Physics and Beyond "'Do you see whales, Heisenberg?', 'Yes, I see only whales, but I hope they are only big waves.'", is one of humorous scenes when the author, Bohr and other friends were sailing in a dark night. The book provides a first-hand account about how science is done and how quantum physics, especially the Copenhagen interpretation, emerged. "Nobody can reproduce these conversations verbatim, but I believe that the spirit of what the people said, and how they did, is conserved," the author tries to explain in the preface. Many believe that the golden years of physics around 1925, when "even small
Werner Heisenberg priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most prominent supporters were the Nobel Laureates in Physics Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. There had been many failed attempts to have Heisenberg appointed as professor at a variety of German universities. His attempt to be appointed as the successor to Arnold Sommerfeld failed because of opposition by the "Deutsche Physik" movement. On 1 April 1935, the eminent theoretical physicist Sommerfeld, Heisenberg's doctoral advisor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, achieved emeritus status. However, Sommerfeld stayed in his chair during the selection process for his successor, which took until