Abstracts and autobiographies
Finn Aaserud
Anders Bárány
Mara Beller
Jim Bennett
Ingemar Carlehed
Cathryn Carson
David C. Cassidy
Matthias Dörries
Michael Eckert
Michael Frayn
Robert Marc Friedman
Yuri V. Gaponov
Kostas Gavroglu
Jan Golinski
Inger Hayman
John L. Heilbron
Klaus Hentschel
Birgitte Hesselaa
Dieter Hoffmann
Andrew D. Jackson
Alexei Kojevnikov
Harry Lustig
Åsa Melldahl
Troels II Munk
Milena Paulovics
Brian Schwartz
Peter Steen
Gunnar Tibell
Kitte Wagner
Lily Weiding
Hugh Whitemore
As director of the Niels Bohr Archive, Aaserud is General Editor of the
Niels Bohr Collected Works, published by Elsevier. He has also been
involved in several arrangements in connection with Michael Frayn's
play Copenhagen, notably a
seminar organised by the Niels Bohr Archive
in connection with the production of the play in the Danish capital.
Aaserud is currently doing research on Niels Bohr's political
involvements, which will be the topic of the last volume (volume 11) of
the Bohr Collected Works. Among his publications the following is the
most relevant as background reading for the symposium: "The scientist
and the statesmen: Niels Bohr's political crusade during World War II"
in Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30, 1
(1999), 1-47.
I have been an actress for many years at Royal Dramatic Theatre in
Stockholm and at Göteborg Stadsteater. I have had the opportunity to
act in many of the most interesting parts of of world drama and
during the season 1999-2000 I did the part of Margarethe Bohr in the
play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn.
Ingemar Carlehed, actor and director, has been employed at Gothenburg
City Theatre since 1971. From 1990 to 1995 he was leader of the Halland
Regional Theatre south of Gothenburg. Among his numerous roles can be
mentioned: Siegmund Freud in British playwright Terry Johnson's comedy
Hysteria and, more recently, Niels Bohr in Michael Frayn's
Copenhagen. In connection with the latter the Chalmers Technical
University in Gothenburg bestowed on him an honorary doctorate in 2000.
Born 1948; Hoffmann received his Diploma in physics in 1971; he became
Dr. phil. in 1976 and Dr. habil. (History of Science) in 1989 at the
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is currently research scholar at the
Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Privatdozent at the
Humboldt- Universität. Hoffmann has published extensively on the history
of physics in the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular the
institutional history of quantum theory and modern metrology as well as
the history of science in the GDR. In 1993 he published a German edition
of the Farm Hall Papers.
Michael Frayn's play takes its place in a series of reflections on the
Copenhagen meeting. This talk gives a brief overview of that history of
representations.
Cathryn Carson teaches history of science at the University of
California, Berkeley. She works on the history of modern physics,
mostly after World War II, and is finishing a book on Heisenberg in
West Germany.
This lecture replaces the talk "Frayn's Heisenberg" by David Cassidy.
Cassidy's Heisenberg biography provides the authoritative background on
the historical Heisenberg. As far as Heisenberg's Copenhagen trip in
1941 is concerned, this visit should be considered in the context of
other wartime trips which Heisenberg made to Nazi-occupied countries. It
is argued that this cultural propaganda, in addition to the debated
nuclear issue, was a major cause which destroyed his friendship with
Bohr.
Michael Eckert is at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. He worked on a
number of projects on the history of physics, and he is the editor
(together with Karl Maerker) of Arnold Sommerfeld's scientific
correspondence (see: http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~Sommerfeld).
The intersection of art with history can enhance as well as distort our
understanding of the past. What do we gain and lose from Frayn's
Heisenberg? What do we learn from this?
David C. Cassidy is Professor of the History of Science at Hofstra
University, Hempstead, New York. He is the author of Uncertainty: The
Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg(New York: Freeman, 1992).
Kitte Wagner, born 1968, has a master's degree in communication and
dramaturgy. She was a founding member of the independent group "Bruthalia
Teatret" in 1994. She worked as a freelance script editor and translator,
translating, among other things, Howard Barkers plays into
Danish. Since 1996
she has been employed as drama consultant at the Betty Nansen Theatre in
Copenhagen under the management of Henrik Hartmann and Peter Langdal.
