[excerpt from Trinity Repertory Study Guide on production of Copenhagen]
A Letter from Education Director PAMELA WARD
Welcome to Trinity Repertory and the 36th season of Project Discovery! We hope that this theater experience will help you and your students to shake off the winter chill. The Education Staff at Trinity had a lot of fun preparing this study guide, and hope that the activities included will help you to incorporate the play into your academic study. It is also structured to help you to introduce performance into your classroom through a process developed in partnership with the Brown University Arts and Literacy Project, and with teachers Deanna Camputaro and Len Newman of Central Falls High School.
Interview with the Director – Oskar Eustis
A condensation of two Interviews with Artistic Director Oskar Eusits
--Michael Smith, Education Assistant
What initially attracted you to this play, this project?
Well honestly it was strictly personal. My stepfather was a physicist. He was a high energy physicist, and became a theoretical physicist, and after he married my mother in 1971 he took a sabbatical and spent a year at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen, and we went over to live in Copenhagen when I was a young boy, and so I both was very familiar with Copenhagen as a city, with physics as a discipline, and very specifically with the history and, even at that time legends of Niels Bohr that came about during my stepfather’s tenure at the institute. So, this was in addition to my interest in the themes.
How do you hope the audience will relate to it?
Well I think its...there’s a couple things about it that I really love. The play is dealing with what is undoubtedly a turning point in human history and certainly a treatment of the atomic bomb and the harnessing of nuclear energy, and when we don’t know what nuclear energy will and won’t make possible. The great thing about this play is that it works on a number of different levels. It is a thriller about how Hitler almost got the bomb, and as a result, I think there is just a huge sense of what the consequences of that would have been. We would be living in a remarkably different world, had the Nazis developed the atomic bomb, uh…before the allies did. And that in itself I think is, gives the play a tremendous sense of urgency, but then, there’s also other levels of the play in which one looks at the relatively chance moments, or the very tiny moments of decision, that they are moments when the hands, the fate of the world is at the hands of a very few people, and making those decisions, how they make those decisions, what those decisions are, have enormous consequences. And then there’s the personal level—which is just the awareness of how, and [Michael] Frayn I think is very sensitive of this, we are often really confused by our own motivations as to why we do what we do, why our lives took the turn that they took, what decisions we made, that, that mystery of ourselves is also part of his subject matter here. So, it exists on a whole number of, of political and personal and historical levels that make it a fascinating play.
In your process as a director, how often have you met with the designers?
We’ve met many times, the set designer, Eugene Lee, and I. One of the great virtues of having a resident company is that you have very much the kind of ongoing dialogue that Bohr and Heisenberg had. We bounce things off. We talk. There’s long silences. We change the subject, uh and eventually what starts to emerge, you know he shows me something, we disagree about it, he changes his mind, I don’t… uh… there’s a wonderful friendship that is as much irrational as it’s rational at this point, and uh I really love the design he’s come up with, which may change again, this being Trinity. But, I think that uh, what’s exciting about it is that it’s a true collaboration Eugene and I and actually change each other’s minds from working together and for me that’s the most exciting thing that can happen…I’ve been working with him for nine years now.
Can you talk a little more about the design? I know that in the original production that there was a circular space and audience was all around. Now we’re putting it in our downstairs space that doesn’t really allow that to happen. What is the space? Where does this play take place?
Well it would if we wanted it to. We’ve done it before down there, but what I think we’re going to do instead is build a couple of platforms that actually go through the audience; so, that it’s not so much that the audience is surrounding the actors. A room, one of the ways I thought about it is a place with a lot of blackboards where there is a lot of thinking going on. That’s what I think is heaven for them it is a place where they can think. That is part of the play. It’s about three people thinking and searching for an answer. I think the space is a kind of heaven and heaven is a place for these people, their heaven is the ultimate experimental space, it’s the ultimate laboratory, it’s the laboratory where, now that we’ve removed all of the desires and confusion and vanity that go into our daily lives here on earth. They can actually think clearly about who they are, why they did what they did, what actually happened in Copenhagen that fall of 1941 and by thinking about it clearly hope to uncover some truth that while they were alive they couldn’t uncover. And, and to, to me it’s a wonderfully attractive image the idea that death strips away the inessential parts and leaves us free to actually see more clearly what was actually happening, and if it’s true enough that’s not for me to say. But, it’s a wonderful idea. That heave is alive. Heaven is where you can see clearly.
Will this Heaven be acutely aware of its audience? Will the characters know that?
