SOLVAY CONFERENCE

Ernest Solvay (1838 1922) was a Belgian industrial chemist who perfected a commercial process for producing sodium carbonate and became extremely wealthy as the use of the Solvay process spread across the world. Solvay had long been interested in the fundamental structure of matter and by 1910 had become especially intrigued with the developing crisis between classical physics and the recently introduced quantum theories. Solvay held an international conference in October 1911 to which he invited many of the most prominent physicists of the period, including Planck, Einstein, and Marie Curie. The first conference proved to be so successful that Solvay established a foundation to sponsor similar conventions from time to time in the years that followed, right up to the present time. The first Solvay Conference had as its topic radiation theory and quanta, while the second conference in 1913 dealt with the structure of matter. Five additional conferences were held between 1921 and 1933 on topics ranging from the electrical conductivity of metals, through magnetism, to the structure and properties of the nucleus. During the third conference (1921), the two major subjects discussed were the nuclear model of the atom, as proposed and elaborated upon by Ernest Rutherford and Bohrs theory.

The 1927 Solvay Conference focused on the new quantum mechanics and initiated what has been called the Einstein Bohr dialogues concerning the implications of the probabilistic Nature of this theory. Einstein was not at all happy with the lack of determinism in the quantum theory and argued that the quantum mechanical description of Nature may not have exhausted all the possibilities of accounting for observable phenomena. The Einstein Bohr dialogues produced some lively debates during the 1927 Solvay meeting. The chairman of the session, H.A. Lorentz, himself an eminent physicist and master of three languages, tried to maintain order but found it exceedingly difficult to do so, as one speaker after another joined in the fray, each in his own language . At one point, things became so confused that one of the participants Paul Ehrenfest, a friend and colleague of both Einstein and Bohr, went to the blackboard and wrote: The Lord did there confound the language of all the Earth. And, at the later time, during one of the lectures, Ehrenfest passed a note to Einstein that read: Dont laugh! There is a special section in purgatory for professors of quantum theory, where they will be obliged to listen to lectures on classical physics ten hours every day. Present day students of quantum theory might still find solace in Ehrensfests remark! and his wonderful contribution of theorem to quantum mechanics. The significance of the events at these meetings for later generations of physicists has been great indeed. The traditions of excellence established during these early conferences continue even to the present. As Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of modern quantum theory and a Solvay participant in 1927, 1930 and 1933, write in 1974: there can be no doubt that in those years (1911 1933) the Solvay Conferences played an essential role in the history of physics.