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Quantum Humor: The Playful Side of Physics at Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics

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Abstract

From the 1930s to the 1950s, a period of pivotal developments in quantum, nuclear, and particle physics, physicists at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen took time off from their research to write humorous articles, letters, and other works. Best known is the Blegdamsvej Faust, performed in April 1932 at the close of one of the Institute’s annual conferences. I also focus on the Journal of Jocular Physics, a humorous tribute to Bohr published on the occasions of his 50th, 60th, and 70th birthdays in 1935, 1945, and 1955. Contributors included Léon Rosenfeld, Victor Weisskopf, George Gamow, Oskar Klein, and Hendrik Casimir. I examine their contributions along with letters and other writings to show that they offer a window into some issues in physics at the time, such as the interpretation of complementarity and the nature of the neutrino, as well as the politics of the period.

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Notes

  1. Ersatz is German for “substitute.”

  2. The shortest one Casimir cites is /Butterfly/Flutter by!/.

References

  1. Felicity Pors and Finn Aaserud, “Historical Sites of Physical Science in Copenhagen,” Physics in Perspective 3 (2001), 230–248; reprinted in John S. Rigden and Roger H. Stuewer, ed., The Physical Tourist: A Science Guide for the Traveler (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2009), pp. 55–72.

  2. Finn Aaserud, “The Copenhagen Conferences,” website <http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/www/institute/History/The_Copenhagen_conferences/>.

  3. George Gamow, Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1966), p. 167.

  4. Ibid., pp. 165–214.

  5. Victor Weisskopf, The Joy of Insight: Passions of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 67–70.

  6. Hendrik Casimir, Haphazard Reality: Half a Century of Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 97–99, 116–126.

  7. Gino Segrè, Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics (New York: Viking, 2007).

  8. Michael Faraday, A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle: to which is added a Lecture on Platinum. Delivered before a Juvenile Auditory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain during the Christmas Holidays of 1860-1. Edited by William Crookes. With Numerous Illustrations (London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company, 1861).

  9. Charles Dickens, “The Chemistry of a Candle,” Household Words. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens 1, No. 19 (1850), 439–444.

  10. James Clerk Maxwell, “Report on Tait’s Lecture on Force: B.A., 1876”; quoted in Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, etc. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1882), p. 647.

  11. P. and T. Ehrenfest, “Begriffliche Grundlagen der statistischen Auffassung in der Mechanik,” Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, Band 4, Teil 4, Heft 6, Art. 32 (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1911), 3–90; reprinted in Collected Scientific Papers, ed. Martin J. Klein (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959), pp. 213–300; W. Pauli, “Relativitätstheorie,” ibid., Band 5, Teil 2 (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1921), pp. 539–775; reprinted in Collected Scientific Papers. Vol. 1, ed. R. Kronig and V.F. Weisskopf (New York, London, Sydney: Interscience, John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 1–237.

  12. Oskar Klein, “Wolfgang Pauli Några Minnesord,” Kosmos 37 (1959), 9–12, on 10.

  13. Paul Halpern, “Klein, Einstein, and Five-Dimensional Unification,” Phys. in Perspec. 9 (2007), 390–405.

  14. Interview of Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir by Thomas S. Kuhn, Léon Rosenfeld, Aage Bohr, and Erik Rüdinger, July 5, 1963, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, USA, website <http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4550_1.html>, p. 10 of 24.

  15. Klein to Ehrenfest, March 1930, Archives for History of Quantum Physics; hereafter AHQP.

  16. Ehrenfest to Klein, March 19, 1930, AHQP.

  17. Faust: Eine Historie (1932), Niels Bohr Archive; hereafter NBA; translated into English in Gamow, Thirty Years (ref. 3), pp. 165–214.

  18. Panagiotis Pantidos, Kalliopi Spathi and Evagelos Vitoratos, “The Use of Drama in Science Education: The Case of ‘Blegdamsvej Faust,’” Science & Education 10 (2001), 107–117.

  19. Segré, Faust in Copenhagen (ref. 7), pp. 7–8.

  20. James Chadwick, “Possible existence of a neutron,” Nature 129 (1932), 312.

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  21. Faust (ref. 17), pp. 9, 20; 188, 213–214.

