Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Jocular Physics: A Tribute to Bohr in Humor

Paul Halpern

Published May 1, 2011• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Copenhagen, starting in the 1920s and 1930s and continuing after the Second World War, was not just a center for extraordinary developments in quantum and nuclear physics; it also provided a perfect stage for physicists' abundant humor. We will examine the Journal of Jocular Physics, a humorous tribute to Bohr published on the occasions of his 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays. We will discuss how the articles in the journal reflected attempts by the contributors, such as Leon Rosenfeld, Victor Weisskopf and others, to interpret and explain aspects of Bohr’s philosophy, such as complementarity and the abandonment of pure Laplacian determinism. This talk (its title loosely translated in German to ‘lustige Physik’) is dedicated to the memory of the inspiring physicist and historian of physics Harry Lustig Journal of Jocular Physics • Tribute to Bohr on his 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays (October 7 -1935, 1945, 1955) • Alternative to “Festschrift:” otherwise Bohr would “feel it as his duty to read the contents and even try to learn something.” • Written by those who had research visits or associations with the Institute of Theoretical Physics (now Niels Bohr Institute) • Reprinted by Niels Bohr Archive during Bohr’s centenary in 1985 along with the much more widelyknown Copenhagen Faust • Shares much with CF in terms of rich veins of cynical humor Gamow’s description of humorous plays that proceeded and inspired the journal: “It became customary at the end of each spring conference at Blegdamsvej 15 (the street address of Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics) to produce a stunt pertaining to recent developments in physics. (Gamow, Thirty Years that Shook Physics, p. 167). Cover of the reprint version of the Journal of Jocular Physics Cover of Journal of Jocular Physics, Volume I, October 7, 1935 (Caricature of Bohr kneeling on the Earth, right hand on forehead, & pondering deep thoughts, like Rodin’s “The Thinker”) First piece: “Niels Bohr on His Fiftieth Birthday” by Kanetaka Ariyama. Sentimental ode to Bohr’s excellent teaching. Discusses progress in physics, including particles known and speculated about at the time: neutron, neutrino, positron. Written in Japanese translated into German Role of neutrino plays a central, humorous role throughout series • Prominent role in Copenhagen Faust • Association with Pauli, a much-satirized (and admired) physicist • “La Plainte du Neutrino” (The neutrino’s complaint) a parody of “Un secret” by Felix Arvers that compares the neutrino’s elusiveness to a secret unrequited love. Languages used in the first volume

Related papers

Niels Bohr on His 60th Birthday

Wolfgang Ernst Friederich Pauli

The present volume to which scientists of many nations from three continents have contributed, notwithstanding the adverse times, gives proof indeed that Professor Niels Bohr’s 60th birthday, on October 7, 1945, is not only his private, personal day of celebration, but a day of observance throughout the scientific community of physicists.1

Reviews of Modern Physics•Apr 1, 1945•46 citations

A Midrash upon Quantum Mechanics

Dietrick E. Thomsen

The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics has become the standard way of explaining the physical philosophical meaning of the mathematics of microscopic behavior. It developed from the thought of people who attended the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen during the 40 years that Niels Bohr directed it, from 1920 to 1962. Bohr took a large part in developing the Copenhagen Interpretation, he didn't escape all controversy over it (although the quote above is a bit of an exaggeration). Bohr did die before the experimental theoretical developments that have transposed the debate over the appropriateness adequacy of the Copenhagen Interpretation into a new key, he may well have been lucky to have escaped when he did. There is no authoritative codification of CI [the Copenhagen Interpretation], write T Gornitz C. E von Weizsacker of the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg, West Germany in' their formal presentation to the recent Loyola Conference on Mathematical Interpretational Problems in Relativistic Quantum Theory, and under the conditions of its origin there probably could not be one.... All prominent authors of the time who wrote on these questions, like Bohr, [Werner] Heisenberg, [Wolfgang] Pauli, J[ohn] v[on] Neumann on one side, [Albert] Einstein [Erwin] Schrodinger on the other, fell, so we feel, into some stammering when they tried to express their own positions. Nevertheless there is what might be called a Copenhagen attitude. It concentrates on observable phenomena, makes statistics probability central to its understanding, considers quantum mechanics primarily a theory of knowledge or information becomes a kind of physica negativa (analogous to a theologia negativa) in trying not to say too much about things that can't be seen or felt. For example, it doesn't much care whether the orbits of electrons in atoms are real or not and, in fact, tends to regard them as unreal. It appears in most textbooks as the standard way of looking at things.

