Copenhagen

One of the most revered physicists of the 20th century (and perhaps all human history), Niels Bohr is the central pivot around which the play operates. It is Heisenberg’s visit to Bohr that incites the narrative, as the dead parties all reflect on why Bohr’s former pupil came to visit him in 1941 and what was said at the meeting that incensed Bohr to such a degree. As such, the text goes to great lengths to highlight how revered Bohr is in the scientific community. On numerous occasions, he is referred to as a Pope-like figure, and his numerous assistants (many of whom went on to become famous physicists in their own right) are presented as his cardinals. This introduces a playful irony between science and religion, in which Bohr functions as a high priest in a field in which sentimentality and doctrine take a back seat to mathematics and science. But this is only one of the many contradictions in the life of a man who was obsessed with the paradoxes and quandaries that haunted the most important scientific developments of the age.

At one stage in the play, Heisenberg accuses Bohr of being more interested in the moral conundrums that affect science than in the science itself.