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The Danish Nobel laureate's own collection of his offprints.
细节
BOHR, Niels Henrik David (1885-1962)
The Danish Nobel laureate's own collection of his offprints.
An exceptional collection comprising 172 offprints, including works by Bohr that laid the foundations for the understanding of atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
The first 5 volumes were presented to Niels Bohr on his 70th birthday by his secretary through the years Sophie Hellmann, and updated by her to his death with two more volumes. Out of the 172 articles, 39 are facsimiles made by Hellmann.
A full list of the contents can be requested from the department. The highlights include:
· The Principle of Complementarity (1927), with three papers, including Bohr’s introductory paper given at the Como Conference in 1927. – ‘The quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory.’ Offprint from: Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Fisici, Como, 1927. Bologna: 1928 [but 1929]. – ‘The quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory.’ Offprint from: Supplement to Nature. London: 1928. Pp.580-590. – ‘Das Quantenpostulat und die neuere Entwicklung der Atomistik.’ Offprint from: Naturwissenschaften. 16. Berlin: 1928. Pp. 245-257. This principle states that objects can exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties – wave-particle duality – depending on the experimental context, but these properties cannot be observed simultaneously. Bohr’s Como paper was repeated in October during the 5th Solvay Conference, and became part of the Bohr–Einstein debates.
· Bohr's response to the 1935 EPR paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, defending the completeness of quantum mechanics while articulating that quantum phenomena require a new conceptual framework distinct from classical ideas: – ‘Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?’ Offprint from: Physical Review. 48. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1935. Pp. 696-702.
· The first fully worked-out theoretical explanation of nuclear fission, clarifying how the nucleus of uranium-235, when bombarded with neutrons, undergoes a deformation that leads to its splitting: – and John A. WHEELER. ‘The mechanism of nuclear fission.’ Offprint from: Physical Review. 56. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1939. Pp. 426-450.
Bohr was the son of Christian Bohr, Professor of Physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and Ellen Adler, the daughter of Danish-Jewish banker David Baruch Adler. Bohr was educated at Gammelholm Latin School, starting when he was seven. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Copenhagen, majoring in physics, and also studying astronomy and mathematics.
In 1905, Bohr decided to enter a competition sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to investigate a method for measuring the surface tension of liquids first proposed by Lord Rayleigh in 1879. This involved measuring the frequency of oscillation of the radius of a water jet. Since the University of Copenhagen had no physics laboratory, he used his father’s laboratory for his experiments, making his own glassware. His prize winning essay was later submitted in an improved form to the Royal Society in London for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and is the first offprint bound in the present collection.
In 1911, Bohr, travelled to England, where he met most of the physicists working on the theory of atomic structure, including J.J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory and Trinity College, Cambridge. He attended lectures on electromagnetism given by James Jeans and Joseph Larmor, and met William Lawrence Bragg and Ernest Rutherford. The latter extended an invitation from Rutherford to conduct post-doctoral work at Victoria University of Manchester, where Bohr met George de Hevesy and Charles Galton Darwin. Returning to Denmark, he published three papers on atomic structure in 1913 which later became famous as ‘the trilogy’. These are present in the collection in facsimile.
In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them’. The award thus recognised both ‘the trilogy’ and his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. His Nobel lecture, ‘Om Atomernes Bygning,’ delivered on 11 December 1922, is present as number 31 in vol. 2 of the present collection.
When the concept of spin was introduced into quantum theory in 1925, Bohr was initially doubtful. However, after discussions with Wolfgang Pauli and Otto Stern in Hamburg, and then with Paul Ehrenfest and Albert Einstein in Leiden, who assured him that relativity solved the problem, he came round to the idea, publishing ‘Spinning electrons and the structure of spectra’ in Nature in 1927 (here in facsimile). Around the same time, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Paul Dirac were formulating the mathematical basis of quantum mechanics, all of whom influenced Bohr. Erwin Schrödinger’s attempt to explain quantum physics in classical terms using wave mechanics also greatly impressed Bohr, who became increasingly convinced that light behaved like both waves and particles. When Heisenberg promoted his uncertainty principle, this led Bohr to introduce his Principle of Complementarity at the Como Conference in 1927, by which he suggested wave-particle duality existed, but asserted that phenomena may have mutually exclusive properties depending on how they are observed. In essence, Bohr stated that measurement defines, rather than disturbs, a particle’s properties.
A decade later, Bohr opened the fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics on 26 January 1939, in which he told the audience of the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn. While discussing these findings with George Placzek, Bohr realized – using his liquid drop model – that the fission of uranium by slow neutrons must mainly involve uranium‑235 rather than uranium‑238. This insight resolved lingering questions about the process and was experimentally confirmed by John R. Dunning in 1940. Bohr and John Wheeler soon presented a detailed theoretical explanation in their 1939 paper, The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission (present in the collection).
