just so bad there’s no story there, or to be generous, you have to struggle to find it. Ultimately very boring as a result.
September 20, 2019
A friendly, unjudgmental book, with lovely real-life characters - well written also because it has been edited and trimmed into weightless prose that one enjoys reading, and feels essentially trustworthy.
January 6, 2021
Wonderful anecdotes about the likes of Ehrenfest, Pauli, Meisner, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and, of course, Bohr. This was the first book I read about the history of quantum mechanics --- not a bad place to start, I wager.
September 26, 2021
Some evil is best left unknown.😈
March 19, 2022
Excellent history of quantum physics told through the personalities of the physicists who developed the fundamental principles.
September 30, 2022
This Faustian travel is a pure jewel on the history of quantum mechanics. I was enlightened to see a more in-depth story about its development.
October 21, 2014
Written by a physicist for an educated but popular audience, Gino Segre accomplishes a great feet by discussing the conferences, personalities, intellects, arguments, and development in Copenhagen of modern quantum mechanical theory. “Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, emerged in 1925-26 only after a long buildup. Its details evolved over time, and its meaning continued to be debated for years. Unlike relativity, it was the work of many who struggled together, often arguing with one another as they hammered out the theory’s conclusions. Its final version, the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, was contested even by some of the creators of the revolution. The questioning has not ceased.” In this way, the development of this theory resembles most of the innovations since, resulting from collaboration from a diverse set of people to achieve a remarkable result. Segre writes “in the ongoing struggle to make sense of our lives, we sometimes have moments when pieces from a distant past realign themselves and a previously unnoticed pattern emerges. Nothing has changed except perhaps the angle from which we look at those events, but the new vista suggests another meaning or even a connection of which we were previously unaware.” In this way, physics is philosophy, and vice versa.
The stories of the people and their personalities are truly fascinating. It is truly remarkable how the contributions of Lise Meitner have not been fully appreciated, as well as the degree to which her commitment was tested by the prohibition of women in her field. “Beginning in Berlin was even harder for Meitner than for Hahn, because Fischer’s Chemical Institute was off-limits to women. After negotiations, a compromise was reached whereby Meitner could use a basement carpenter’s room that had a separate entrance to the street, but she was not allowed to go upstairs into the institute, even to Hahn’s laboratory. If she had to use a bathroom, she needed to walk to a nearby restaurant. When the Rutherfords spent a few days in Berlin on their way back to Manchester after the 1908 Nobel Prize ceremonies, the men talked in Hahn’s laboratory while Meitner went shopping with Mary Rutherford. Meitner was also unpaid, which meant continuing to live in a furnished room on an allowance from her parents. But with the exciting work propelling her forward, she extended her stay in Berlin well beyond what either she or her parents had originally envisioned.” I want to learn more about John von Neumann, who was a true universal genius as one of the century’s great mathematicians, developed economic game theory, and developed the first digital computer, in addition to his contributions to quantum theory.
Segre devotes much attention to Einstein, Bohr, and Pauli, as would be expected. Einstein’s protestations are well documented throughout this history. “When Einstein talked of the Old One, he wasn’t invoking a traditional divinity. His god was the god of Spinoza, the god of order in the universe. The notion that the observer necessarily affects the results of experiments was unacceptable to him. And yet he could not convince those who thought otherwise that his view was correct.”
There is a wonderful exchange on Einstein’s protests to the Solvay conference proposals. Einstein had turned his focus away from quantum mechanics and instead was pursuing a unification of gravitation and electromagnetism. Pauli wished Einstein’s efforts a speedy death because he thought they were doomed to failure. In the conference, he proposed a thought experiment as a challenge to the Copenhagen interpretation that involved a box of particles and a clock, with a shutter that would open and let one particle out at a time and then the box would be weighed. In the uncertainty principle, it would be impossible to exactly measure the particle’s energy. Bohr, however, after an evening’s thought, showed that Einstein had neglected to take into account the slight movement in the earth’s gravitational field, and therefore proved that there was indeed a small uncertainty in the determination of mass an energy. Einstein ultimately conceded that he lost this battle, but not the war. The Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli argument won out against the lingering doubts of some physicists in 1927.
This is a highly readable history of physics, and as well collaboration between men and women of towering intellect.
