Normally we don’t post announcements for other programs on this blog, but I got this note recently from Princeton Physics Professor Christopher Herzog that I thought had some really interesting ideas about science and magic (and an upcoming reading of Copenhagen), which I thought were neat and worth sharing.  Anyway, here it is!  Hope you can go to his reading!

Heisenberg, Bohr, and Pauli

I’m a professor in the physics department at Princeton University, and I’ve put together a reading of Michael Frayn’s Tony award winning play, Copenhagen.

The play is a semi-historical retelling of a pivotal meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg at the start of World War II.  Bohr and Heisenberg were key figures in the development of quantum
mechanics —the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the Bohr atom.   Deeply concerned about the ethical and moral implications of developing an atomic bomb, Heisenberg sought the advice of his old mentor Bohr.

I’m hoping the event will be a magical experience.

My own love of science began undoubtedly with magic—Tolkien’s unforgettable Gandalf, the magical wardrobe of C.S. Lewis.  Soon though, there were other books, by Niven and Asimov, about faster than light travel and great empires in space.  It was a logical evolution, given Arthur C. Clarke’s remark that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  There are many reasons why today I am a scientist, but one is undoubtedly that at some early age I realized with crushing disappointment that I could never be a wizard, at least in this world, but that being a theoretical physicist was the next best thing.

To me, today, magic is the use of language and special objects to work powerful and mysterious effects. Tolkien’s ring of power is certainly magical, though made up.  Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, is real, and those who understand its language have created lasers, computers, and atomic weapons.  A good production of a well written play is magic too, creating or recreating a world on a stage, in the best instances helping us to know our own hearts a little better.

Hoping you will come on October 6 at 7:30 pm, Taplin Auditorium, and leave with a little bit of quantum mechanics, a little bit of wisdom, and a little bit of magic.  - Christopher Herzog

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre

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