Copenhagen, part 1

Parents Weekend at Colorado College this year is Oct. 10-12. One of the events is a discussion of the play Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn. This promises to be most interesting.

The play is about a meeting between three people: physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and Bohr's wife Margrethe. This meeting did in fact take place, in Copenhagen in September 1941.

In 1924-27 Heisenberg worked for Bohr at the University of Copenhagen and the two scientists made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics. But in 1941 Heisenberg was in charge of Germany's atomic program and Bohr, his former mentor, was in German-occupied Denmark. The two friends were also enemies.

The meeting must have been difficult. There is much controversy about what was said at the meeting, and that forms the basis for the play. On one level the play is about morality (friendship, loyalty, developing atomic weapons). On another level the play is about the contributions that these two scientists made to quantum mechanics, and how this meeting can be interpreted in light of those contributions.

That last sentence probably doesn't make any sense to you. I'll try to explain it in the next three posts (this one being long enough already).

More info about the play Copenhagen: Wikipedia entry, Amazon entry. The play was first performed on stage in 1998. The book, with a lengthy Postscript, was published in 2000.