  22. Casimir, Haphazard Reality (ref. 6), p. 120.

  23. Journal of Jocular Physics, Vol. I (October 7, 1935), NBA, p. [1].

  24. Ibid., title page; reproduced in Barbara Lovett Cline, The Questioners: Physicists and the Quantum Theory (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1965); reprinted as Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 216.

  25. Kanetaka Ariyama, “Niels Bohr on His Fiftieth Birthday,” Journal, Vol. 1 (ref. 23), pp. [1–4].

  26. ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Switzerland, “The Pauli Effect, Anecdotes,” website <http://www.library.ethz.ch/exhibit/pauli/effekt_pauli_e.html>.

  27. [Léon Rosenfeld], “La Plainte du Neutrino,” Journal, Vol. 1 (ref. 23), p. [35].

  28. V. Weisskopf, “Komplementäre Philosophie des Witzes,” ibid., pp. [24–25].

  29. H. Casimir, “Über eine weniger bekannt Bohr’sche Theorie und ihre experimentelle Bestätigung,” ibid., p. [23].

  30. Casimir, Haphazard Reality (ref. 6), pp. 98–99.

  31. Journal, Vol. 1 (ref. 23), p. [36].

  32. Oskar Klein, “On Political Quantization,” unpublished manuscript submitted to the Journal, Vol. 1 (ref. 23), NBA.

  33. Hulthén to Pauli, November 13, 1945, quoted in Charles P. Lenz and Karl von Meyenn, ed., Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy. Translated by Robert Schlapp (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994), p. 50.

  34. Stefan Rozental, “The Forties and the Fifties,” in S. Rozental, ed., Niels Bohr: his life and work as seen by his friends and colleagues (Amsterdam: North Holland and New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), pp. 148–190, on p. 174.

  35. L. Rosenfeld, “My Initiation (paraphysical recollections),”Journal of Jocular Physics, Vol. II (October 7, 1945), NBA, pp. [1–4]; idem, “Niels Bohr,” expanded and corrected Second Edition (1961), in Robert S. Cohen and John J. Stachel, ed., Selected Papers of Léon Rosenfeld [Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXI] (Dordrecht, Boston, London: D. Reidel, 1979), pp. 313–326.

  36. Ibid., p. [4]; 320 (paraphrased).

  37. G. Gamow, Mr Tompkins in Wonderland or Stories of c, G, and h. Illustrated by John Hookham (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1939).

  38. Niels Bohr, [“Preface”], in G. Gamow, Mr. Tompkins i Drømmeland. (København: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag 1942), pp. 7–8.

  39. R.A. Alpher, H. Bethe, and G. Gamow, “The Origin of Chemical Elements, Physical Review 73 (1948), 803–804.

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  40. Gamow to Klein, undated (probably 1948), NBA.

  41. Klein to Gamow, undated (probably 1948), NBA.

  42. Journal of Jocular Physics, Vol. III (October 7, 1955), NBA.

  43. J. Lindhard, “To all members of CERN Standardization of Papers,” ibid., pp. 10–13.

  44. Ibid., p. 10.

  45. H.B.G. Casimir, “Broken English,” Ibid., pp. 14–18; reprinted in Haphazard Reality (ref. 6), pp. 122–125.

  46. Ibid., p. 14; 122.

  47. Casimir, Haphazard Reality (ref. 6), p. 122.

  48. Journal, Vol. III (ref. 42), pp. 37–46.

  49. George Gamow, “The Heart on the Other Side,” in Frederik Pohl, ed., The Expert Dreamers (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1962), pp. 51–61.

  50. R.E.P., “The Atom that Bohr Built,” Journal, Vol. III (ref. 42), pp. 47–48.

  51. Ibid., p. 48.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Finn Aaserud and Felicity Pors of the Niels Bohr Archive for copies of the Blegdamsvej Faust and Journal of Jocular Physics, and for information about Oskar Klein’s unpublished submission to its first volume. I thank Robert P. Crease and Peter Pesic for encouraging comments, and Roger H. Stuewer for his excellent, careful, and knowledgeable editorial work on my paper.

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  1. Department of Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, 600 South 43rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Paul Halpern

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Correspondence to Paul Halpern.

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Paul Halpern is Professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. He is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Forum on the History of Physics of the American Physical Society.

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Halpern, P. Quantum Humor: The Playful Side of Physics at Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics. Phys. Perspect. 14, 279–299 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0071-8

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