1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons (the most famous conference) . .

17 of the 29 attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners.

The Solvay Conference, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, was considered a turning point in the world of physics. Located in Brussels, the conferences were devoted to outstanding preeminent open problems in both physics and chemistry.

The most famous conference was the October 1927 Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons, where the world’s most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, remarked “God does not play dice”. Bohr replied: “Einstein, stop telling God what to do”. 17 of the 29 attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners, including Marie Curie, who alone among them, had won Nobel Prizes in two separate scientific disciplines.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗘𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀, 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗞𝗮𝗿𝗹 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿, 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝗕𝗼𝗵𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀, 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗻, 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲.

Back: Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, JE Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Fowler, Léon Brillouin.
Middle: Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr.
Front: Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugène Guye, CTR Wilson, Owen Richardson.

Auguste Piccard designed ships to explore the upper stratosphere and the deep seas (bathyscaphe, 1948).

Emile Henriot detected the natural radioactivity of potassium and rubidium. He made ultracentrifuges possible and pioneered the electron microscope.

Paul Ehrenfest remarked (in 1909) that Special Relativity makes the rim of a spinning disk shrink but not its diameter. This contradiction with Euclidean geometry inspired Einstein’s General Relativity. Ehrenfest was a great teacher and a pioneer of quantum theory.

Edouard Herzen is one of only 7 people who participated in the two Solvay conferences of 1911 and 1927. He played a leading role in the development of physics and chemistry during the twentieth century.

Théophile de Donder defined chemical affinity in terms of the change in the free enthalpy. He founded the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, which led his student Ilya Prigogine (1917-2006) to a Nobel prize.

Erwin Schrödinger matched observed quantum behavior with the properties of a continuous nonrelativistic wave obeying the Schrödinger Equation. In 1935, he challenged the Copenhagen Interpretation, with the famous tale of Schrödinger’s cat. He shared the Nobel prize with Dirac.

Jules Emile Verschaffelt, the Flemish physicist, got his doctorate under Kamerlingh Onnes in 1899.

Wolfgang Pauli formulated the exclusion principle which explains the entire table of elements. Pauli’s sharp tongue was legendary; he once said about a bad paper: “This isn’t right; this isn’t even wrong.”

Werner Heisenberg replaced Bohr’s semi-classical orbits with a new quantum logic which became known as matrix mechanics (with the help of Born and Jordan). The relevant noncommutativity entails Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Sir Ralph Howard Fowler supervised 15 FRS and 3 Nobel laureates. In 1923, he introduced Dirac to quantum theory.

Léon Nicolas Brillouin practically invented solid state physics (Brillouin zones) and helped develop the technology that became the computers we use today.

Peter Debye pioneered the use of dipole moments for asymmetrical molecules and extended Einstein’s theory of specific heat to low temperatures by including low-energy phonons.

Martin Knudsen revived Maxwell’s kinetic theory of gases, especially at low pressure: Knudsen flow, Knudsen number, etc.

William Lawrence Bragg was awarded the Nobel prize for physics jointly with his father Sir William Henry Bragg for their work on the analysis of the structure of crystals using X-ray diffraction.

Hendrik Kramers was the first foreign scholar to seek out Niels Bohr. He became his assistant and helped develop what became known as Bohr’s Institute, where he worked on dispersion theory.

Paul Dirac came up with the formalism on which quantum mechanics is now based. In 1928, he discovered a relativistic wave function for the electron which predicted the existence of antimatter, before it was actually observed.
#Quantum #Physics #Mechanics

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Hola, saben exactamente dónde fué tomada la fotografía? Si visito Bruselas quisiera tomarme una foto en esas escaleras