The stories of the people and their personalities are truly fascinating. It is truly remarkable how the contributions of Lise Meitner have not been fully appreciated, as well as the degree to which her commitment was tested by the prohibition of women in her field. “Beginning in Berlin was even harder for Meitner than for Hahn, because Fischer’s Chemical Institute was off-limits to women. After negotiations, a compromise was reached whereby Meitner could use a basement carpenter’s room that had a separate entrance to the street, but she was not allowed to go upstairs into the institute, even to Hahn’s laboratory. If she had to use a bathroom, she needed to walk to a nearby restaurant. When the Rutherfords spent a few days in Berlin on their way back to Manchester after the 1908 Nobel Prize ceremonies, the men talked in Hahn’s laboratory while Meitner went shopping with Mary Rutherford. Meitner was also unpaid, which meant continuing to live in a furnished room on an allowance from her parents. But with the exciting work propelling her forward, she extended her stay in Berlin well beyond what either she or her parents had originally envisioned.” I want to learn more about John von Neumann, who was a true universal genius as one of the century’s great mathematicians, developed economic game theory, and developed the first digital computer, in addition to his contributions to quantum theory.
Segre devotes much attention to Einstein, Bohr, and Pauli, as would be expected. Einstein’s protestations are well documented throughout this history. “When Einstein talked of the Old One, he wasn’t invoking a traditional divinity. His god was the god of Spinoza, the god of order in the universe. The notion that the observer necessarily affects the results of experiments was unacceptable to him. And yet he could not convince those who thought otherwise that his view was correct.”
There is a wonderful exchange on Einstein’s protests to the Solvay conference proposals. Einstein had turned his focus away from quantum mechanics and instead was pursuing a unification of gravitation and electromagnetism. Pauli wished Einstein’s efforts a speedy death because he thought they were doomed to failure. In the conference, he proposed a thought experiment as a challenge to the Copenhagen interpretation that involved a box of particles and a clock, with a shutter that would open and let one particle out at a time and then the box would be weighed. In the uncertainty principle, it would be impossible to exactly measure the particle’s energy. Bohr, however, after an evening’s thought, showed that Einstein had neglected to take into account the slight movement in the earth’s gravitational field, and therefore proved that there was indeed a small uncertainty in the determination of mass an energy. Einstein ultimately conceded that he lost this battle, but not the war. The Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli argument won out against the lingering doubts of some physicists in 1927.
This is a highly readable history of physics, and as well collaboration between men and women of towering intellect.
April 8, 2019
Interesting framing of exiciting times and personalities. Physics and hi-jinx in 1932 Copenhagen. Using a skit based on Goethe's Faust performed at the free-wheeling Copenhagen conferences as scaffolding, Segre (Emilio Segre's nephew) unpacks the metaphors in the skit in relation to the fast-moving developments in quantum physics of the time. With Bohr as the Lord, Pauli as Mephisto, and poor Ehrenfest as Faust, torn between the two. With backstories and rich details of the life and physics of all the major attendees Bohr, Pauli, Ehrenfest, Heisenberg, Dirac, Meitner, Gamow (stuck in Russia in '32), Landau, the still-physicist Max Delbruck and even a young Chandrasekhar. What an incredible time in physics where on a monthly basis new fundamental discoveries were being made about matter. Just in 1932 alone, this august group had to chew on the discoveries of neutron (Rutherford guessed), the positron (Dirac hypothesized), splitting of the (Lithium) atom (Gamow calculated), proton's "magnetic moment" measured showing substructures in atoms (theory failed). The year also marked a pendulum swing back in favor of experiments leading theory. From this highly collaborative and jovial atmosphere to the darkness of Nazism/Facism and the secrecy of the various bomb projects and cold war was a sad descent indeed. Bohr emerges as a remarkable figure - energetic and relentlessly-moving-forward physicist, immensely beloved of such a large group of fellow physicists (of all ages and ranks), resourceful administrator of his influential institute, and influencer of politicians to help people escape the terror of anti-semitism. Similar loving profiles of other giants (esp. the acerbic Pauli, the "Conscience of Physics") emerge from that pivotal time.
July 23, 2010
This book does a very good job of relating a fairly important topic - the interpretation of quantum mechanics - and setting it within the contexts of historical events and the characters of the physics community of the 1920's and early 1930's. Gino Segre is a theoretical physicist by profession, and the nephew of another great theorist, and his ability to understand and communicate the nature of complementarity and the Bohr-Heisenberg interpretation reflect this pedigree.
