The Niels Bohr Archive's
History of Science Seminar |
Tuesday 26 August 2003 at 14:15
Auditorium D, Niels Bohr Institute Blegdamsvej 17, Copenhagen |
Abstract:
It is well known that Niels Bohr had personal contacts with many physicists in
Germany in the period c.1917 - c.1941, but it is less known that Bohr also had
widespread contacts with physicists in the Soviet Union in the same period.
Bohr and people working at "Institut for Teoretisk Fysik" in Copenhagen had in
this period correspondence with more than 20 physicists from the Soviet Union,
for example George Gamow, Lev Landau (Nobel Prize in 1962) and Peter Kapitza
(Nobel prize in 1978). Besides correspondence with physicists in the Soviet
Union Bohr also had correspondence with other scientists and political figures
in the Soviet Union (notably Josef Stalin).
In my talk I will elucidate Bohr's contacts with the Soviet Union as
documented by the material available at the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen. I
will shed light on some of the topics Bohr discussed with Soviet
physicists such
as Gamow, Landau and Kapitza. I will furthermore look more generally at the
different aspects of Bohr's contacts with people in the Soviet Union, what made
these contacts important for Bohr and the physicists in the Soviet Union, and
what they focused on.
Selected sources:
Archival documents the Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen. Correspondence
Bohr-Gamow, Bohr-Landau, Bohr-Kapitza and many others.
BOAG, J. and RUBININ, P. and SCHOENBERG, D. ed.: Kapitza in Cambridge and
Moscow, North-Holland 1990, the Netherlands
GRAHAM, L.: Science in Russia and the Soviet Union, a Short History, Cambridge
University Press 1993, England
JOSEPHSON, P.: Physics and Politics in Revolutionary Russia, University of
California Press, 1991, USA
Advisors: Finn Aaserud (NBA), Ole Ulfbeck (NBI)