Niels Bohr An Essay Dedicated to Him on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, October 7, 1945 [Second Edition Corrected] 1961 [1945e]

Abstract

“Thou, father, art Nature’s discoverer, from thee fatherly precepts we receive”. This invocation to the great atomist of antiquity we will also address to the creator of modern atomic theory! As soon as the young physicist comes under the spell of the bright and serene atmosphere of the institute in the Blegdamsvej. when he partakes of those animated discussions improvised on any subject offered by chance and superbly disdainful of the flight of time, when he joins the group of disciples around the kindly smiling master, truly he feels himself received into a spiritual family, strongly united under Niels Bohr’s paternal aegis. And just as, in the latin poet’s restless soul, veneration for Epicure derives from a feeling of decisive liberation — liberation from the ‘terrors of religion’ by a rational understanding of the universe ,— the disciple sees in Bohr the thinker who for contemporary science has brought about a similar liberation by elucidating with his idea of complementarity the apparent paradoxes of quantum theory.

Tu. pater, es rerum inventor, tu patria nobis suppeditas praccepta… Lucretius De rerum nuturu III 9–10.