Niels Bohr's Times,: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity

Title ......Page 3
Copyright ......Page 4
To the reader ......Page 5
A note on the references ......Page 9
Dedication ......Page 11
Contents ......Page 13
a) Themes ......Page 19
b) Some personal recollections ......Page 22
c) A tour through this book ......Page 32
2 \'In Denmark I was born ...\' ......Page 50
3 Boyhood ......Page 60
a) 1903 ......Page 70
b) The nature of light; beginnings ......Page 71
c) Particles or waves? ......Page 74
d) Color, visible and invisible ......Page 78
e) Of Maxwell\'s theory, Hertz\'s experiment, and the definition of classical physics ......Page 81
f) Trouble with the aether: the Michelson-Morley experiment ......Page 84
g) In which classical physics comes to an end and Einstein makes his first appearance ......Page 86
a) The age of continuity ......Page 92
b) Kirchhoff\'s law ......Page 93
c) 1860-1896 ......Page 95
d) 1896: physics takes a bizarre turn ......Page 96
e) Introducing Max Planck ......Page 97
f) A brief digression on statistical mechanics ......Page 98
g) In which Planck stumbles on a new law that ushered in the physics of the twentieth century ......Page 100
h) Particles or waves? ......Page 105
a) Physics in Denmark, from a college for the clergy to the epoch of Orsted ......Page 110
b) In which Bohr begins his university studies and starts mobilizing help in writing ......Page 115
c) The atom: status in 1909 ......Page 121
d) Niels Bohr, M.Sc, Ph.D. ......Page 125
e) Death of father. Bohr becomes engaged ......Page 129
a) Cambridge: Thomson, father of the electron ......Page 135
b) Manchester: Rutherford, father of the nucleus ......Page 139
a) Young man in a hurry ......Page 150
b) In which Bohr leaves the church and gets married ......Page 151
c) The Rutherford memorandum ......Page 153
d) \'The language of spectra ... a true atomic music of the spheres\' ......Page 157
e) In which Bohr hears about the Balmer formula ......Page 161
f) Triumph over logic: the hydrogen atom(*) ......Page 164
g) Reactions, including Bohr\'s own ......Page 170
a) The early schools in quantum physics ......Page 178
b) In which Bohr returns to Manchester and then becomes Denmark\'s first professor of theoretical physics ......Page 181
c) In which Bohr acquires his own institute ......Page 184
a) Mathematics in physics ......Page 194
b) The old quantum theory 1913-1916: sketches(*) ......Page 197
c) In pursuit of principles: Ehrenfest, Einstein, and Bohr ......Page 207
d) The crisis ......Page 214
e) Bohr and the periodic table of elements ......Page 220
f) The Nobel Prize ......Page 228
a) Comparisons ......Page 242
b) First encounters ......Page 245
c) More on Einstein and the light-quantum ......Page 248
d) \'The culmination of the crisis\': the BKS proposal ......Page 250
e) The new era dawns: de Broglie ......Page 257
f) Spin ......Page 259
a) Bohr & Sons ......Page 267
b) International recognition ......Page 269
c) First trip to America ......Page 271
d) Bohr as fund raiser ......Page 273
e) The institute up till mid-1925. Introducing Heisenberg ......Page 278
a) A last look back: Bohr as \'director of atomic theory\' ......Page 285
b) Kramers in 1924 ......Page 288
c) Heisenberg in 1924 ......Page 290
d) 1925: how quantum mechanics emerged \'quite vaguely from the fog\'(*) ......Page 293
e) Bohr\'s earliest reactions ......Page 297
f) Early 1926: the second coming of quantum mechanics ......Page 298
g) The summer of 1926: Born on probability, causality, and determinism ......Page 302
h) Appendix, c- and q-numbers for pedestrians ......Page 307
a) The Copenhagen team in 1926. Heisenberg resolves the helium puzzle ......Page 313
b) In which Schrodinger comes on a visit ......Page 316
c) Prelude to complementarity. The Bohr-Heisenberg dialog ......Page 318
d) The uncertainty relations, with a look back at the correspondence principle ......Page 322
e) Complementarity: a new kind of relativity ......Page 327
f) Solvay 1927. The Bohr-Einstein dialog begins ......Page 334
a) Beginnings of a new direction for Bohr and his school ......Page 342
b) Theoretical nuclear physics: the prehistoric era ......Page 343
c) Great progress: the first artificial transmutation of chemical elements and the first signs of a new force. Great confusion: the proton-electron model of the nucleus ......Page 345
d) In which quantum mechanics reveals nuclear paradoxes and the neutron is discovered ......Page 348
e) In which the Bohrs move to the Residence of Honor ......Page 350
f) In which Bohr takes nuclear matters in hand ......Page 353
g) Being a brief prelude to the war and the years thereafter ......Page 359
a) Particles and fields ......Page 364
b) QED(*) ......Page 368
c) Spin (continued). The positron. The meson(*) ......Page 370
d) Bohr on QED(*) ......Page 376
e) Bohr and the crisis of 1929. The neutrino ......Page 382
b) The first accelerators ......Page 393
c) Weaver at the helm ......Page 397
d) Troubles in Germany ......Page 399
e) Bohr and the Rockefeller foundation\'s emergency program ......Page 401
f) The discovery of induced radioactivity ......Page 404
g) Four fateful factors fit ......Page 405
h) How Hevesy introduced isotopic tracers in biology ......Page 406
i) Bohr as fund raiser (continued) ......Page 412
j) Denmark\'s first accelerators and the fifth fateful factor ......Page 416
a) Days of sorrow ......Page 425
b) Times of travel ......Page 431
a) Bohr and philosophy: \'It was, in a way, my life\' ......Page 438
b) Complementarity (continued). More on the Bohr-Einstein dialog. A new definition of \'phenomenon\' ......Page 443
c) Bohr on statistical mechanics ......Page 454
d) Complementarism ......Page 456
a) The early days, including Bohr\'s discovery of the role of uranium 235 ......Page 470
b) Fission in Copenhagen ......Page 476
c) Atomic energy? Atomic weapons? ......Page 478
d) Bohr as president of the Kongelige Danske Videnshabernes Selskab ......Page 482
a) Introduction ......Page 491
b) Denmark and Germany, from 16 November 1864 until 4 May 1945 ......Page 492
c) Bohr\'s war years, the Scandinavian episode ......Page 497
d) Bohr\'s war years, the Anglo-American episode ......Page 508
e) Bohr, Churchill, Roosevelt, and the atomic bomb ......Page 515
a) Prolog ......Page 527
b) The later writings, 1945-1962 ......Page 528
c) Glasnost 1950: Bohr\'s open letters to the United Nations ......Page 531
d) CERN ......Page 537
e) Nordita ......Page 539
f) Riso ......Page 541
g) The later travels ......Page 546
h) The final half year ......Page 547
23 Epilog ......Page 552
Appendix. A synopsis of this book in the form of a chronology ......Page 556
Index of names ......Page 565
Index of subjects ......Page 574
Plates ......Page 583
Cover ......Page 595