(The following text is based on remarks made at the symposium)

ALAN BRODY:

I'm Alan Brody. I'm the Associate Provost for the Arts at MIT. I want to welcome all of you on behalf of the MIT Office of the Arts and the Goethe Institut, who are sponsoring this extraordinary event tonight. And I want to give special thanks to Brian Schwartz of The Graduate Center, City University New York, who engineered this whole thing and brought it to my attention.

Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" centers on the mysterious meeting of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr Copenhagen in 1941. Bohr and his wife, Margrethe were in effect in exile from Germany, and Heisenberg was working on the development of an atom bomb in Hitler's laboratories. No one really knows what transpired at that meeting. The play structured on Heisenberg's own theories of indeterminacy, and Michael Blakemore's direction -- structured on images of quantum physics -- searches out all the possibilities of that meeting and their implications. It's a riveting journey.

The theater, of course, has always served as a vehicle for understanding the structure of reality in any given time and place. So, it's got to be telling us something, when so plays like "Arcadia," like "Proof, "like "QED" and, of course, "Copenhagen," center on questions of morality, humanity and mystery, and science, mathematics and engineering -- the building blocks of reality in the 21st Century -- serving the same needs that faith and theology did in the Medieval world.

Mariette Hartley, Len Cariou and Hank Stratton in a scene from Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" —Photo by Joan Marcus

And it is appropriate that this panel should be happening on the MIT campus, where the arts thrive in the context of science and engineering. This very panel reflects the new inter-penetration of theater, science and social science. Let me introduce the panelists briefly and then turn the microphone over to them.

Jochen Heisenberg was born in Leipzig in 1939 as the third of seven children of Werner and Elizabeth Heisenberg. He's now a Professor of Physics at the University of New Hampshire. He began his university studies in Munich in 1958 in chemistry but eventually changed to physics. In 1967 he received his PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics from the University of Hamburg. After stints at Stanford University and at MIT he moved to the University of New Hampshire, where he has been teaching and doing research since.

You'll see this is alphabetical, except for Len Cariou. We didn't know he was going to be here so I'm going to put him last.

Mariette Hartley, who plays Margrethe Bohr in "Copenhagen," started a career as a protege of Eva Le Gallienne and a member of John Houseman's American Shakespeare Festival. Her theater credits include "The Miser" at the Mark Taper Forum, "Detective Story" at the Amundsen, "Sylvia" at the Manhattan Theatre Club and L.A., and Tom Stoppard's adaptation of "The Seagull" at The old Globe and "Measure for Measure" and "King John" at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. She's also familiar to film and television audiences. Her autobiography, "Breaking The Silence" was a bestseller.

Gerald Holton is a Professor of Physics and History of Science Emeritus at Harvard University. He's a Malinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science. His chief research interests are in the history and philosophy of science and in the physics of matter at high pressure. Among his books are "Thematic origins of Scientific Thought," "Kepler to Einstein: Science and Anti-Science," "Einstein, History and other Passions," "Scientific Imagination: The Advancement of Science and Its Burdens." Professor Holton is a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many foreign academies. He's received the Sarton Medal, The Millikan Medal, the Oersted Medal, The Presidential Citation for Service to Education, and the selection by The National Endowment for the Humanities as Tenth Annual Jefferson Lecturer, the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Hank Stratton plays Werner Heisenberg in "Copenhagen." He recently completed the national tour of the revival of "Cabaret" as Cliff Bradshaw. on Broadway he appeared opposite Nathan Lane in "The Man Who Came To Dinner" and in the Encore's production of "Lady in the Dark." In Los Angeles he joined the original off-Broadway company of Paul Rudnick's "Jeffrey" and the award-winning production of "Two Rooms" at the Court Theatre. He has appeared in numerous productions at regional theaters, including "The Way of the World" at Boston's own Huntington Theatre. Mr. Stratton is a graduate of The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

Laszlo Tisza was born in 1907, Budapest, Hungary. He is Professor of Physics Emeritus at MIT. He learned quantum mechanics in G–ttengen 1928-1929 and spent one semester in Werner Heisenberg's department in Leipzig. He worked with Edward Teller, L.D. Landau and Fritz London and initiated the two-fluid theory of liquid helium. He came to the United States in 1941 and joined the faculty at MIT that year. His research areas include: theoretical physics and the history and philosophy of science, specifically on the foundation of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. His 1966 book, "Generalized Thermodynamics," is considered a classic. Professor Tisza had personal contact with Niels Bohr while the latter visited at MIT. He's a Fellow of The American Physical Society and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris in Sorbonne.