However, the unique narrative falls short of being great. Niels Bohr invited a group of talented physicists to Copenhagen each year to discuss the problems of the moment. Big science had yet to develop, and it was possible to gather all the most influential thinkers in developing this new science, plus their selected graduate students, into a small lecture room at Bohr's Institute. An annual part of the meeting was a skit put together by the younger invitees that spoofed their elders. In 1932, the greatest skit of all was performed, a satirical reinterpretation of Goethe's Faust with Bohr cast as the Lord God, Wolfgang Pauli as Mephistopheles, and Paul Ehrenfest as the troubled Faust.
Perhaps this was great because of how well the scientists' personalities corresponded to the characters of Goethe's drama. However, for Segre the drama also represents symbolically the "Faustian bargain" physicists would soon face in unlocking the secrets and dark power of nuclear energy, as well as the last gasp of exuberance and unity before the darkness of war descended again over Europe.
Segre weaves the story of the birth of the Copenhagen Interpretation together with the personal narratives of the key theorists (and one notable experimentalist, Lise Meitner). The climax of the narrative is the agreement between Bohr and Heisenberg on the interpretation, and unfortunately the story does not end there. The Real World is chronologically messy, and does not fit the requirements of literature. The story of the discovery of the neutron and the messy developments of the 1930's-1940's and beyond in nuclear physics intrude on Segre's storytelling, because Chadwick's discovery of the neutron was a major point of discussion at the 1932 meeting, and occurred before the Faust skit used as his plot vehicle. This means that the reader must necessarily encounter another raft of new physics (antimatter, neutrinos, and weak forces - oh my!). For an account intended for the general audience, it would be better to explain the quantum mechanics without looking into nuclear physics and the future.
This is a very good and readable account, and would be enjoyable for those who are not familiar with the science involved.
However, the unique narrative falls short of being great. Niels Bohr invited a group of talented physicists to Copenhagen each year to discuss the problems of the moment. Big science had yet to develop, and it was possible to gather all the most influential thinkers in developing this new science, plus their selected graduate students, into a small lecture room at Bohr's Institute. An annual part of the meeting was a skit put together by the younger invitees that spoofed their elders. In 1932, the greatest skit of all was performed, a satirical reinterpretation of Goethe's Faust with Bohr cast as the Lord God, Wolfgang Pauli as Mephistopheles, and Paul Ehrenfest as the troubled Faust.
Perhaps this was great because of how well the scientists' personalities corresponded to the characters of Goethe's drama. However, for Segre the drama also represents symbolically the "Faustian bargain" physicists would soon face in unlocking the secrets and dark power of nuclear energy, as well as the last gasp of exuberance and unity before the darkness of war descended again over Europe.
Segre weaves the story of the birth of the Copenhagen Interpretation together with the personal narratives of the key theorists (and one notable experimentalist, Lise Meitner). The climax of the narrative is the agreement between Bohr and Heisenberg on the interpretation, and unfortunately the story does not end there. The Real World is chronologically messy, and does not fit the requirements of literature. The story of the discovery of the neutron and the messy developments of the 1930's-1940's and beyond in nuclear physics intrude on Segre's storytelling, because Chadwick's discovery of the neutron was a major point of discussion at the 1932 meeting, and occurred before the Faust skit used as his plot vehicle. This means that the reader must necessarily encounter another raft of new physics (antimatter, neutrinos, and weak forces - oh my!). For an account intended for the general audience, it would be better to explain the quantum mechanics without looking into nuclear physics and the future.
This is a very good and readable account, and would be enjoyable for those who are not familiar with the science involved.
July 21, 2014
It was the Age of Innocence. It was 1932, before Hitlers rise to power and the exodus of scientists to places like Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. The top physicists from around the world met yearly, first in Solvay then later in Coppenhagen. From these meetings what was to emerge was nothing short of the reordering of modern scientific thought on how the world was put together. Bohr, Pauli and Heisenberg essentially created Quantum Mechanics out of nothing and in its place came the exclusion principle and matrix calculations, quantum numbers and eigenvalues. They took away electron orbits and gave us electron states.