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a
journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. Copenhagen is the
sixteenth of his plays, which include Noises Off, Benefactors
and
Wild Honey (adapted from Chekhov's untitled play), and he has done a
number of translations, mostly from the Russian. His nine novels
include Towards the End of the Morning (in the USA Against
Entropy), The
Trick of It, A Landing on the Sun, and Headlong.
Methuen have published
two selections of his columns, The Original Michael Frayn and The
Additional Michael Frayn. He is married to the biographer and critic
Claire Tomalin.
Birgitte Hesselaa teaches literature and drama at the University of
Copenhagen and Roskilde University Centre. She has worked for several
years as dramatic consultant and script editor, partly for Danish
television, partly for the Royal Theatre of Denmark, and has published
articles and books on literature and drama, most recently a book (in
Danish) on the work of contemporary Danish dramatist Line Knutzon (Vi
lever i en tid: Line Knutzons dramatik, Copenhagen: Borgen, 2001).
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John Heilbron, professor of history and the vice chancellor, emeritus,
University of California at Berkeley, is a senior research fellow at
Worcester College, Oxford. His pertinent research interests centre on
the history of atomic and quantum physics, especially the work of Max
Planck and Niels Bohr. His most recent book, The Sun in the Church:
Cathedrals as Solar Observatories, and his current writing focus on a
long-run drama, the Roman Catholic Church's ongoing struggle to come to
grips with Galileo.
What do historians talk about – and what don't they – when discussing
Michael Frayn's Copenhagen? Their choices tell us more about the
discipline of history of science than about the play. I will focus on
what historians have either neglected or deliberately left out, trying
to identify the moments when historians think they are leaving the safe
ground of familiar ways of doing history of science.
Matthias Dörries is professor for history of science at the Université
Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. He has studied at the University of
Freiburg, the Freie Universität in Berlin, the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and the Ecole des Hautes
Études
en Sciences Sociales in Paris and holds degrees in the natural and the
human sciences. His research work focuses on the physical sciences in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the relation between science
and language.
Taking my contribution to the Dörries volume as a point of departure, I
will discuss why the "historical polyphony" which I applaud there, and
which is implemented so well in Frayn's play, is so seldomly found in
texts by historians of science. Historians use various strategies and
methods to organise, analyse and present their scientific subject
matter. These strategies will be examined in light of their
compatibility with such polyphony. The methods include scientific
biography and psychobiography, institutional history, as well as
problem-oriented, disciplinary and comparative approaches.
Klaus Hentschel is assistant professor at the institute for history of
science in Göttingen. He published an anthology of primary documents
on physics and national socialism (Birkhäuser 1996) as well as several
articles on physicists during and after the NS- period. For further
information see http://www.gwdg.de/~khentsc.
I shall consider how Frayn's Copenhagen compares with other ways of
narrating the history of science that circulate in contemporary
culture. Pioneer historians of science, including Joseph Priestley and
William Whewell, described their subject as a "drama" because they
believed the sublime spectacle of the progress of knowledge was
pedagogically inspiring. Frayn's fiction obviously presents a very
different dramatic spectacle. It emphasises contingency rather than the
inevitability of progress. Unlike a philosophical dialogue, it
encompasses disparate viewpoints and sets them in tension. It even
withholds the satisfaction of a conventional denouement. Through these
means, it exhibits particularly clearly the multiple possibilities of
historical interpretation. I shall argue that, for these reasons, it is
exactly the kind of drama historians of science should be pleased to
see attracting a large public audience.
Jan Golinski is Professor of History and Humanities at the University of
New Hampshire. He has held fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge;
at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of
Wisconsin-Madison; and at the Dibner Institute for the History of
Science and Technology. He has also been a Visiting Professor at
Princeton University. His books are: Science as Public Culture:
Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge University
Press, 1992); Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History
of Science (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998) and The Sciences in
Enlightened Europe (co-edited with William Clark and Simon Schaffer),
(University of Chicago Press, 1999).
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In my presentation I will provide a partial analysis of dialogical
versus monological narratives in history of science and in literature,
including drama.In this connection I will briefly comment on the issue
of a "distance" between author and hero in both forms of writing.
Finally, I will raise the question of the moral and intellectual
responsibility of an author of historical as well as fictional
narratives.The focus of my talk will be on Frayn's Copenhagen, with
some allusions to my Another Round.
Mara Beller is Barbara Druss Dibner Professor in the History and
Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her book,
Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolution, deals with the dialogues
and strategies that resulted in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum
physics, and was recently awarded the Forkosh award for the best book in
intellectual history published in 1999. She is interested in the
dialogical nature of thought and creativity, in science and in arts,
including drama.