Science News•Jul 11, 1987•1 citation

Niels Henrik David Bohr, 1885-1962

John Douglas Cockcroft, J. D. Cockcroft

Abstract Niels Bohr was born on 7 October 1885, the son of Professor Christian Bohr, the physiologist, and Ellen, daughter of D. B. Alder, a banker. He had one sister, Jenny, and a brother, Harald, who became Professor of Mathematics in the University of Copenhagen. They grew up in a home of culture. From his father, Niels became acquainted with the problems of biology and in later years became interested again in biological problems through his interests in complementarity. He was educated in Copenhagen, first at the Gammelholm School and then at the University. Whilst there, he became interested in philosophical problems through attending the lectures of Hoffding. According to Rosenfeld (Nordita Publication No. 57) ‘he was fascinated by some of the great religious figures of the past, especially the Jewish prophets and the Buddha; he earnestly endeavoured to penetrate the human side of their teachings and arrived at interpretations of striking originality. Into these sacred texts, coming from the innermost recesses of the human soul, he read an effort to account in a peculiar language for that deepest complementarity between rational knowledge and living experience of the cosmos which in his eyes characterized man’s ambiguous position and rules his whole activity. No wonder that such deep seated views were to play a leading part in his thought in later years and even pervade every shade of his sensitive reaction to the various impressions of everyday life’. During his adolescent years Niels Bohr together with his brother, Harald, were good footballers and his passion for sport was transferred in time to skiing and sailing. He was a lover of the arts and when Eric Gill’s carving of Rutherford installed in the Mond Laboratory at Cambridge was being criticized he was delighted to be presented by Dirac and Kapitza with a copy for his Institute at Copenhagen.

Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society•Nov 1, 1963•4 citations

Bohr: what does it all mean?

Andrew Whitaker

Wonderful news from Copenhagen Heisenberg and Schrödinger invented mathematical formalisms that provided correct answers to all the various problems of (non-relativistic) quantum theory. It was Bohr who uncovered the underlying significance of the theory; in particular he showed how the profound conceptual difficulties encountered as the theory developed – the so-called wave–particle duality, the totally unclassical nature of the uncertainty principle – could be neutralised by a revision, or more accurately a generalisation, of our use of physical concepts. Such was the generally accepted view of things from soon after 1927, when Bohr first put forward his ideas on complementarity at an international meeting of physicists at Como, through the 1930s, when it was felt that Bohr destroyed Einstein's contrary opinions, and certainly up to the time of Bohr's death in 1962. Bohr's analysis is usually spoken of as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, though it is instructive to realise that such a term was frowned upon by those closest to Bohr, since it appears to suggest that the interpretation is just one among (conceivably) many. Let us examine, for example, the words of Léon Rosenfeld, Bohr's disciple and long-term collaborator, as expounded at a conference in 1957 [52]. Rosenfeld maintained that any idea of ‘interpreting a formalism’ was a ‘false problem’, that in a good theory, the ‘ordinary language (spiced with technical jargon for the sake of conciseness)’ in which it is described, is ‘ inseparably united … with whatever mathematical apparatus is necessary’, that ‘we are here not faced with a matter of choice between two possible languages or two possible interpretations, but with a rational language intimately connected with the formalism and adapted to it, on the one hand, and with rather wild, metaphysical speculations … on the other’.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Jun 29, 2006•0 citations

The paradigm of complementarity

Sandro Petruccioli

‘The new wave mechanics gave rise to the hope that an account of atomic phenomena might be obtained which would not differ essentially from that afforded by the classical theories of electricity and magnetism. Unfortunately, Bohr's statement in the following communication of the principles underlying the description of atomic phenomena gives little, if any, encouragement in this direction.’ This comment is to be found in the brief note prefaced by the editors of the British journal Nature to Niels Bohr's paper ‘The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory’ in the supplement of 14 April 1928. The article in question is the famous paper which first introduced and defined the concept of ‘complementarity’ and outlined the basic points of what was to become known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the paper, Bohr returned to the arguments contained in the paper discussed at the International Congress of Physicists held at Como in September 1927 to mark the centenary of the death of Alessandro Volta and published in the proceedings of the same congress. It was probably his conviction that the new viewpoint adopted in the description of nature fully expressed the theoretical and cognitive content of quantum physics coupled with his enthusiasm at having achieved ‘after many years of struggling in the dark […] the fulfilment of the old hopes’ that induced him to give his work broader and more prestigious circulation.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Nov 18, 1993•0 citations

Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First Century Perspectives

Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse

Niels Bohr and Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr's philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the “Copenhagen Interpretation.” With respect to philosophical influences on Bohr's outlook, the contributors analyse prominent similarities between his viewpoint and Kantian ways of thinking, the views of the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding, and themes characteristic of American pragmatism. In recognizing the importance of Bohr's epistemological naturalism they examine his defence of the indispensability of classical concepts from a variety of different perspectives. This collection shows us that Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, now nearly a century old, still has the power to shed light on a variety of issues that have arisen only since his lifetime, as well as decoherence theory and other non-collapse interpretations. Balancing historical themes with contemporary discussions, Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics establishes Bohr's on-going contribution to the philosophy of physics and examines his place in the history of philosophy.

