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THE SOLVAY CONFERENCES on PHYSICS Aspects of the Development of Physics Since 1911 the Solvay Conferences on Physics

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THE SOLVAY CONFERENCES on PHYSICS Aspects of the Development of Physics Since 1911 the Solvay Conferences on Physics THE SOLVAY CONFERENCES ON PHYSICS Aspects of the Development of Physics since 1911 The Solvay Conferences on Physics ASPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHYSICS SINCE 1911 by Jagdish Mehra With a Foreword by Werner Heisenberg D. Reidel Publishing Company Dordrecht-Holland / Boston-U.S.A. 1975 LibflU)' of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mehra, Jagdish. The Solvay Cooferc:ooes on Physics. locludes bibliographical references and index. I. Solvay Cooferenceon Physics. 2. Solvay, Emest,1838-1922. 3. Physics-History. QCI.5792M43 530'.09 75-28332 ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1869-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1867-8 DOl: 10.10071978-94-010-1867-8 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordte;:bt, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Inc. Lincoln Buildins. 160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, Mass. 02043, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved Copyright C 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Sottcover reprint orthe hardcover 1st edition 1975 No pari of the material protected by this copyriJhl notice may be reproduced or utili:oed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopyi.og, recording or by any infonnational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner Foreword Jagdish Mehra's historical account of the Solvay Conferences from 1911 to 1973 demonstrates not only the great influence which these conferences have had on the development of modern physics, but it also shows clearly how far-sighted and well­ planned were the intentions of Ernest Solvay when he took the initiative for organizing a new type of international conferences. In contrast to the conventional meetings in which reports are given on the successful solution of scientific problems, the Solvay Conferences were conceived to help directly in solving specific problems of unusual difficulty. The importance of the quantum structure of Nature had become well under­ stood already by 1911, but at that time there was no hope for an answer to the ex­ tremely difficult new questions posed by the atomic phenomena. The new conferences should therefore be devoted primarily to thorough discussions of such problems be­ tween a small number of the most competent physicists, and Ernest Solvay was guided by the hope that the discussions would eventually lead to a real and substantial progress. The earliest Solvay Conferences which I attended were those of 1927, 1930 and 1933, and they served this purpose extremely well. In 1926 the mathematical formalism of quantum- and wave-mechanics approached its final shape, but the interpretation was still controversial. Schrodinger hoped that his matter waves could be considered as waves in three-dimensional space and time, and that the discontinuous feature of quantum 'jumps' could be avoided thereby. Born, in his theory of collisions, had given the statistical interpretation of the waves in a many-dimensional configuration space. The members of the Copenhagen group, primarily Bohr, Kramers, Pauli and I, after a thorough analysis of the uncertainty principle and the concept of com­ plementarity, had come to the conviction that the paradoxa of quantum theory could be finally resolved within their philosophy, and that the new interpretation would answer all the hard questions for a well-defined experimental situation. However, there were many problems in which this final answer had not yet been given ex­ plicitly. Therefore the discussions at the 1927 Solvay Conference, from the very beginning, centred around the paradoxa of quantum theory. The Compton effect emphasized the apparent wave-particle duality; the flexibility of the mathematical formalism demonstrated that the two pictures, waves and particles, may be compatible, if the limited range of their applicability is taken properly into account. Einstein criticized this very limitation because it seemed to undermine the ideal of an objective descrip­ tion of Nature, which had been considered to lie at the basis of physics. Besides it in­ troduced a statistical element into the foundations of physics, which Einstein would VI FOREWORD not admit. Einstein therefore suggested special experimental arrangements for which, in his opinion, the uncertainty relations could be evaded. But the analysis carried out by Bohr and others during the Conference revealed errors in Einstein's arguments. In this situation, by means of intensive discussions, the Conference contributed direct­ ly to the clarification of the quantum-theoretical paradoxa. The next meeting (1930) dealt largely with the applications of quantum