Kostas Gavroglu is a professor of history of science at the Department
of History and Philosophy of Science, Athens University. He is also the
Director of the Laboratory for the Electronic Processing of Historical
Archives. He has worked on topics related with the history of low
temperature physics and the history of quantum chemistry. His books
include Methodological Aspects of the Development of Low Temperature
Physics with Yorgos Goudaroulis (Kluwer Publishers, 1989), Fritz
London, A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 1995). He has been
guest editor for the special issue on "Theoretical Chemistry in the
Making: Appropriating Concepts and Legitimizing Techniques" of Studies
in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, December 2000. He is
currently working on the history of artificial cold and also on the
problems related to the introduction of the scientific ideas in 18th
century Greece.
kgavro@cc.uoa.gr
Alexei Kojevnikov is assistant professor of history of science at the
University of Georgia, Athens, and research associate at the Institute
for History of Science and Technology, Moscow. He is doing research on
the history of quantum physics and on the history of Soviet science.
Born 1944.
Trained as a theatre director, Statens Teaterskole 1974.
Actor, e.g. Niels Bohr in "Copenhagen".
Translator, e.g. "Breaking the Code".
President of the Danish Actors' Association 1991-95.
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Whitemore will discuss how and why he wrote the play Breaking the
Code, about the life and work of British mathematician and computer
pioneer Alan Turing. The play premiered in London in 1986 and appeared
on Broadway the following year. Having been shown in theatres around
the world, it was recently made into a TV film by the BBC. Whitemore
will discuss in particular how and to what extent the play is based on
the biography of Turing written by British mathematician and historian
of science Andrew Hodges.
Hugh Whitemore has written for the stage, television and films. His work
has been translated into many languages and has been seen throughout
the world. He is currently writing a film for Rodley Scott about
Winston Churchill in the 1930s.
Jim Bennett:
Adapting history to drama: a historian's experience
This paper addresses some of the issues raised in the imaginative
translation of an episode in the history of science into a drama for
the stage. The reflections come from the historian's side of the story.
Some sections of my history of Armagh Observatory were influential (I
deliberately leave this influence vague for now) in the process of
writing and producing the play Observatory by Daragh Carville, staged
by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1999. As well as writing my book, I
discussed the project with the playwright and commented on an early
draft. Having missed the production, I have only recently read the
published play and discovered the considerable revisions made in
redrafting. The interplay between imaginative writing and staging,
historical documentation and accuracy, and scientific understanding and
speculation is, I hope, illuminated by reflection on this personal
experience, in which the historian's identity and role is neither
unambiguous nor unequivocal.
Jim Bennett is Director of the Museum of the History of Science,
University of Oxford, and an historian of astronomy, mathematics and
scientific instruments. He is the author of Church, State and
Astronomy in Ireland: 200 Years of Armagh Observatory (Belfast:
The Armagh Observatory, 1990).
Robert Marc Friedman:
Balancing act: the historian as playwright
When we move from theory to practice, we find that the craft skills by
which a playwright constructs a drama worthy of the stage differs in
many respects with those by which a historian produces scholarly
narrative. Yet, insight and experience from both fields can enrich the
endeavors of each enterprise. For the conference, I would like to share
some of my on-going concerns in trying to take the results of
historical research and writing as the basis for drama. I am currently
experimenting with three episodes explored in my forthcoming book, The
Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science, as material
for three one-act plays. Is it possible to maintain scholarly integrity
and ethical responsibility while creating drama that is theatrically
compelling?
Robert Marc Friedman [Robert.friedman@hi.uio.no] is professor of history
of science at University of Oslo. As an undergraduate at New York
University he studied drama and theatre parallel with geophysics and
physics. After turning to history of science, he subsequently used his
Johns Hopkins University doctoral research on Vilhelm Bjerknes and the
transformation of meteorology as a basis for a screenplay for a one-hour
television drama, produced and broadcast by the Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation (1982). Under contract he wrote additional film treatments
and screenplay for television drama based on history of science. His
latest book, The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in
Science, will be published in October. He is currently using this
history of awarding the Nobel Prize as a basis for dramatic works. His
scholarly publications include, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm
Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1989) and The Expeditions of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup:
Contexts for Shaping an Ocean Science (La Jolla, CA: Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, 1994).
