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Niels Bohr: Master of Physics and Dialogue
| Article
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11334 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1986 |
5,073 Words |
| Author
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John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler is director of the Center for
Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas at Austin and
Joseph Henry Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He
spent the years 1934-1935 at the Institute for Theoretical
Physics in Copenhagen, and was a frequent collaborator of
Bohr's. |
The fall of wartime 1944. Connecticut Avenue in downtown Washington. A broad sidewalk. One physicist from the Du Pont plant at Hanford, Washington, producer of plutonium, walking alongside two from Los Alamos, customer for that plutonium. From Los Alamos, Aage Bohr the son, and Niels Bohr, the father: an immensely impressive figure, widely regarded as the world's most responsible man of science. A few days before, thanks to the friendly offices of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, the deeply concerned Bohr had had his long and historic discussion with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on weapons control, the higher politics of international relations in the coming nuclear age, and the ideal of the open world. "How can such a man as I," Bohr said early in that long walk, "speak about these issues to the leader of such a country in the midst of such a war? But I put it simply to him as man to man; what other way is there?"
"I put it to him as man to man"! That phrase epitomizes Bohr's way of life as well as his way of doing physics. Public statements were not for him, nor were press conferences, nor were winged phrases to catch the public eye. No. His way of doing physics was man to man. His way of making headway on any great issue was man to man. His effectiveness derived not from publicity, but from its direct opposite, man-to-man, dialogue, private persuasion, the hold of his eyes and voice and reasoning on his partner in colloquy.
A special sense of judgment Bohr certainly had, and a marvelous physical insight, but above all a unique gift for making progress through dialogue. And what dialogue! What wonderful mixture of jokes and optimism and utmost seriousness! What issue of physics would be taken up in any given year at Bohr's institute as it was in the old days, in that modest building, in that stucco structure, smaller than many a house? Bohr distilled the central issue out of dialogue with those who were themselves distillers of issues, former collaborators and special visitors. He knew that nobody can be anybody without somebodies around. Among the somebodies--for one extended period or another--were Paul Dirac, Rudolf Peierls and E. J. Williams of Britain, Hendrik Casimir, Paul Ehrenfest and Hans Kramers of the Netherlands, Werner Heisenberg and Lise Meitner of Germany, Leon Rosenfeld of Belgium, Wolfgang Pauli of Switzerland, Vladimir Alecxandrovitch Fock, George Gamow and Lev Landau of the Soviet Union, Oskar Klein of Sweden, Yoshio Nishina of Japan, and John Slater and L.H. Thomas of the United States.
The single-hearted attention that Bohr gave to such a colleague showed nowhere
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