"Faust" written by Goethe, perhaps the last true universal genius, provides the setting for a play. Our scientists find themselves acting out a story based on themselves and this great work. Little were they to know that in the outcome of what they were searching were the seeds of a Faustian bargain for the fate of humankind. But the story gets ahead of itself. "Faust" was only a diversion, some time off of the heavy intellectual lifting, some time for a few laughs with friends.
Serge intermingles the story of the development of quantum mechanics with the play. The real characters become Mephistopheles and Faust. This book is as much about people as it is about things. It is about the resistance of Einstein to the new ideas, the wave mechanics of Schroedinger and Pauli's lack of respect for mathematics as "crutches for weak men". It is about late night conversations on anti-matter, positrons and neutrinos, and pair production. Are these particles or are these waves? Perhaps they are both but then again, perhaps they are neither and in fact are something beyond words, beyond our languaging, but existing in transcendental algebra where things like electron spin, wave functions, and quantum tunneling can be better understood.
Great read!
"Faust" written by Goethe, perhaps the last true universal genius, provides the setting for a play. Our scientists find themselves acting out a story based on themselves and this great work. Little were they to know that in the outcome of what they were searching were the seeds of a Faustian bargain for the fate of humankind. But the story gets ahead of itself. "Faust" was only a diversion, some time off of the heavy intellectual lifting, some time for a few laughs with friends.
Serge intermingles the story of the development of quantum mechanics with the play. The real characters become Mephistopheles and Faust. This book is as much about people as it is about things. It is about the resistance of Einstein to the new ideas, the wave mechanics of Schroedinger and Pauli's lack of respect for mathematics as "crutches for weak men". It is about late night conversations on anti-matter, positrons and neutrinos, and pair production. Are these particles or are these waves? Perhaps they are both but then again, perhaps they are neither and in fact are something beyond words, beyond our languaging, but existing in transcendental algebra where things like electron spin, wave functions, and quantum tunneling can be better understood.
Great read!
February 26, 2015
I think this would be a four-star book for someone not previously exposed to relativity and quantum mechanics because this history focuses on the relationships between scientists and their personal relationship to physics. Explanations of the various discoveries are light, without equations, and easy to follow, almost too simplified if you've read the details in other books. The story of Faust and the Copenhagen version presented in 1932 is woven throughout the text with the original illustrations from the printed version included as well. I really enjoyed learning about the personalities of each famous physicist and who was close with whom but dividing it by discovery or scientist roughly chronologically made the text of the Faust adaptation difficult to follow. Quotes were presented out of order based on who or what they described and I felt like I never got a good sense of the overall play, despite knowing Goethe's original fairly well. Segre tries to explain the original in the beginning and refers to the differences between the two throughout, but not reading the opening of the adaptation until nearly the end of the book frustrated me. I was hoping there would be a complete translated version as an appendix, so I could read it through once, but there is not.
April 12, 2008
This is an impressively readable account of the lives of and relations between the pantheon of quantum-era physicists -- especially Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Pauli -- but also to lesser extents others including Einstein and Rutherford. It requires zero knowledge of physics and reads like a bit of a page turner.
You do have to get over the misleading title and organization of the book: the Faust thing is the thinnest of threads providing an excuse to tie the various stories together. And the idea of a Faustian bargain and "struggle for the soul of physics" must be referring to some other book Segre (or his marketers) dreamed of, because there is really damn near nothing of that ilk. I suspect they really wanted to leverage fans of _Copenhagen_. Last caveat: for all his skill with personalities, Segre can deliver some real clunkers -- I really winced at his theorizing re Ehrenfest's suicide.
Upshot: nice quick read with some great sketches of these luminaries. But do read it quickly. For more on physics or on Faustian bargains, there are better books.
You do have to get over the misleading title and organization of the book: the Faust thing is the thinnest of threads providing an excuse to tie the various stories together. And the idea of a Faustian bargain and "struggle for the soul of physics" must be referring to some other book Segre (or his marketers) dreamed of, because there is really damn near nothing of that ilk. I suspect they really wanted to leverage fans of _Copenhagen_. Last caveat: for all his skill with personalities, Segre can deliver some real clunkers -- I really winced at his theorizing re Ehrenfest's suicide.
Upshot: nice quick read with some great sketches of these luminaries. But do read it quickly. For more on physics or on Faustian bargains, there are better books.
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