Certainly the actors will. And we’ll be interacting with the audience a lot because we always do that. You know, one of the things that Eugene always thinks about, that I love, is he basically thinks about the theater as one room, as basically a room that everyone is in together, and the audience is in it, and the actors are in it. It’s not that there’s a stage there and an audience here. It’s, we’re in a room, and what’s the quality of that room? So, I hope that it will have a sort of infectious impact on the audience; so, that the audience can get caught up in the same clarity of pursuit, in the experiment that the actors are engaged in; so, in a way we are all engaged in this experiment all together.
It’s also a lot about movement. Well, the text explores a lot about the movement and the space of the atom and electrons. Is that going to become part of the visual physical world?
Sure, sure, sure, sure it’s definitely one of the analogies Frayn draws in the play to relate and bounce off each other and interfere with each others orbits, I think very strongly and intelligently throughout the play.
And your actors, this is a very technical play they have to be familiar with and very comfortable with this technical language. Have they already started preparing. Have you given them homework?
Do you know the class backdrop to this?
No.
These actors have had more preparation than any actor for any play in the history of mankind. I’ve taught a class with Nobel prize winning physicist, and we taught this class where we take the play and questions come up such as “what do you mean quantum mechanics” and we’d take the question to him. It’s been just fantastic. We’ve really had a great time doing it. It’s been fun. By this point both the actors and I understand the science as best as possible for lay people to understand it. There are aspects of the Mathematics that I will never get, but the rehearsal will take about three weeks.
What about the ethics the play raises? The responsibility.
What about it? [We both laugh.]
Well I think that ultimately one of the things he’s trying to cope with is how do you deal with friendship when there are, are concerns greater than friendship at stake. And one of the things, the play is often accused of being soft on Heisenberg. Which it may or may not be, but we’ve got to leave that for the audience to judge. But, it somehow seems to be forgiving of Heisenberg. One of the core messages of the play is that ultimately the greatest act of friendship that Bohr does for Heisenberg, for his friend, is not to be his friend. The implication is that if Bohr continued honoring the relationship to be his friend it would not have helped. I think the play; the ethics of the play are actually pretty clear where it stands on the issue of friendship.
Making the transitions from this heaven world that you speak of, to the flashback/memory scenes, do you see this as a seamless movement?
Absolutely. I don’t think that the space is defined any more than the heaven/memory space where there is a question to be answered.
So, do you think anyone knew the answer to this friendship question? Or do you think that it was a complete Group experience?
I think none of them knew the answer.
Not even Margrethe?
She’s actually wrong. She starts out thinking she knows the answer she’s sure that the bastard wanted to make the bomb for Hitler.
History of the Atomic Bomb
Outline: 1895 – 1941
From: http://www.hibbing.tec.mn.us/programs/dept/chem/abomb/index.html
1895
November 8
Wilhelm Röntgen was working with a covered cathode ray tube in a darkened room in his lab at the University of Würzburg. When the tube was turned on, the anode end became fluorescent and a coated screen across the room glowed. He put several objects between the tube and the screen and they all appeared transparent. Röntgen concluded that a new type of ray was being emitted from the tube, which he called X-rays. Over the next several weeks, Röntgen convinced himself he was correct, and on January 1, 1896 sent out preprints of his article to many scientists.
1896
At the meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, Röntgen's discovery of X-rays is discussed. Henri Becquerel immediately sees a connection between X-rays and fluorescence, which he had been studying. He performs a number of experiments on fluorescent materials and on March 2, 1896 announces that he had found that certain compounds of Uranium gave off new rays regardless if they fluoresced.
Becquerel tested a number of phosphorescent or fluorescent substances to see if they emited X-rays. His experimental procedure involved wrapping photographic plates with thick black paper and then placing the substance to be tested on the paper. This was then exposed to sunlight for several hours. If X-rays were emitted, they would pass through the paper and fog the plate. Becquerel's first tests gave negative results. However he eventually tested uranyl potassium sulfate, a uranium salt, and achieved positive results. At the end of February, Becquerel attempted to repeat this experiment, but it was cloudy in Paris so he placed his experimental setup in a drawer until March 1. He proceeded to develop the plate and found that the fogging was just as intense as the experiment in which the uranium salt had been exposed to sunlight. Becquerel realized that the fogging of the plate had nothing to do with the fluorescent properties of the salt or X-rays. He had discovered the phenomenon we now know as radioactivity.
1897
While director of the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge, J. J. Thomson reports the discovery of a negatively charged constituent of all atoms. He names these particles electrons after a name proposed in 1894 by G.J. Stoney.
Thomson used a gas discharge tube and external magnetic and electric fields to discover the electron. When just the external magnetic field was applied, the cathode rays in the tube were deflected a certain amount. When just the external electric field was applied, the cathode rays were deflected in the opposite direction. Both deflections indicated that the cathode rays possesed a negative charge. Finally, when both the external magnetic and electric fields were applied, Thomson could adjust their strengths so that their effects cancelled each other. In this way, Thomson discovered the charge to mass ratio of the electron.