Len Cariou received the Tony Award for his legendary performance in "Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." He is also Tony-nominated for "Applause" and "A Little Night Music." He was also seen on Broadway in "Cold Storage," "Dance a Little Closer," "The Speed of Darkness" and many other superb plays. His classical stage repertoire is far-ranging, encompassing the title roles in "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Cyrano," "Coriolanus," as well as Iago, Petruccio, Prospero. He's been seen on screen, on television. He's former Artistic Director of The Manitoba Theatre Center and Former Associate Director of the Guthrie Theatre. And I just told him something I had wanted to tell him for about 20 years or more actually. I saw him do an "Oedipus" at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis that absolutely blew me away and changed my life. And I can now publicly thank him for that too.

So, welcome to all of you, and congratulations to the entire company of "Copenhagen," each of whom is a finalist in the 2002 National Theatre Awards, which were announced last Monday. And "Copenhagen" has also been nominated in the Best Play category.

Now, we're going to start off with some brief remarks from, well, no... they're not going to be brief. They just told me that.

Laszlo Tisza will start off, following him will be Professor Holton, and following him will be Jochen Heisenberg. After that I'm going to open the mike to the company of "Copenhagen" so that they can wing it.

So, let me first introduce Laszlo Tisza.

LASZLO TISZA:

My credentials for being on this panel are that I spent a semester with Heisenberg in 1930; I also listened many times to Niels Bohr talking at meetings, the first time at one organized by Lev Landau in Kharkov, Ukraine in 1934. I also had a one-to-one discussion with him at MIT. All these personal contacts wouldn't help me much in clarifying what happened in Copenhagen in 1941. Fortunately, I had an early experience that let me understand their differences in style of doing physics before I ever met them. I had been a mathematician in Hungary when I came to Göttingen in 1928. I had a Danish friend, Mogens Pihl, who seduced me to the beauties of quantum theory and quantum mechanics. None of this had I heard about in Budapest. By the time I went back on my first vacation a new professor had brought physics in Budapest into the 20th century. However, this was too late for me; the great new experience came to me all of a sudden in Göttingen.

I took the first ever quantum mechanics course with Max Born. It was pure matrix mechanics, not a word of Schrödinger. There were no textbooks yet, so I read, primarily the original papers of Heisenberg along with those he wrote with Max Born and Pascual Jordan. For the experimental background the standard fare was Arnold Sommerfeld's "Atombau und Spektrallinien." This was all Bohr's theory. Thus the difference in style, in personality between Bohr and Heisenberg was a living reality for me before I ever met them.

It made a great impression on me how Frayn captured their difference in style and succeeded to give it dramatic expression. You see their clash, the resulting friction and also the emergence of friendship and affection when the common goal was taking shape. I think that is one of the finest aspects of the play, which I indeed liked very much.

Now back to Copenhagen. "Why did he come? "

Well, it was September 1941. I vividly remember those dark days when the Germans stood at the gates of Moscow and we all were apprehensive that they might win. Heisenberg, although not a Nazi, was a German patriot and must have been elated. He would have liked to shake his friend out of his anti-German prejudice. This effort was not appreciated, although at a later date a member of the German Embassy warned the Danish Jews of the impending deportation and prevented the catastrophe.

The scenario was repeated two years later when Heisenberg visited his friend Casimir in occupied Holland as described in the latter's memoirs. Although the prospect for victory was not so promising, Heisenberg still suggested that German dominion may be the lesser evil. It is Germany's task to defend Europe from the Eastern hordes and Europe should be grateful because the French and the British would not have had the strength and determination to do that. Casimir was not impressed by Heisenberg's sensitivity, nor were the Bohrs.

