The 1927 Solvay Conference in Physics, founded by Belgian Industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1911, was held in Brussels. The topic was Electrons and Photons. Among the attendees were 17 current or future Nobel Laureates.
Here is the quiz. Answers below.
Identify these participants:
- Won two Nobels
- Felix dead?
- Grandpa of Grease star
- Uncertain
- Which two involved with father-son Nobels
- h
- She does not play dice
- Her lover?
Answers below
- Madame Curie
- Schroedinger (Schroedinger’s cat)
- Born – Max Born was the grandfather of Olivia Newton-John.
- Heisenberg (Heisenberg uncertainty principle)
- Bohr – Niels Bohr won the prize for Physics in 1922 and his son Aage Bohr won in 1975, also for Physics. And Bragg – William Lawrence Bragg, born in Australia, was joint winner for Physics in 1915 with his father William Henry Bragg. There is also a mother-daughter connection. Marie Curie’s daughter Irene won the Chemistry prize jointly with her husband in 1935.
- Planck – h is the symbol of Planck’s constant.
- Einstein – in discussion at the conference on Uncertainty, Einstein famously said ‘God does not play dice’, to which Bohr replied ‘Einstein, stop telling God what to do’.
- Langevin – he was married with 4 children and allegedly had an affair with Marie Curie in 1910 four years after her husband died. This became public in 1911 just before she was due to accept her second Nobel. The prize committee asked her not to come to Stockholm to accept the prize in person. She went to Stockholm anyway, and told them ‘I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life’.