Fall
While studying in Paris, Marie Curie begins a systemmatic study of all the known elements with the intent of discovering which of them emit Becquerel's rays. She finds that along with Uranium, Thorium also produces the rays. She proposes the name radioactivity for this phenomenon.She also studies natural ores and finds some of them to be more radioactive than Uranium or Thorium. Marie draws the conclusion that the ores contained an as yet undiscovered element which is more radioactive than Uranium or Thorium, She presents her studies on April 12, 1898. By July 1898, Marie and her husband Pierre have discovered one of these new elements which they name Polonium. In December of the same year they announce the discovery of Radium. Over the next four years they process several tons of pitchblende ore by hand and eventually isolate one decigram of radium chloride. From this, Marie is able to determine radium's atomic weight. All of this work is reported in Marie's doctoral thesis on June 25, 1903.
1898
While working at the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge, Ernest Rutherford identifies two types of radiation emitted from Uranium. He calls them alpha and beta. In 1900, Paul Villard finds a third type which he calls gamma. During this same year, it is discovered that beta radiation is composed of electrons, and gamma radiation is very short wavelength electro-magnetic rays. The nature of alpha radiation remains a mystery until 1908 when Rutherford shows them to be Helium nulcei.
1900
In order to solve the blackbody problem, Max Planck introduces the idea of the quantum. He hypothesizes that energy is not continuous but made of small packets called quanta.
1900-1903
Rutherford and Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal develop the theory of radioactive transmutation which says that when a radioactive atom emits an alpha or beta particle, it really breaks into two parts, the particle and a heavy leftover part which is physically and chemically different from the parent atom. They also establish that the activity of radioactive substances decreases in a characteristic way which we now know as the half-life.
1905
September
Albert Einstein submits his second paper on special relativity in which he introduces his famous relation between mass and energy.
1911
Rutherford, now at the University of Manchester, reports the results of research carried out over the past three years with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden. They fired alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil expecting to observe the particles pass through the foil unhindered. Most did, however a few were deflected at great angles leading Rutherford to conclude that all of the positive charge in the atom was concentrated in a tiny area called the nulceus. The negatively charged electrons were placed outside of the nucleus.
1911
C. T. R. Wilson invents the cloud chamber, which allows subatomic particles to be viewed for the first time.
The Wilson Cloud Chamber is a particle detector in which the path of a fast charged particle is made visible by the formation of liquid droplets on the ions left by the particle as it passes through the gas in the chamber. The interior of a cloud chamber contains a mixture of a gas such as air, argon, or helium and a vapor such as water or alcohol. When such a mixture is made supersaturated in the vapor component by cooling of the gas (typically by expansion), the vapor tends to condense preferentially on charged ions in the gas. Since a fast moving charged particle produces many ions in its passage through the gas, condensation of the vapor leaves a trail of droplets to indicate the path of the particle. By placing the cloud chamber in a magnetic field and photographing the resulting trails, the mass, velocity and charge of the particle can be determined.
1913
Frederick Soddy develops the concept of isotopes to explain the large number of radioactive particles which had been discovered. Isotopes (from the Greek "same place") are atoms with the same atomic number but different atomic weights.
Using the newly discovered field of X-ray spectroscopy, Henry Moseley discovers a regular, step like increase in the frequency of the Ka line in the spectra of elements. The progression of the Ka line could be expressed as a function of an integer, Z, which Moseley named the atomic number. He surmised that it defined the net positive charge, or number of protons, in an atom. By ordering the elements by increasing atomic number and not by increasing atomic mass as Mendeleev had done, Moseley was able to find agreement with Mendeleev's table without having to switch the positions of any elements. The real importance of Moseley's periodic table is that by ordering the elements in terms of atomic number, which increases by integer values, there is no possibility of finding new elements in between other successive elements because we can not have half a proton. So Moseley's table limited the number of known elements to 92 (H [Z=1] to U [Z=92]). This allowed Moseley to predict the existence of seven elements which had not yet been discovered and, along with Soddy's idea of isotopes, allowed scientists to sort out all of the radioactive decay fragments which had been misinterpreted as new elements.
"Moseley's step ladder" arranged with frequency decreasing from left to right. The darker of the two lines is Ka, the other Kb. The regular decrease in frequency of both lines can be seen. It is obvious that something is missing between Ca and Ti. If we move Ca up, we find another spectra can be placed in the sequence. This is Scandium, which was known to Moseley but which he had not yet examined when he drew up the ladder.
In order to more easily count radioactive decays, Hans Geiger invents an electronic counter which now bears his name.