Now the main question, what was said about the atomic bomb? I claim that this question cannot be answered. Heisenberg admits that he was inhibited to talk freely and the most likely answer is that not much of significance was said and we shall never know. I am afraid that Frayn raised an issue that he cannot resolve.

However, fortunately, it is possible to consider a somewhat related issue that admits of an objective discussion. Bohr mentions Robert Jungk's book, "Brighter than a Thousand Suns," that represents a German point of view not to Bohr's liking. Jungk states, "It seems paradoxical that the German nuclear physicist living under a saber-rattling dictatorship, obeyed the voice of conscience and attempted to prevent the construction of the atomic bomb, while the professional colleagues in the democracy school had no fear, and with very few exceptions, concentrated their whole energies on the production of the new weapons."

This quotation rubbed both Bohr and the physicists in this country the wrong way. Although the assertion seems to deal with subjective attitudes, I think the issue has an objective side that can be examined without reading the minds of the protagonists. This is particularly the case because according to the testimony of the Farm House transcripts Heisenberg and Weizsäcker made their stand more specific -- they would work on the atomic pile generating power, but out of moral considerations prevent their military from working on the bomb.

I think that contrary to appearance this is not a subjective problem limited by our inability to read the minds of the protagonists -- a limitation much emphasized in the play. We have instead the objective fact that you can take credit for preventing a discovery from happening only if you are capable of making the discovery.

I am not the first one to say that Heisenberg couldn't do it. It was Sam Goudsmit who raised this point first in his "Alsos." This attitude is also prominent in the play. However, this idea usually appears jointly with the accusation of incompetence. This is where I wish to dissent. Heisenberg was one of the greatest theorists of the century. To call him incompetent is quite out of order. It was just not in his style to work on such engineering projects as either the production of atomic power or the atomic bomb.

I emphasized above the difference of style between Bohr and Heisenberg. There is also a difference in style between Heisenberg on the one hand and the heroes of the Manhattan Project. Heisenberg's great achievement was recognizing the central flaw of the Bohr theory. He realized that the use of planetary orbits that was Bohr's point of departure became less useful to the point of embarrassment. And yet to discover a replacement was extremely difficult. Heisenberg was the first to do it; he looked at the essence, the core of a vast array of phenomena.

Oppenheimer, Fermi, Wigner, Teller, Bethe, Neumann and their vast team had a vast vision, they could think of many things at the same time. Fermi was a first-class theorist and a first-class experimentalist. He had a fantastic feeling for things. Wigner was a wonderful nuclear physicist and a chemical engineer and this joint ability made him capable of designing the plutonium factory, which he did in Hanford, Washington.

I heard an anecdote that rings true to me. At a meeting one of the DuPont engineers said: "Dr. Wigner, you tell us all about nuclear physics; we are chemical engineers, we'll do the rest." Wigner said, "Gentlemen, you are mistaken I am a chemical engineer; I have my diploma from the Berlin Institute of Technology."

And, indeed, the extraction of plutonium from the atomic pile was an extremely complicated procedure, where conventional chemical engineering combined with specific nuclear complications. Wigner had a great deal to contribute to the design of the DuPont engineers.

In Los Alamos, when it came to the manufacture of the atomic bomb, the complexities were enormous. Oppenheimer was willing and able to connect the varied aspects of physics, chemistry and metallurgy with the complex mechanics of the implosion process.

I saw Oppenheimer at the 7th Annual Meeting of Theoretical Physics at George Washington University. There were many speakers, and Oppenheimer was on top of every detail; he pulled everything together. This is, of course, quite different from Heisenberg's focusing on the core of deep phenomena.

I think our fascination with Heisenberg stems from his being torn by a double tragedy. He was a German patriot who decided to compromise with the despised Nazi government and suffered the consequences. The second tragedy was that being a great theorist he felt obliged to develop the engineering implication of nuclear fission. In this he miserably failed. He made disappointingly few contributions to the atomic project compared with lesser people of considerable talent, such as Walther Gerlach, Kurt Diebner, Karl Wirtz and Fritz Houtermans.

As an analogy, Wolfgang Pauli was a little bit like Heisenberg. When Oppenheimer assembled his crew in Los Alamos, Pauli wrote him, "Don't you think I should join you too?"

