Love and physics: Margrethe Nørlund and Niels Bohr's creativity ...

Megan Shields Formato, Harvard University, U.S.A.
Writing the Atom: Writing Practices and the Bohr Atom
This paper describes how an important moment in early twentieth century physics – the discovery and
description of the Bohr model of the atom– was contingent upon the strange writing practices of the
Danish physicist Niels Bohr. In the primary and secondary literature Bohr’s writing practices have the
status of an entertaining puzzle or peripheral anecdote, something that is always mentioned but almost
never taken up directly. He skied slowly; he recited Icelandic sagas; and, by the way, he moved through
upwards of fifty drafts for a simple birthday card and dictated many of his first drafts to his wife,
Margrethe. In my project, I move Bohr’s writing practices to the center and ask what these practices
were, how they acted as tools in quantum theory, and how they can help us to access and describe the
competing ideas about scientific communication held by the wider physics community between 1911
and 1924. In this paper, I will look at how Bohr’s writing and dictation practices worked sometimes in
tandem and sometimes against his choice to model the electron’s orbit on more familiar, but much
larger planetary systems.
This paper builds on other work by historians of science such as Andrew Warwick, David
Kaiser and Ursula Klein who share the questions of how the material practices and technologies—the
“paper tools”—leave traces in the theoretical conceptions themselves. I ask how Bohr’s dictation,
writing and drawing practices persist in the models and theories he helped create.
Karl Grandin, Royal Academy of Science, Sweden
Niels Bohr as seen from a Swedish perspective
Niels Bohr made several crucial contributions to the development of physics in the 20 th century, not
only through his scientific publications but also through establishing the important environment for
international collaboration at the institute at Blegdamsvej. In this talk I will investigate Bohr’s activities
from a Scandinavian perspective, especially Bohr as seen from the Swedish perspective. Besides all his
other important activities Bohr took an active interest throughout his career in the local promotion of
the physical sciences. Bohr as seen from a Swedish perspective might then not only satisfy the local
historical interest in the matter, but also add elements to the understanding of Bohr’s work by taking the
Scandinavian connection into consideration. There is a story from the Second Scandinavian Congress
of Mathematicians in Copenhagen in 1911, when the Swedish theoretical physicist C.W. Oseen came
into contact with Niels Bohr and subsequently supported Bohr in obtaining a professorship and
discussing how to strengthen physics in Denmark and Sweden. Later on Bohr was even offered to
become a member of the physics Nobel committee. The Scandinavian element is even more
pronounced after the war through for instance discussions of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy with
the Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander and the establishment of Nordita.
5