A Geiger counter consists of a tube filled with argon gas. A potential difference exists between the inside wall of the tube and a wire that runs down the middle of the tube. Argon gas , however, does not conduct electricity. If an alpha, beta, or gamma ray enters the tube through the thin window, it ionizes argon atoms along its path. These ions and the corresponding electrons cause a brief electrical discharge between the wire and the wall of the tube, thereby producing a current pulse. This pulse is amplified and counted electronically.
Neils Bohr develops a new model of the atom in which he explained the spectrum of hydrogen by introducing quantized electron orbits. Bohr postulated that atoms don't collapse and that light is emitted from atoms at only certain wavelengths because the electron can exist in only certain orbits or energy levels. We say that the energy of the electron is quantized, that is, it can have only certain discrete energies and none in between.
1917-1919
Rutherford bombards Nitrogen atoms with alpha particles and creates atoms of Oxygen. This is the first demonstration of artificial transmutation, the changing of one element into another. It is also the first experimental proof of the existence of protons.
1919
Francis Aston invents the Mass Spectrometer, a device capable of separating isotopes of an element and also accurately measuring isotope masses. Aston initially separated neon into Ne-20 and Ne-22. Over the years, he also found that the mass of an isotope's nucleus never equaled the sum of the masses of its protons and neutrons. Aston reasoned that part of the mass of the protons and neutrons was converted into energy, which could be calculated using E = mc^2. Over the next two decades, Aston would identify 212 of the known stable isoptopes.
1924
Louis De Broglie explains Bohr's quantized electron orbits by proposing that electrons could behave as waves.
1926
Using Bohr's and de Broglie's ideas, Erwin Scrödinger develops the Quantum Mechanical model of the atom.
1927
Werner Heisenberg develops the Uncertainty Principle, stating it is impossible to know both the exact position and momentum of an electron.
1929
At the University of California, Ernest O. Lawrence invents the cyclotron, a device for accelerating particles to be used in nuclear disintegrations. The first such disintegrations with a cyclotron are accomplished in 1932.
In a cyclotron, charged particles, such as protons, are produced at the center of the instrument. These particles move in a circular path because of the confining magnetic field above and below. The particles are alternately pushed and pulled by the alternating electric current thereby acquiring more and more energy. As they move faster, they spiral outward. After about one hundred orbits they emerge from the instrument with great energy.
1932
February
James Chadwick bombards Berylium nuclei with alpha particles and discovers neutrons. The neutron had been predicted by Rutherford in 1920 and its discovery had been on Chadwick's mind ever since.
Harold Urey and his coworkers at Columbia University announce the discovery of deuterium, one of the heavy isotopes of hydrogen.
Naturally occuring hydrogen consists of two isotopes. A third isotope, tritium, was created in 1934. Tritium is radioactive and decays by beta decay with a half life of 12.3 years.
June
John D. Cockcroft (1897-1967) and Ernest T. S. Walton (1903-1995) become the first to disintigrate stable nuclei by the use of artificially accelerated particles.
Protons were accelerated and slammed into lithium atoms producing helium and energy. This reaction was the first experimental proof of Einstein's E = mc^2.
While studying cosmic rays, Carl Anderson discovers a fourth elementary particle, the positron.
The positron is a positively charged electron. It is the decay product of many radioactive isotopes, such as carbon-11.
1933
Fall
While in London, Leo Szilard envisions neutron induced chain reactions leading to the release of incredible amounts of energy.
1934
January,15
Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie announce the discovery of induced radioactivity. They bombard Al, Mg and B with alpha particles and turn an initially stable nucleus into a radioactive one.
September
Ida Noddack publishes a paper suggesting that under neutron bomdardment, heavy nuclei like uranium may break up into several large fragments. Her article is largely ignored.
1934-1935
Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in Rome undertake a systematic study of neutron induced nuclear reactions of every element. One purpose is to produce new nuclides. In May 1934, they bombard uranium for the first time. On October 22, 1934 they discover that paraffin wax slows the neutrons and greatly increases the activity. During this time, Fermi and his team become the first humans to cause nuclear fission, but they do not recognize it. Part of their standard experimental procedure includes covering their uranium samples with a thin sheet of aluminum foil to filter out unwanted alpha particles. Unbeknownst to them, the aluminum also stops the fission products from reaching their detectors. It would not be until the beginning of 1939 that nuclear fission would finally be recognized. Writer W.L. Laurence has called this delay the "Great Five Year Miracle that Saved the World"
Using reactions of lighter elements, Fermi hypothesized that the following sequence should take place when uranium was bombarded by neutrons.
1935
Arthur Dempster at the University of Chicago discovers the Uranium-235 isotope.