To which Oppenheimer replied: no, no, no. You just stay there and publish while we can't.

I dare say that Pauli was relieved. If Pauli had been in charge of the atomic bomb project we would have never gotten the bomb.

Let me specify the nature of Heisenberg's failure. When the Allies interrupted his work in '45, he was still frantically trying to reach criticality. Fermi achieved this from December '41 to December '42. Heisenberg and his group believed that they were almost there. They thought if it had been only two more weeks or so, they could have done it. This is not true, because they missed some elementary aspects, like the use of cadmium rods, which slow down the reaction and prevent a meltdown. If the Germans had succeeded, then they would have all died of radiation, because of the lack of cadmium rods in the pile.

Another thing was that they didn't realize that graphite could be used as a good moderator, because industrial graphite had impurities, They didn't think that that purification of graphite would have been simpler than working with heavy water.

In sum they failed because of lack of engineering skills -- the limited German resources strained by allied bombing. Moral scruples were only rationalization. The idea that they didn't succeed because of moral reasons, I think is completely untenable. However, I repeat I would not consider Heisenberg as incompetent. He earned his ranking as a great physicist.

GERALD HOLTON:

Ladies and gentlemen, I, in a sense, follow directly on Lazlo Tisza's remarks, because what truly interests me is not my given task today, which is to compare the letters of Heisenberg and Bohr, which are interesting enough. But I'm interested, as a historian of science, in the different ways the two laboratories --the laboratory at Los Alamos and the one under Heisenberg -- were run. What made one successful and the other a failure? I hint at it in a very small anecdote, which some of you may know, which then allows me to go to my main task.

When young Richard Feynman, not yet having the ink dry on his Ph.D. diploma, is sent to Los Alamos, there are not yet enough offices. They're still building. So he's doubled up with Hans Bethe -- Hans Bethe, the man who knows everything about nuclear physics, who had written what everybody calls the Bible -- remember Hans Bethe's Bible? on nuclear physics. So Hans Bethe, being well brought up in Germany, says something like this:"Young man, sit down over there." Richard slouches down. "It is my moral duty to tell you what we are doing here." And he goes to the blackboard and he begins to show some of the theoretical material. And there comes the voice from this young nobody, saying, "Hans, this is wrong." Probably there was a plus sign instead of a minus sign.

But imagine this happening at Werner Heisenberg's, or anywhere in hierarchic labs in Germany.

At Los Alamos, immediately, Feynman was 'discovered' -- a Wunderkind -- and, of course, he had amazing freedom to do things there.

My task, then, is to go to the comparison of letters between Heisenberg, on the one hand, that famous letter that Robert Jungk published, , and on the other hand, the recently- released -- in early February --letters, or more properly drafts, because none of them were sent -- except one telegram -- by Niels Bohr.

Even for a very abbreviated tour, the only way I can do it is to invoke relativity, by going so fast that my clock will say 10 minutes, whereas your clock will ....

Now, the first thing to mention is, of course, the publication of that book, "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" by Robert Jungk, a journalist, who had worked hard on it for years, traveled, interviewed everybody. It first comes out in German in 1956 as, "Heller als tausend Sonnen, das Schicksal der Atomforscher." In this book, rather than in the English translation (1958), he has a preface, which says how this book came about. That chapter he left out in the English version, for good reasons.

The German original shows he has an agenda. He says, this book "came about" because of three happenings to him. One, when he visited Los Alamos in 1949, he met there a scientist who broke down, berating himself in tears that he had helped to create that frightening war weapon.

Then Jungk says, on another trip, to Europe, he encountered a German scientist, who told him that he and his colleagues (I'm quoting in translation) "in the Third Reich, they had debated how one could prevent the misapplication of that great atomic discovery."

Then back in Los Alamos another year, Jungk happens to see a great scientist walking with this (quote) "a smile on his face of near angelic beauty." Jungk found out later -- to his horror -- that this man was at that point actually thinking about producing what Jungk called a "new type of hellish bomb."

Now you see the supposed moral contrast between the Allies and Germans in Jungk's book. But it was safely left out from the English version.

