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 1927, Heisenberg was a Privatdozent at Göttingen, meaning he was qualified to teach and examine independently, without having a chair. From 17 September 1924 to 1 May 1925, under an International Education Board Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, Heisenberg went to do research with Niels Bohr, director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. His seminal paper, "Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen" ("Quantum theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations"), was published in September 1925. He returned to Göttingen and, with Max Born and Pascual Jordan over a period of about six months, developed the matrix