1936
Bohr publishes his theory of the compound nucleus. He visualized a nucleus made up of neutrons and protons closely packed together rather than a single particle. In this model, a neutron, upon colliding with a heavy nucleus, does not interact with just a single nucleon, but rather distributes its energy throughout the nucleus. This creates a slightly unstable nucleus which, in a distinct second stage, would lose its extra energy by decaying in a number of different ways.
1937
October
Following up on a suggestion made by George Gamov in 1928, Bohr publishes the liquid drop model of the nucleus. In this model, the nucleus can be thought of as a drop of liquid which, when acted upon by some outside influence, pulsates and eventually splits in two.
1938
December
After Fermi's experiments, scientists try to identify the products of the neutron bombardment of uranium but can not. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman finally show that two of the products are Barium-139 and Lanthanum-140. They suspect that the uranium atom has been split, but are reluctant to propose such a radical idea.
1939
January
Hahn communicates his results to his long time partner, Lise Meitner, who, being Jewish, is in exile in Stockholm. Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, work out the details of Hahn and Strassman's observations. They take the final step and suggest that the uranium atom has been split into two nuclei of roughly equal size, a process they call nuclear fission. Frisch performs the verifying experiments after returning to his position at Bohr's Institute in Copenhagen.
Neils Bohr brings the news of fission to the U.S. when he travels there for a conference.
Scientists quickly duplicate Frisch's experiment and confirm nuclear fission.
The vertical pulses on the oscilliscope screen indicate the fission of U-235 nuclei. It was these pulses that Fermi and his team missed but that Frisch saw in his experiments to verify nuclear fission in Janurary 1939.
February-March
Within a week of each other, Frederic Joliot-Curie's team in Paris and Fermi and Szilard at Columbia discover that secondary neutrons are released during uranium fission thus making a chain reaction feasible.
September
The Physical Review publishes a paper by Bohr and Princeton physicist John Wheeler describing quantitatively all of fission theory. In the article they explain that Uranium-235 is responsible for fission.
World War II begins.
Fall
At the prompting of Leo Szilard, Einstein signs a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the danger of atomic bombs and urging that the U.S. take a lead in their production. The letter is delivered to the president by Alexander Sachs on October 11, 1939. Spurred by Einstein's letter, Roosevelt establishes the Advisory Committee on Uranium which meets on Oct. 21 to discuss nuclear fission, power sources and bombs. The military gives $6,000 to the committee for chain reaction experiments.
1940
March
Working in Birmingham, Otto Frisch and Rudolph Peierls consider fast neutron fission of Uranium-235. They calculate that a critical mass of only about one kg is needed and that the resulting explosion would be tremendous.
Frisch's and Peierl's estimate turned out to be a bit optimistic. The actual values of critical masses were determined latter at Los Alamos and are listed below. Scientists discovered that the critical mass could be reduced by the use of a thick casing of natural uranium which surrounded the critical mass, or core. This tamper, as it was called, reflected neutrons back into the core and helped to hold the core together for a fraction of a second while the chain reaction progressed.
John Dunning at Columbia bombards with neutrons a small sample of U-235 that had been separated by Alfred Nier at the University of Minnesota. Dunning shows that it was indeed the U-235 isotope that was responsible for the slow neutron fission of uranium, just as Bohr and Wheeler had hypothesied.
April
The MAUD committee is formed in England to study the theoretical aspects of the bomb. By the spring of 1941, all of the basics of the bomb and its effects had been worked out.
June12
Realizing the need to organize American science for war, Carnegie Institute president Vannevar Bush convinces Roosevelt to place him at the head of a National Defense Research Committee. The NDRC was to search for new opportunities to apply science to the needs of war. Fission research was at the top of the list. Being a government agency, the NDRC had its own budget and could undertake any research the committee deemed important. The Advisory Committee on Uranium became a sub-committee of the NDRC in charge of fission research.
Summer
Francis Simon and his colleagues working at Oxford quantify the gaseous diffusion separation of U-235.
Gaseous Diffusion makes use of the fact that the rate at which gas molecules diffuse through a porous barrier is inversely proportional to their mass. In other words, lighter molecules will pass through a barrier more quickly than heavier molecules. This method would eventually be used to separate U-235 from U-238 at Oak Ridge.
1941
Ernest O. Lawrence begins contemplating the electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes.
Lawrence realized that by modifying his cyclotron, he could achieve isotope separation just as in a mass spectrometer. However this was a slow, inefficient means of separation which would require many individual units to provide a decent yield.
Spring
At Berkeley, Glenn Seaborg, along with American chemists Joe Kennedy and Art Wahl and Italian physicist Emilio Segre discover Plutonium and determine it to be fissionable like U-235.