mechanics to problems of general interest in magnetism, such as the magnetic behaviour of solid bodies or the fine structure of spectral lines. The discussions made visible the wide field that had been opened up by the final understanding of quantum theory and they spread the knowledge of the new methods and their use in many parts of physics. The discussions on the paradoxa of quantum theory were taken up again between Bohr and Einstein. When Einstein discussed an experiment in which the energy of a photon was measured by its gravity, Bohr was able to demonstrate that the influence of the gravitational field on the frequency of light, as described in Einstein's theory of general relativity, was indeed just sufficient to guarantee the uncertainty relations; the inner consistency of quantum mechanics could not be better demonstrated. The whole weight of the Conference lay on the discussions, not on the reports, and the results justified the hopes of Ernest Solvay that this style would immediately foster progress in physics. Three years later, in the meeting of 1933, the interest had changed from quantum theory to the structure of the atomic nucleus. The discovery of the neutron by Chad­ wick, and of the positron by Dirac, Anderson and Blackett, had raised entirely new theoretical problems. If the nucleus consists of protons and neutrons, does it also contain electrons? Or are the electrons created in p-decay out of energy, as the posi­ tron-electron pairs are created by jI-quanta? Pauli enunciated his hypothesis of the neutrino. Again, theoretical research was actually carried forward at the Con­ ference by means of discussions between those who had the best insight into the dif­ ficult new problems. There can be no doubt that in those years the Solvay Conferen­ ces played an essential role in the history of physics. I have taken up these reminiscences in this foreword in order to emphasize that the historical influence of the Solvay Conferences on the development of physics was connected with the special style introduced by their founder: a small group of the most competent specialists from various countries discussing the unsolved problems of their field and thereby finding a basis for their solution. During the period following the Second World War the situation in physics had changed. Progress was mainly due to the new experimental results, e.g. the observa­ tions concerning the spectrum and the interaction of particles. Mter the radical changes brought about by the discovery (in 1932) of anti-particles and anti-matter had been interpreted and understood, no fundamental difficulty had appeared which would foreshadow new radical changes in the foundation of physics. The main obstacle to further progress seemed to be the high degree of complexity in the spectrum of par­ ticles, and with this obstacle the methods of the Solvay Conferences were perhaps less efficient than with the fundamental problems of the early 1920s. Nevertheless the FOREWORD vn Solvay Meetings have stood as an example of how much well-planned and well­ organized conferences can contribute to the progress of science, and this book provides a testimony of that progress. Munich. 19 November 1974 'Acknowledgements On several occasions during the 1970 Solvay Conference (on the symmetry proper­ ties of nuclei) I found myself answering various questions about the Solvay Confer­ ences on Physics: their origin, the fundamental problems which had come up for dis­ cussion and highlights of the encounters between famous physicists at the earlier Conferences, etc. It was possible to answer some of these questions because in previous visits to Brussels I had received the opportunity of studying many documents * relating to the Conferences. Moreover, I had had the benefit of conversations with Professors Niels Bohr, P. A. M. Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Leon Rosen­ feld t, all of whom attended the 1927 and 1930 Conferences (on quantum mechanics and magnetism, respectively) and had witnessed the Einstein-Bohr discussions. Pro­ fessors Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and Rosenfeld continued to take an active interest in the later Conferences, and I had been able to gather much interesting and useful in­ formation from them. Hitherto the only published accounts of the early Solvay Conferences, other than references to them in letters and memoirs, were: (1) Maurice de Broglie, Les Premiers Congres de Physique Solvay (Editions Albin Michel, Paris 1951), which gave short biographical sketches of the participants in the first Conseil Solvay and a very brief report on the first three Conferences, and (2) N. Bohr, 'The Solvay Meetings and the Development of Quantum Physics' (presented at the 1961 Solvay Conference), in which Bohr discussed the fundamental problems which came into focus at different times. During the 1970 Conference Professor I1ya Prigogine, Director of the I nstituts Internationaux de Physique
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