•Jan 1, 2017•5 citations
Copenhagen, starting in the 1920s and 1930s and continuing after the Second World War, was not just a center for extraordinary developments in quantum and nuclear physics; it also provided a perfect stage for physicists' abundant humor. We will examine the Journal of Jocular Physics, a humorous tribute to Bohr published on the occasions of his 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays. We will discuss how the articles in the journal reflected attempts by the contributors, such as Leon Rosenfeld, Victor Weisskopf and others, to interpret and explain aspects of Bohr’s philosophy, such as complementarity and the abandonment of pure Laplacian determinism. This talk (its title loosely translated in German to ‘lustige Physik’) is dedicated to the memory of the inspiring physicist and historian of physics Harry Lustig Journal of Jocular Physics • Tribute to Bohr on his 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays (October 7 -1935, 1945, 1955) • Alternative to “Festschrift:” otherwise Bohr would “feel it as his duty to read the contents and even try to learn something.” • Written by those who had research visits or associations with the Institute of Theoretical Physics (now Niels Bohr Institute) • Reprinted by Niels Bohr Archive during Bohr’s centenary in 1985 along with the much more widelyknown Copenhagen Faust • Shares much with CF in terms of rich veins of cynical humor Gamow’s description of humorous plays that proceeded and inspired the journal: “It became customary at the end of each spring conference at Blegdamsvej 15 (the street address of Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics) to produce a stunt pertaining to recent developments in physics. (Gamow, Thirty Years that Shook Physics, p. 167). Cover of the reprint version of the Journal of Jocular Physics Cover of Journal of Jocular Physics, Volume I, October 7, 1935 (Caricature of Bohr kneeling on the Earth, right hand on forehead, & pondering deep thoughts, like Rodin’s “The Thinker”) First piece: “Niels Bohr on His Fiftieth Birthday” by Kanetaka Ariyama. Sentimental ode to Bohr’s excellent teaching. Discusses progress in physics, including particles known and speculated about at the time: neutron, neutrino, positron. Written in Japanese translated into German Role of neutrino plays a central, humorous role throughout series • Prominent role in Copenhagen Faust • Association with Pauli, a much-satirized (and admired) physicist • “La Plainte du Neutrino” (The neutrino’s complaint) a parody of “Un secret” by Felix Arvers that compares the neutrino’s elusiveness to a secret unrequited love. Languages used in the first volume
The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics has become the standard way of explaining the physical philosophical meaning of the mathematics of microscopic behavior. It developed from the thought of people who attended the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen during the 40 years that Niels Bohr directed it, from 1920 to 1962. Bohr took a large part in developing the Copenhagen Interpretation, he didn't escape all controversy over it (although the quote above is a bit of an exaggeration). Bohr did die before the experimental theoretical developments that have transposed the debate over the appropriateness adequacy of the Copenhagen Interpretation into a new key, he may well have been lucky to have escaped when he did. There is no authoritative codification of CI [the Copenhagen Interpretation], write T Gornitz C. E von Weizsacker of the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg, West Germany in' their formal presentation to the recent Loyola Conference on Mathematical Interpretational Problems in Relativistic Quantum Theory, and under the conditions of its origin there probably could not be one.... All prominent authors of the time who wrote on these questions, like Bohr, [Werner] Heisenberg, [Wolfgang] Pauli, J[ohn] v[on] Neumann on one side, [Albert] Einstein [Erwin] Schrodinger on the other, fell, so we feel, into some stammering when they tried to express their own positions. Nevertheless there is what might be called a Copenhagen attitude. It concentrates on observable phenomena, makes statistics probability central to its understanding, considers quantum mechanics primarily a theory of knowledge or information becomes a kind of physica negativa (analogous to a theologia negativa) in trying not to say too much about things that can't be seen or felt. For example, it doesn't much care whether the orbits of electrons in atoms are real or not and, in fact, tends to regard them as unreal. It appears in most textbooks as the standard way of looking at things.
