Abstract
Quantum mechanics will soon be one hundred years old and still has not been disproven. This fact would have certainly surprised many of its creators, the physicists who lived in an era of great social and scientific turmoil, when firmly established ideas were being overturned. Many of the very authors who gave us quantum mechanics believed that it, too, would soon be succeeded and superseded by another, even more radical and fundamental breakthrough, and tried to make this happen by calling into question the very foundations of their own achievement.
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Notes
- 1.
This book is the second in the planned series of four volumes addressing the beginnings of quantum physics research at the major European centers. The first investigation (Schirrmacher 2019) focused on Göttingen; the current one deals with the Copenhagen network, and the two subsequent ones will study the centers in Berlin and Munich. These investigations emerged from an expansive study on the quantum revolution as a major transformation of physical knowledge undertaken by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Fritz Haber Institute (2006–2012).
It is impossible to do justice to the incredibly rich conceptual historiography of quantum physics. Only the most general surveys range from the early and still very valuable classics (Jammer 1966; Hund 1974) to the encyclopedic six-volume work by Mehra and Rechenberg (1982–2001) and to the most recent analysis in Duncan and Janssen (2019). More specific studies will be cited further in the text. The pioneering approaches in, respectively, the social and cultural history of quantum physics originate from Forman (1967, 1971).
- 2.
These numbers are based on more detailed statistics and the bibliography of early quantum mechanics in Kozhevnikov and Novik (1989).
- 3.
On this point, Schrödinger’s biographers could have commented that his sexual experiences abundantly compensated for the lack of Heisenberg’s and Dirac’s and that he certainly would have been willing to bring a few additional female companions. On Schrödinger’s personal life and science, see Moore (1989).
- 4.
This is largely the reason why, for example, Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize not for the theory of relativity, either special or general, but for the empirically confirmed formula of the photoelectric effect. For a historical discussion of Nobel Prizes with attention to Scandinavian perspectives, see Friedman (1989, 1990, 2011). I am very much obliged to Karl Grandin for his guiding me through the Nobel Archives.
- 5.
“Es ist in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte dieser Zeit üblich geworden, mit den Namen van’t Hoff und Arrhenius, auch den Namen Wilhelm Ostwald zu verbinden, obwohl er nicht durch eine gleichwertige Entdeckung um dieselbe Zeit hervorgehoben wurde. Dies liegt daran, daß in meiner Person sich der organisatorische Faktor verkörperte, ohne welchen eine derart schnelle und weitreichende Gestaltung eines neuen Wissensgebietes nicht stattfinden kann. Denn die neue Wissenschaft gewann durch meine Berufung nach Leipzig einen geographischen und schulebildenden Mittlpunkt.” Ostwald (1927, 2: 20). On the institutional development of physical chemistry, see Servos (1990) and Kormos Barkan (1992).
- 6.
“The Institute… which had the foresight to grasp the unique combination of circumstances that were at hand some sixty years ago.” Aage Bohr, “Foreword,” in Robertson (1979, V).
- 7.
A number of penetrating historical investigations have described and scrutinized the intellectual aspect of Bohr’s research program and his contributions to quantum theory: (Heilbron and Kuhn 1969; Hendry 1984; Pais 1991; Darrigol 1992; Kragh 2012). The best account of the development of the Copenhagen Institute is in Robertson (1979), to which the present study is indebted for many clues and tacit hints. The later period of Bohr’s institute during the 1930s is described thoroughly in Aaserud (1990).
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Kojevnikov, A. (2020). Introduction. In: The Copenhagen Network. SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59188-5_1
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