Anders Bárány was a main instigator of experimental atomic collision
physics at the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory (MSL), which in the process has
become one of four National Laboratories in Sweden. He has also served
as executive editor of the journal Physica Scripta of the Swedish
Academy of Science. He is presently Scientific Secretary of the
Academy's Nobel Committee for Physics and Senior Curator at the recently
established Nobel Museum in Stockholm.
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Born 1941. Jackson received his PhD in physics from Princeton University
in 1967. He was Professor of Physics at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook until coming to the Niels Bohr Institute in 1995.
Jackson's published work is in theoretical nuclear physics and related
fields. In collaboration with Karen Jelved, he has translated and
edited Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian Ørsted
(Princeton University Press, 1998).
Jackson is
currently chairman of the board of the Niels Bohr Archive.
Brian Schwartz and Harry Lustig:
Science as theater, theater as science: news and views from
New York
Beginning with Bertolt Brecht's Galileo in 1943 - which deals with the
responsibility of a man of genius in a hostile world – and Friedrich
Dürrenmatt's The Physicists in 1962 - a modern morality play –
science and, in particular, physics, have served a number of dramatists
as a backdrop for the exposition of existential problems. In 1998
Michael Frayn, with Copenhagen, broke new ground by actually
presenting significant content and ideas of science on stage and
examining recent, factually controversial and emotionally charged
events in the history of science and the world. The opening of
Copenhagen in New York in March 2000 provided us with the stimulus and
occasion to mount what we believe to have been the first symposium on
the science and history of the events that are presented - some would
say adumbrated - in the play to a wide audience. We are now making
plans, together with physicists, historians, and theater people to
organise similar, more locally based, events during this fall's and
winter's tour of Copenhagen in many cities of the United States.
During the last few years a minor boom of science and scientists
related plays, by authors known and (as yet) unknown have been staged
in the United States. We will provide information about them and
venture some thoughts about the pluses and minuses this new popularity
may hold in store for the practice and history of science.
Brian Schwartz is Vice President for Research, Professor of Physics and
co-director of the New Media Lab at The Graduate Center of the City
University of New York. He was director of the American Physical
Society's centennial program celebrated in 1999. His research areas
include superconductivity, magnetism and the use of the new media for
simulation and visualization in materials research, urban traffic
problems and science education.
Brian Schwartz
Vice President for Research and Sponsored Programs
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 8.309
New York, NY 10016, USA
Phone: (212) 817-7521
Fax: (212) 817-1629
Email: bschwartz@gc.cuny.edu
Harry Lustig is Professor of Physics and Provost Emeritus at the City
College of the City University of New York, Treasurer Emeritus of the
American Physical Society, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the
University of New Mexico. His research has been in theoretical nuclear
physics, the Mossbauer Effect, solar energy, and, more recently, the
history of physics.
Harry Lustig
304 Chula Vista Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
Phone: (505) 989-4193
Fax: (505) 989-1939
E-mail: lustig@aps.org or h_lustig@yahoo.com (note: h_lustig)
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The Physical Art tradition was invented at Moscow State University
(MSU) in the 1950s and has existed in different forms within the
Russian physics community for more than forty years up to the present.
At different times it has comprised the following main forms: (1)
Annual jocular Physical Day performances (beginning with Archimedes's
Birthday at MSU), which were held at some universities and scientific
centres from the early 1960s. The renowned physicists Lev Landau and
Niels Bohr took part in the first performances of 1960-61. (2) The
amateur comedy theatre Archimedes, which performed several comic
operas as well as Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo. Its most popular
production, the opera Archimedes, was performed more than 250 times
and celebrated its 40th anniversary in May 2000. (3) The physical
poetry school, the work of which was published officially only from
the end of the 1990s. Although described more accurately as the
reaction of the young generation of scientists to social and political
events than as popularisation of science, the Physical Art tradition
did draw the attention of the Russian public to the quantum and atomic
revolution in physics and reflected the very high authority of
physicists (as well as natural scientists in general) in the postwar
period.