After an infamous meeting in Copenhagen in 1941 with Heisenberg, who had become head of Germany’s atomic research, and because of increased persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark, Bohr escaped to neutral Sweden, before being flown to Britain. Bohr's son Aage followed his father to Britain, and became his personal assistant. In London, Bohr was employed by Tube Alloys, the British nuclear weapons development programme. Later in 1943, Bohr and his son visited the United States as a Tube Alloys consultant, where he met with the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. He visited Einstein and Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and went to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. Over the next 2 years Bohr paid a series of extended visits to Los Alamos, with Robert Oppenheimer crediting Bohr with an important contribution to the work on modulated neutron initiators. Bohr also seems to have acted as mentor to younger scientists on the project, most notably Richard Feynman.
Bohr realised early on that nuclear weapons would change international relations, and tried to convince Anglo-American politicians that it would be in their interests to share Manhattan Project information with the Soviets. However, a meeting with Churchill in May 1944 did not go well, and although he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt in August that same year, both Roosevelt and Churchill in their meeting in September rejected the idea of informing the world about the project. Bohr himself was probably put under surveillance by the Anglo-Americans to ensure he did not make contact with the Soviets. After the war, Bohr addressed an ‘Open Letter’ to the United Nations in June 1950, calling for international cooperation on nuclear energy (in the present collection).
Bohr’s later years were concerned with helping to establish The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, which was initially based in Copenhagen before moving to Geneva in 1957. Bohr died of heart failure on 18 November 1962 at his home in Carlsberg, Copenhagen.
Together 172 works in 7 volumes, quarto (270 x 195mm), 39 of which in facsimile, all numbered either with small labels or in pencil, typescript titles, contents leaves and index at end of final volume. Modern library half cloth over boards (extremities a fraction rubbed). Provenance: Niels Bohr (the first 5 vols presented by his secretary Sophie Hellmann on his 70th birthday, with her compilation of 2 more volumes up to his death; thence by descent to:) – Aage Bohr (numbers 39, 40 and 41 contain his hand-written comments) – thence by descent.
The Danish Nobel laureate's own collection of his offprints.
An exceptional collection comprising 172 offprints, including works by Bohr that laid the foundations for the understanding of atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
The first 5 volumes were presented to Niels Bohr on his 70th birthday by his secretary through the years Sophie Hellmann, and updated by her to his death with two more volumes. Out of the 172 articles, 39 are facsimiles made by Hellmann.
A full list of the contents can be requested from the department. The highlights include:
· The Principle of Complementarity (1927), with three papers, including Bohr’s introductory paper given at the Como Conference in 1927. – ‘The quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory.’ Offprint from: Atti del Congresso Internazionale dei Fisici, Como, 1927. Bologna: 1928 [but 1929]. – ‘The quantum postulate and the recent development of atomic theory.’ Offprint from: Supplement to Nature. London: 1928. Pp.580-590. – ‘Das Quantenpostulat und die neuere Entwicklung der Atomistik.’ Offprint from: Naturwissenschaften. 16. Berlin: 1928. Pp. 245-257. This principle states that objects can exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties – wave-particle duality – depending on the experimental context, but these properties cannot be observed simultaneously. Bohr’s Como paper was repeated in October during the 5th Solvay Conference, and became part of the Bohr–Einstein debates.
· Bohr's response to the 1935 EPR paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, defending the completeness of quantum mechanics while articulating that quantum phenomena require a new conceptual framework distinct from classical ideas: – ‘Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?’ Offprint from: Physical Review. 48. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1935. Pp. 696-702.
· The first fully worked-out theoretical explanation of nuclear fission, clarifying how the nucleus of uranium-235, when bombarded with neutrons, undergoes a deformation that leads to its splitting: – and John A. WHEELER. ‘The mechanism of nuclear fission.’ Offprint from: Physical Review. 56. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1939. Pp. 426-450.
Bohr was the son of Christian Bohr, Professor of Physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and Ellen Adler, the daughter of Danish-Jewish banker David Baruch Adler. Bohr was educated at Gammelholm Latin School, starting when he was seven. In 1903, Bohr enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Copenhagen, majoring in physics, and also studying astronomy and mathematics.
In 1905, Bohr decided to enter a competition sponsored by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to investigate a method for measuring the surface tension of liquids first proposed by Lord Rayleigh in 1879. This involved measuring the frequency of oscillation of the radius of a water jet. Since the University of Copenhagen had no physics laboratory, he used his father’s laboratory for his experiments, making his own glassware. His prize winning essay was later submitted in an improved form to the Royal Society in London for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and is the first offprint bound in the present collection.