June
The Office of Scientific Research and Development is formed to mobilize the scientific resources of the nation and apply the results of research to national defense. Vannevar Bush is named director and answers only to the President . The NDRC, the military labs and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics were all research organizations. The OSRD was put in charge of all of them and also empowered with the authority to pursue engineering development. The NDRC continued as part of the OSRD with Harvard president James B. Conant in charge. The NDRC's mission was to make recommendations on research and development. Around this same time Bush orders a series of National Academy of Sciences studies to determine the current state of knowledge on nuclear fission.
September
At Columbia University, Fermi assembles his first nuclear pile in an attempt to create a slow neutron induced chain reaction in uranium. He fails, but realizes that with better materials, the chain reaction is possible.
The pile was simply a lattice of uranium or uranium oxide interspersed within graphite. The graphite slowed down neutrons which allowed the fission of U-235 to proceed quite readily. Some of the neutrons were captured by U-238 creating Pu-239. Fermi defined the reproduction factor "k" to allow him to determine whether a pile would become critical. "k" is the average number of secondary neutrons produced by one original neutron in the pile. "k" had to be greater than one for the chain reaction to proceed. The "k" value for this pile was 0.87.
Bohr and Heisenberg meet in Copenhagen.
The Story
The Tony Award-winning Copenhagen is inspired by actual events that have intrigued and baffled historians for more than 50 years. A 1941 meeting occurred between two brilliant physicists, longtime friends whose work together had opened the way to the atom, but who were now on opposite sides of World War II. German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a covert trip at great risk to see his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe in Copenhagen, but the meeting ended in disaster. Bohr was half-Jewish and a citizen of occupied Denmark. Heisenberg was a professor at Leipzig in Germany, but unknown to Bohr, he had become head of the Nazi regime's project to harness atomic energy. Both men were under surveillance.
Why did Heisenberg go to Denmark, and what did the two men say to each other? What happened at this pivotal meeting that was a defining moment of the modern nuclear age? The play explores a number of issues: the possible motives for this visit, whether it could have taken a different course, and if so, whether this might have produced a different outcome to the World War, since it is known that Heisenberg shared with Bohr that there was work being done to produce an atomic bomb. This raises the further issue of the morality of scientists working on atomic energy, which had the capability to produce a new weapon of incredible destructive power.
THE CHARACTERS
Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen on October 7, 1885, as the son of Christian Bohr, Professor of Physiology at Copenhagen University, and his wife Ellen, née Adler. Niels, together with his younger brother Harald (the future Professor in Mathematics), grew up in an atmosphere most favorable to the development of his genius - his father was an eminent physiologist and was largely responsible for awakening his interest in physics while still at school, his mother came from a family distinguished in the field of education.
After matriculation at the Gammelholm Grammar School in 1903, he entered Copenhagen University where he came under the guidance of Professor C. Christiansen, a profoundly original and highly endowed physicist, and took his Master's degree in Physics in 1909 and his Doctor's
degree in 1911.
Bohr's studies became more theoretical in character as time pasted, his doctor's disputation being a purely theoretical piece of work on the explanation of the properties of the metals with the aid of the electron theory, which remains to this day a classic on the subject. It was in this work that Bohr was first confronted with the implications of Planck's quantum theory of radiation.
In the autumn of 1911 he made a stay at Cambridge, where he profited by following the experimental work going on in the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir J.J. Thomson's guidance, at the same time as he pursued own theoretical studies. In the spring of 1912 he was at work in Professor Rutherford's laboratory in Manchester, where just in those years such an intensive scientific life and activity prevailed as a consequence of that investigator's fundamental inquiries into the radioactive phenomena. Having there carried out a theoretical piece of work on the absorption of alpha rays, which was published in the Philosophical Magazine, 1913, he passed on to a study of the structure of atoms on the basis of Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus. By introducing conceptions borrowed from the Quantum Theory as established by Planck, which had gradually come to occupy a prominent position in the science of theoretical physics, he succeeded in working out and presenting a picture of atomic structure that, with later improvements (mainly as a result of Heisenberg's ideas in 1925), still fitly serves as an elucidation of the physical and chemical properties of the elements.
In 1913-1914 Bohr held a Lectureship in Physics at Copenhagen University and in 1914-1916 a similar appointment at the Victoria University in Manchester. In 1916 he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Copenhagen University, and since 1920 (until his death in 1962) he was at the head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, established for him at that university.
Recognition of his work on the structure of atoms came with the award of the Nobel Prize for 1922.
Bohr's activities in his Institute were since 1930 more and more directed to research on the constitution of the atomic nuclei, and of their transmutations and disintegrations. In 1936 he pointed out that in nuclear processes the smallness of the region in which interactions take place, as well as the strength of these interactions, justify the transition processes to be described more in a classical way than in the case of atoms (Cf. »Neutron capture and nuclear constitution«, Nature, 137 (1936) 344).