Yuri Gaponov, professor and doctor of physical and mathematical
sciences, graduated from Moscow State University (MSU) in 1958, where
he did post-graduate studies. In 1963 he was employed at the RRC
Kurchatov Institute where he is presently leader of the laboratory
of theoretical physics. He has published about 100 scientific articles
in nuclear theory, weak interaction and neutrino physics. He is a
member of the Russian Academy of Sciences' scientific committees on
neutrino physics, nuclear physics and applied nuclear physics. From
1963 to the present he was the main producer of the physicist amateur
theatre club Archimedes. Gaponov created the Physical Day
tradition at the MSU (1960–69), where he organised the 1961 celebration
with the participation of Niels Bohr. The tradition was subsequently
transferred to the Kurchatov Institute (1972-84), where Gaponov
served as the permanent main producer. In the 1990s he organised, in
cooperation with historians, public seminars in Moscow on the history of
the Soviet atomic bomb/energy project, whereupon he became initiator of
a series of international symposia on the same topic (HISAP), the first
two of which were held in Dubna, Russia (1996) and Laxenburg, Austria
(1999), respectively.
Gunnar Tibell, Professor emeritus in high energy physics, Uppsala
University. Ph D from Uppsala University in 1963 on a thesis called
Investigations of Nuclear Structure and Interaction Symmetries with
High Energy Protons. Various periods at CERN, altogether about 7 years
in the time 1958 - 1984, during 1975 - 79 as Senior Physicist. Visiting
Professor at University of Maryland and at Osaka University. About 150
scientific publications during the years 1955 - 2001. Active in Swedish
Physical Society (President 1989-95) and European Physical Society
Division on Education (Chairman of Pre-university Section), Consultant
at Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm for the play Copenhagen 1999 -
2000. Active in Forum on Research Ethics at Uppsala University. Music
critic in Upsala Nya Tidning. Member of International Commission on
Physics Education (IUPAP), President of International Young Physicists'
Tournament, an annual team competition for school pupils, Editor of
Linné-on-line, an internet project for schools (www.linnaeus.uu.se).
The talk will describe the production of Copenhagen at the Betty Nansen
Theatre, Copenhagen, including the development from rehearsal to
performance.
Lily Weiding is one of the most well-established actors in Denmark,
with an impressive list of roles in the theatre. She played Margrethe
Bohr throughout the production of Copenhagen at the Betty Nansen
Theatre.
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This talk will discuss the background and circumstances for Det Danske
Teater (The Danish Theatre) setting up an entirely independent staging
of Copenhagen in Denmark. In contrast to the version at the Betty
Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen, this production toured all over Denmark.
Peter Steen is a prominent Danish actor, as well as a theatre director
and dramatist. Together with his wife Karin Nørregaard, eskimologist,
he translated Copenhagen for the Danish Theatre production, in which he
played the role of Niels Bohr.
The talk deals with various aspects of the Stockholm production of
Copenhagen. In the preparatory stage, a major question consisted of
identifying where the drama was in Frayn's seemingly theoretical text.
Another part of the preparation involved contacts with physicists who
helped in the understanding of what the characters talked about. In the
course of the rehearsal period, the relationship between the three
characters underwent interesting changes.
Åsa Melldahl's recent activities include the leadership from 1995 to
1999 of the theatre section of National Swedish Radio, where she has
also produced numerous plays. Among her several stage productions may
be mentioned in particular Jonas Forssell's
and Magnus Florin's Trädgården
(The
Garden) in Stockholm in 1999. This opera has the Swedish botanist Carl
Linnaeus (1707-1778) as its main character. Melldahl's production of it
was selected by the Financial Times as one of the five best opera
stagings in the world that year. Her subsequent productions include
Copenhagen, which was set up at the Royal Swedish Dramatic Theatre in
2000, when she also arranged the entertainment in connection with the
Nobel Festivities. In 2001, she produced George Bizet's opera Carmen
in Stockholm.
My staging of Copenhagen, the first full-length play I ever
directed, was first shown non-publicly five times in November 2000 at
the theatre of the Hochschule fuer Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch".
It was the result of a collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for
the History of Science in Berlin. Subsequently it was performed
internally at a number of physics conferences in Berlin und Hamburg. In
my talk I will begin with a brief description of how this particular
production of Copenhagen came to be. I will describe the
planning phase of the staging as well as the cooperation with the Max
Planck Institute and with a physics consultant. I will then discuss the
criteria for my choice of actors and talk about some personal
experiences in working with the play.
Born in Berlin in 1972, Milena Paulovics worked as a
director's assistant at the Staatstheater Oldenburg from 1994 to 1997.
Since 1997 she has been studying stage directing at the Hochschule für
Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch" in Berlin, and is presently
completing her degree.
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