Abstract Niels Bohr was born on 7 October 1885, the son of Professor Christian Bohr, the physiologist, and Ellen, daughter of D. B. Alder, a banker. He had one sister, Jenny, and a brother, Harald, who became Professor of Mathematics in the University of Copenhagen. They grew up in a home of culture. From his father, Niels became acquainted with the problems of biology and in later years became interested again in biological problems through his interests in complementarity. He was educated in Copenhagen, first at the Gammelholm School and then at the University. Whilst there, he became interested in philosophical problems through attending the lectures of Hoffding. According to Rosenfeld (Nordita Publication No. 57) ‘he was fascinated by some of the great religious figures of the past, especially the Jewish prophets and the Buddha; he earnestly endeavoured to penetrate the human side of their teachings and arrived at interpretations of striking originality. Into these sacred texts, coming from the innermost recesses of the human soul, he read an effort to account in a peculiar language for that deepest complementarity between rational knowledge and living experience of the cosmos which in his eyes characterized man’s ambiguous position and rules his whole activity. No wonder that such deep seated views were to play a leading part in his thought in later years and even pervade every shade of his sensitive reaction to the various impressions of everyday life’. During his adolescent years Niels Bohr together with his brother, Harald, were good footballers and his passion for sport was transferred in time to skiing and sailing. He was a lover of the arts and when Eric Gill’s carving of Rutherford installed in the Mond Laboratory at Cambridge was being criticized he was delighted to be presented by Dirac and Kapitza with a copy for his Institute at Copenhagen.
Wonderful news from Copenhagen Heisenberg and Schrödinger invented mathematical formalisms that provided correct answers to all the various problems of (non-relativistic) quantum theory. It was Bohr who uncovered the underlying significance of the theory; in particular he showed how the profound conceptual difficulties encountered as the theory developed – the so-called wave–particle duality, the totally unclassical nature of the uncertainty principle – could be neutralised by a revision, or more accurately a generalisation, of our use of physical concepts. Such was the generally accepted view of things from soon after 1927, when Bohr first put forward his ideas on complementarity at an international meeting of physicists at Como, through the 1930s, when it was felt that Bohr destroyed Einstein's contrary opinions, and certainly up to the time of Bohr's death in 1962. Bohr's analysis is usually spoken of as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, though it is instructive to realise that such a term was frowned upon by those closest to Bohr, since it appears to suggest that the interpretation is just one among (conceivably) many. Let us examine, for example, the words of Léon Rosenfeld, Bohr's disciple and long-term collaborator, as expounded at a conference in 1957 [52]. Rosenfeld maintained that any idea of ‘interpreting a formalism’ was a ‘false problem’, that in a good theory, the ‘ordinary language (spiced with technical jargon for the sake of conciseness)’ in which it is described, is ‘ inseparably united … with whatever mathematical apparatus is necessary’, that ‘we are here not faced with a matter of choice between two possible languages or two possible interpretations, but with a rational language intimately connected with the formalism and adapted to it, on the one hand, and with rather wild, metaphysical speculations … on the other’.
‘The new wave mechanics gave rise to the hope that an account of atomic phenomena might be obtained which would not differ essentially from that afforded by the classical theories of electricity and magnetism. Unfortunately, Bohr's statement in the following communication of the principles underlying the description of atomic phenomena gives little, if any, encouragement in this direction.’ This comment is to be found in the brief note prefaced by the editors of the British journal Nature to Niels Bohr's paper ‘The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory’ in the supplement of 14 April 1928. The article in question is the famous paper which first introduced and defined the concept of ‘complementarity’ and outlined the basic points of what was to become known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the paper, Bohr returned to the arguments contained in the paper discussed at the International Congress of Physicists held at Como in September 1927 to mark the centenary of the death of Alessandro Volta and published in the proceedings of the same congress. It was probably his conviction that the new viewpoint adopted in the description of nature fully expressed the theoretical and cognitive content of quantum physics coupled with his enthusiasm at having achieved ‘after many years of struggling in the dark […] the fulfilment of the old hopes’ that induced him to give his work broader and more prestigious circulation.
Niels Bohr and Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr's philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the “Copenhagen Interpretation.” With respect to philosophical influences on Bohr's outlook, the contributors analyse prominent similarities between his viewpoint and Kantian ways of thinking, the views of the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding, and themes characteristic of American pragmatism. In recognizing the importance of Bohr's epistemological naturalism they examine his defence of the indispensability of classical concepts from a variety of different perspectives. This collection shows us that Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, now nearly a century old, still has the power to shed light on a variety of issues that have arisen only since his lifetime, as well as decoherence theory and other non-collapse interpretations. Balancing historical themes with contemporary discussions, Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics establishes Bohr's on-going contribution to the philosophy of physics and examines his place in the history of philosophy.