Confusion in Warsaw

No remarkable new contributions to physical theory came out of Warsaw, Poland last week, and none was expected. Nevertheless, an International Conference on New Theories in Physics, sponsored by the League of Nations1 International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, was in session there, attended by some 30 giants of theoretical physics. On hand were Denmark's Niels Bohr and France's Louis de Broglie. Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger of Germany and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac of England had been expected but did not appear. These five men alone have created almost the whole structure of Quantum Mechanics, which deals mathematically with the mathematically complex innards of the atom. Presumably, Herren Heisenberg and Schrodinger were forbidden to attend because of the Nazi Government's antipathy for the League of Nations. Why Dirac of democratic Britain did not appear was not disclosed. Physicist Heisenberg's paper was presented for him by colleagues from Belgium and Holland.

The physicists' talk was lively and brilliant. But they spent most of their time trying to find some way to mend the painful gap between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, bickering politely about the validity and application of physical theories, asking themselves what physical reality is after all. Bohr criticized de Broglie and almost everyone present criticized Sir Arthur Eddington. Altogether they gave the impression of giants wallowing in a quagmire.

Einstein's Relativity was practically complete in 1915, and Quantum Mechanics had its fullest flowering in the 19205. Since then, theoretical physics has been bogged down in ever-deepening sinks of paradox and abstraction, while experimental physics has forged gaily ahead, with the discovery of the neutron and positron, of artificial radioactivity, of heavyweight hydrogen.

The most productive years of a topflight theoretical physicist appear to be about the same as those of a championship tennis player. Most of the five bigwigs of Quantum Mechanics did their most important work when they were very young men. Heisenberg, for example, laid down his celebrated Uncertainty Principle (relating to the position and velocity of electrons) when he was 26; Dirac mathematically deduced the existence of the positive electron when he was 28. Once a theorist has constructed a powerful new theory, he is likely to become fond of it and spend much energy polishing and protecting it. To more than one scientist who contemplated last week's apparently fruitless meeting in Warsaw, it seemed likely that when theory emerges from its present slough, young minds with fresh imaginations will show the way.

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