The Mind That Created the Bohr Atom∗
Bohr, 1913-2013, S´eminairePoincar´eXVII (2013) 19 { 58 S´eminairePoincar´e The Mind that Created the Bohr Atom∗ John L. Heilbron Berkeley and Oxford April House, Shilton Burford OX18 4AB, England \Philosophari volo, sed paucis, siger den nordiske natur." (I want to philosophize, but in a few words, says the Nordic temperament.) Møller, Skrifter (1930), 2, 364. \Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind." Spratt, History (1667), 392. Historians usually present their results as narrative and invoke ordinary motives, even if only a passion to solve a problem, to move the action along. Whatever physicists might think, historians still believe that particular outcomes have distinct causes. This wholesome doctrine is hard to follow, however, where the subject is creation. How can the historian or biographer hope to display a coherent narrative of a scientist's or artist's progress from one idea to another, from confusion to clarity, from knowing no more than anyone else to inventing something new to everyone? The historical actors themselves who try to fathom their course report unhelpfully that their insight or invention came suddenly, unconsciously, while they were thinking about something else. The recent release of a portion of the correspondence between Niels Bohr and his family, especially his fianc´ee,during his postdoctoral stay in England in 1911/12, invites an attempt at a causal account of his path to the three-part paper of 1913 that created the quantum atom (the \trilogy").
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