A liquid drop would, according to this view, give a very good picture of the nucleus. This so-called liquid droplet theory permitted the understanding of the mechanism of nuclear fission, when the splitting of uranium was discovered by Hahn and Strassmann, in 1939, and formed the basis of important theoretical studies in this field (among others, by Frisch and Meitner).
Bohr also contributed to the clarification of the problems encountered in quantum physics, in particular by developing the concept of complementarily. Hereby he could show how deeply the changes in the field of physics have affected fundamental features of our scientific outlook and how the consequences of this change of attitude reach far beyond the scope of atomic physics and touch upon all domains of human knowledge. These views are discussed in a number of essays, written during the years 1933-1962. They are available in English, collected in two volumes with the title Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge and Essays 1958-1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, edited by John Wiley and Sons, New York and London, in 1958 and 1963, respectively.
During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II, Bohr escaped to Sweden and spent the last two years of the war in England and America, where he became associated with the Atomic Energy Project. In his later years, he devoted his work to the peaceful application of atomic physics and to political problems arising from the development of atomic weapons. In particular, he advocated a development towards full openness between nations. His views are especially set forth in his Open Letter to the United Nations, June 9, 1950.
Until the end, Bohr's mind remained alert as ever; during the last few years of his life he had shown keen interest in the new developments of molecular biology. The latest formulation of his thoughts on the problem of Life appeared in his final (unfinished) article, published after his death: "Licht und Leben-noch einmal", Naturwiss. 50 (1963) 72: (in English: "Light and Life revisited", ICSU Rev., 5 (1963) 194).
Professor Bohr was married, in 1912, to Margrethe Nørlund, who was for him an ideal companion. They had six sons, of whom they lost two; the other four have made distinguished careers in various professions - Hans Henrik (M.D.), Erik (chemical engineer), Aage (Ph.D., theoretical physicist, following his father as Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics), Ernest (lawyer).
Niels Bohr died in Copenhagen on November 18, 1962.
Werner Heisenberg was born on 5th December 1901, at Würzburg. He was the son of Dr. August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. His father later became Professor of the Middle and Modern Greek languages in the University of Munich.
Heisenberg went to the Maximilian school at Munich until 1920, when he went to the University of Munich to study physics under Sommerfeld, Wien, Pringsheim, and Rosenthal. During the winter of 1922-1923 he went to Göttingen to study physics under Max Born, Franck, and Hilbert. In 1923 he took his Ph.D. at the University of Munich and then became Assistant to Max Born at the University of Göttingen, and in 1924 he gained the venia legendi at that University.
From 1924 until 1925 he worked, with a Rockefeller Grant, with Niels Bohr, at the University of Copenhagen, returning for the summer of 1925 to Göttingen.
In 1926 he was appointed Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen under Niels Bohr and in 1927, when he was only 26, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig.
In 1929 he went on a lecture tour to the United States, Japan, and India.
In 1941 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Berlin and Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics there.
At the end of the Second World War he, and other German physicists, were taken prisoner by American troops and sent to England, but in 1946 he returned to Germany and reorganized, with his colleagues, the Institute for Physics at Göttingen. This Institute was, in 1948, renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics.
In 1948 Heisenberg stayed for some months in Cambridge, England, to give lectures, and in 1950 and 1954 he was invited to lecture in the United States. In the winter of 1955-1956 he gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, these lectures being subsequently published as a book.
During 1955 Heisenberg was occupied with preparations for the removal of the Max Planck Institute for Physics to Munich. Still Director of this Institute, he went with it to Munich and in 1958 he was appointed Professor of Physics in the University of Munich. His Institute was then being renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.
Heisenberg's name will always be associated with his theory of quantum mechanics, published in 1925, when he was only 23 years old. For this theory and the applications of it which resulted especially in the discovery of allotropic forms of hydrogen, Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932.
His new theory was based only on what can be observed, that is to say, on the radiation emitted by the atom. We cannot, he said, always assign to an electron a position in space at a given time, nor follow it in its orbit, so that we cannot assume that the planetary orbits postulated by Niels Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities, such as position, velocity, etc. should be represented, not by ordinary numbers, but by abstract mathematical structures called "matrices" and he formulated his new theory in terms of matrix equations.
Later Heisenberg stated his famous principle of uncertainty, which lays it down that the determination of the position and momentum of a mobile particle necessarily contains errors the product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant h and that, although these errors are negligible on the human scale, they cannot be ignored in studies of the atom.
From 1957 onwards Heisenberg was interested in work on problems of plasma physics and thermonuclear processes, and also much work in close collaboration with the International Institute of Atomic Physics at Geneva. He was for several years Chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee of this Institute and subsequently remained a member of this Committee.