In 1911, Bohr, travelled to England, where he met most of the physicists working on the theory of atomic structure, including J.J. Thomson of the Cavendish Laboratory and Trinity College, Cambridge. He attended lectures on electromagnetism given by James Jeans and Joseph Larmor, and met William Lawrence Bragg and Ernest Rutherford. The latter extended an invitation from Rutherford to conduct post-doctoral work at Victoria University of Manchester, where Bohr met George de Hevesy and Charles Galton Darwin. Returning to Denmark, he published three papers on atomic structure in 1913 which later became famous as ‘the trilogy’. These are present in the collection in facsimile.
In 1922, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics ‘for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them’. The award thus recognised both ‘the trilogy’ and his early leading work in the emerging field of quantum mechanics. His Nobel lecture, ‘Om Atomernes Bygning,’ delivered on 11 December 1922, is present as number 31 in vol. 2 of the present collection.
When the concept of spin was introduced into quantum theory in 1925, Bohr was initially doubtful. However, after discussions with Wolfgang Pauli and Otto Stern in Hamburg, and then with Paul Ehrenfest and Albert Einstein in Leiden, who assured him that relativity solved the problem, he came round to the idea, publishing ‘Spinning electrons and the structure of spectra’ in Nature in 1927 (here in facsimile). Around the same time, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Paul Dirac were formulating the mathematical basis of quantum mechanics, all of whom influenced Bohr. Erwin Schrödinger’s attempt to explain quantum physics in classical terms using wave mechanics also greatly impressed Bohr, who became increasingly convinced that light behaved like both waves and particles. When Heisenberg promoted his uncertainty principle, this led Bohr to introduce his Principle of Complementarity at the Como Conference in 1927, by which he suggested wave-particle duality existed, but asserted that phenomena may have mutually exclusive properties depending on how they are observed. In essence, Bohr stated that measurement defines, rather than disturbs, a particle’s properties.
A decade later, Bohr opened the fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics on 26 January 1939, in which he told the audience of the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn. While discussing these findings with George Placzek, Bohr realized – using his liquid drop model – that the fission of uranium by slow neutrons must mainly involve uranium‑235 rather than uranium‑238. This insight resolved lingering questions about the process and was experimentally confirmed by John R. Dunning in 1940. Bohr and John Wheeler soon presented a detailed theoretical explanation in their 1939 paper, The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission (present in the collection).
After an infamous meeting in Copenhagen in 1941 with Heisenberg, who had become head of Germany’s atomic research, and because of increased persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark, Bohr escaped to neutral Sweden, before being flown to Britain. Bohr's son Aage followed his father to Britain, and became his personal assistant. In London, Bohr was employed by Tube Alloys, the British nuclear weapons development programme. Later in 1943, Bohr and his son visited the United States as a Tube Alloys consultant, where he met with the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. He visited Einstein and Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and went to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. Over the next 2 years Bohr paid a series of extended visits to Los Alamos, with Robert Oppenheimer crediting Bohr with an important contribution to the work on modulated neutron initiators. Bohr also seems to have acted as mentor to younger scientists on the project, most notably Richard Feynman.
Bohr realised early on that nuclear weapons would change international relations, and tried to convince Anglo-American politicians that it would be in their interests to share Manhattan Project information with the Soviets. However, a meeting with Churchill in May 1944 did not go well, and although he met President Franklin D. Roosevelt in August that same year, both Roosevelt and Churchill in their meeting in September rejected the idea of informing the world about the project. Bohr himself was probably put under surveillance by the Anglo-Americans to ensure he did not make contact with the Soviets. After the war, Bohr addressed an ‘Open Letter’ to the United Nations in June 1950, calling for international cooperation on nuclear energy (in the present collection).
Bohr’s later years were concerned with helping to establish The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, which was initially based in Copenhagen before moving to Geneva in 1957. Bohr died of heart failure on 18 November 1962 at his home in Carlsberg, Copenhagen.
Together 172 works in 7 volumes, quarto (270 x 195mm), 39 of which in facsimile, all numbered either with small labels or in pencil, typescript titles, contents leaves and index at end of final volume. Modern library half cloth over boards (extremities a fraction rubbed). Provenance: Niels Bohr (the first 5 vols presented by his secretary Sophie Hellmann on his 70th birthday, with her compilation of 2 more volumes up to his death; thence by descent to:) – Aage Bohr (numbers 39, 40 and 41 contain his hand-written comments) – thence by descent.
荣誉呈献
Mark Wiltshire
Specialist