Smart Folks

The photo above was taken in October 1927 at the Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons.  Located in Brussels and founded by industrialist Ernest Solvay, the conferences allowed for leading physicists to discuss open problems in their field.

Of the 29 scientists in this photo, 17 were to win the Nobel Prize.

It was at this conference that Einstein, disturbed with Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, remarked “God does not play dice”. Niels Bohr replied: “Einstein, stop telling God what to do”.

Some of the best known participants (summaries courtesy of rare historical photos).

Front Row:
2nd from left: Max Planck - originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. He proposed that exchanges of energy only occur in discrete lumps, which he dubbed quanta.
3rd from left: Marie Curie - was the first woman to earn a Nobel prize and the first person to earn two. In 1898, she isolated two new elements (polonium and radium) by tracking their ionizing radiation.
4th from left: Hendrik Lorentz - discovered and gave theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time.
Center: Albert Einstein - developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).He is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula (which has been dubbed “the world’s most famous equation”).

Middle Row:
Far right: Niels Bohr - started the quantum revolution with a model where the orbital angular momentum of an electron only has discrete values. He spearheaded the Copenhagen Interpretation which holds that quantum phenomena are inherently probabilistic.
2nd from right: Max Born - his probabilistic interpretation of Schrödinger’s wave function ended determinism in physics but provided a firm ground for quantum theory.
3rd from right: Louis de Broglie - discovered that any particle has wavelike properties, with a wavelength inversely proportional to its momentum (this helps justify Schrödinger’s equation).
5th from right: 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.

Back Row:
Far left: Auguste Piccard - designed ships to explore the upper stratosphere and the deep seas
6th from left: Erwin Schrodinger - 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.
8th from left: 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.”
9th from left: Werner Heisenberg - replaced Bohr’s semi-classical orbits by 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.