Frayn’s play Copenhagen speculates on what might have transpired during a meeting between Nobel laureates Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg inCopenhagen in September 1941, at the height of the German advance into Russia and just three months before America’s entry into the war. The power of National Socialist Germany was at its pinnacle, and the Germans had just been made aware, through Swedish sources, of U.S. plans to build an atomic bomb.
The meeting was at Heisenberg’s behest. As Germany’s leading theoretical physicist and head of the German Uranium Club, the organ which would assess the possible war uses of nuclear energy, he was the man best situated to advise his government on the creation of an atomic bomb. The older Bohr was not only a professional colleague of Heisenberg, but a close personal friend as well. The play ponders the possible reasons for Heisenberg’s visit, linking them to the failure of the Germans to develop the bomb
No comments:
Post a Comment