When he became, in 1953, President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he did much to further the policy of this Foundation, which was to invite scientists from other countries to Germany and to help them to work there.
Since 1953 his own theoretical work was concentrated on the unified field theory of elementary particles which seems to him to be the key to an understanding of the physics of elementary particles.
One of his hobbies was classical music: he was a distinguished pianist. In 1937 Heisenberg married Elisabeth Schumacher. They had seven children, and lived in Munich.
Werner Heisenberg died in 1976.
Margrethe Bohr
Little information can be found about Margrethe’s personal life. Not only was she Niels’ wife, but Margrethe worked as Niels’ personal secretary—writing his official correspondences, typing notes, and transcribing his dictations. These positions gave Margrethe total knowledge of her husband’s work. In the play, she is acutely aware of the men’s games, techniques, failings, and accomplishments. She enlightens their situation from her unique perspective.
THE PLAYWRIGHT
English dramatist, columnist, reporter and translator Michael Frayn was born on September 8, 1933, in the suburbs of London. His mother, a once promising young violinist, died when Frayn was only 12, and his father, a rep for an asbestos and roofing materials firm, was forced to withdraw the young boy from the expensive private school he was used to attending in favor of a cheaper public education. Frayn, however, thrived in this new environment. Growing up in Ewell, south London, the young boy displayed a talent for music and poetry, and by the time he was a teenager, he knew that he wanted to be a writer of some sort.
After a brief stint in the army during which time he served as a Russian interpreter, Frayn attended the University of Cambridge. Graduating in 1957 with a degree in "moral sciences", he soon began his writing career as a reporter and columnist for the Manchester Guardian (1957-62) and The Observer (1962-68). During this time, he published several collections of essays from his columns and also wrote several novels including The Tin Men (1965), The Russian Interpreter (1966), and A Very Private Life (1968).
Frayn's first play was written for an evening of one-acts, but was rejected by the producer. Irritated, Frayn decided he would simply write several more pieces and put on an evening of his own short plays. Unfortunately, The Two of Us (1970), starring Lynne Redgrave and Richard Briars, was fairly disastrous. The production made back its money thanks mostly to the performances of Redgrave and Briars, but it was viciously attacked by the critics, and after the premiere, Frayn was spat upon in the street by audience members. Undaunted, however, Frayn continued to write for the stage, and his next efforts were far more successful.
Alphabetical Order (1975) tells the story of a newspaper office that loses its identity when an overly efficient employee attempts to impose order on the chaotic environment. This time, the play received raves from the critics and won Frayn the Evening Standard Award for "Best Comedy of the Year". He followed this success with Clouds (1976), Donkey's Years (1977), and Make or Break (1980) which also won the Evening Standard Award. However, Frayn is perhaps best know for Noises Off (1982), a frenetic behind the scenes look at an English theatrical troupe putting on a typically English farce. Noises Off won Frayn a third Evening Standard Award for "Best Comedy of the Year" and enjoyed a run of four years in London's West End. A companion piece, Look Look (1990), attempted to add a new twist. This time, the audience would watch an audience watching a play, but the idea didn't entirely hold together and the production only lasted 27 performances.
Frayn’s most recent piece Copenhagen (1998), dramatizes the disastrous 1941 meeting between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and a former colleague and friend, Danish physicist Neils Bohr. Hailed as an imaginative and fascinating recreation of the historical meeting, Copenhagen earned "Best Play" honors at the 1998 Evening Standard Awards and brought Frayn once again to the attention of international audiences.
Frayn has also translated several plays by Chekhov including The Cherry Orchard (1978), Three Sisters (1983), and Uncle Vanya (1988), Chekhov's first, untitled play as Wild Honey, and four of his one-acts: The Evils of Tobacco, Swan Song, The Bear and The Proposal. His first film, Clockwise (1986), featured John Cleese, and his second film, First and Last (1990), won an international Emmy Award. The film adaptation of Noises Off was produced by Disney with a star-studded cast and Alphabetical Order, Donkey's Years, Make and Break, and Benefactors have all been filmed for UK television. One of Frayn's novels, A Landing on the Sun (1991), was presented on the BBC in 1994, and another, Headlong (1999) was a contender for the Booker Prize.
Elsevier Publishing Company. Biography of W Heisenberg. 2001. <http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1932/heisenberg-bio.html>
Elsevier Publishing Company. Biography of N. H. D. Bohr. 2001. <http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1922/bohr-bio.html>
Elsevier Publishing Company. Biography of A. Einstein. 2001. <http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html>
Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen: A Play. New York: Anchor Books, 2001
Hughes, Robert. Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists. New York: Penguin, 2001
Winchester-Thurston. What is Quantum Physics. 1996. <http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html>.