It also ought to be said that for nearly five decades, Jungk's version of what he called the German scientists being concerned with the "dubious moral aspect" of working on atomic weapons was the only widely read source on the matter. That had consequences to this day. Jungk's take (which he regretted later, in his autobiography "Trotzdem" [1993], as having allowed himself to propagate "a legend") was adopted by Thomas Powers in his 1993 book, "Heisenberg's War" (where Jungk is referred to frequently in the text, but does not appear in the Index). And Powers' book in turn became a mainstay for Michael Frayn's play, Frayn calling it in his original Postscript to his published play (1998) the "extraordinary and encyclopaedic book...which first aroused my interest in the trip to Copenhagen."

So the fiction has lived on unchallenged until Bohr's documents were released, as you will see shortly; but it persists nevertheless.

Now when Heisenberg read Jungk's book, he initiated a correspondence on 17 November 1956, with a second letter on 18 January 1957. It took me about a year to get hold of that correspondence in full, because Jungk only published a small part of it.

First Heisenberg has suggestions for a few corrections, and then says that, in passing, that he can't remember some of the early discussions concerning the possible useof atomic energy in warfare,(quote) "perhaps out of fear, it was pushed away into the innermost." And later again, he says, "It is a sign of psychological pushing away at that time."

He protects himself by saying what happened all those years ago, in those dark years, I'm really putting it away, out of my conscience.

He also refers to whether there is a moral right in using the bomb. That point he'd seen raised -- first by the interned German scientists in England after they had heard of the Allied use of the bomb in 1945.

Well, Robert Jungk answered Heisenberg 29 December 1956, and there he says, By the way, tell me more about that meeting in 1941, which hadn't been mentioned by Heisenberg in his first letter. Would you please send it to me?

Heisenberg sent him the long second letter, of which Jungk later only published in his book maybe a half, without saying so. And in that hidden half that Jungk does not use, there in Heisenberg's discussion of the supposed moral qualms. Jungk puts that, however, as his own contribution, into the text of the 1957 English, Danish, and other editions.

There's a kind of a mischief being done by the journalist.

Jungk cuts out a number of important fragments, including that about the "moralische Bedenken," which are in Heisenberg's letter, and adopted then as more or less his own.

Let me just point out a couple of things.

Heisenberg say, in an excerpt of his letter in the Jungk book, "As far as I remember, although I may be wrong after such a long time, the conversation came about as follows."

He thus started by protecting himself. Later:

"We knew that one could produce a bomb, but overestimated the technical expenditure at the time. ...I tried to conduct this talk in such a way as to preclude putting my life into immediate danger. This talk probably started with my question as to whether or not it was right for physicists to devote themselves in wartime to the uranium problem... Bohr understood the meaning of this question immediately, as I realized from his slightly frightened reaction. He replied, as far as I can remember with a counter-question."

Then later on, Heisenberg says, "I may have replied."

In short, what I'm pointing out is that Heisenberg says between the lines and right in the lines: it's not all that clear to me after all these years; it may have happened that way. I am not really that sure about what happened at that time. I have pushed it away, psychologically.

Niels Bohr Credit: AIP Niels Bohr Library

Now, to Niels Bohr, who read that letter in Jungk's Danish version of 1957. He immediately began a series of drafts, of which there are about 12 -- some of them are numbered 11A, 11B, 11C in Niels Bohr's publication on the web site. In it, over the years from about 1957 to his death in 1962 -- in the typical way of Niels Bohr -- he goes over and over the same ground and never contradicts himself. But he looks at it from this way and that way. He did his physics that way, too. Leon Rosenfeld said they worked on one paper that had a hundred drafts over 10 years. It drove poor Rosenfeld crazy. Let me insert that I knew both Bohr and Heisenberg, if not closely. I met Heisenberg and admired him for his cultural refinement and scientific knowledge. We met three times. He talked at Harvard in the 1970s. And we also met at two conferences.

I also knew Niels Bohr through meetings, particularly here at MIT in the 1950s and at the American Academy.

At that time I wanted to publish a talk that Niels Bohr had just given. It was so complex. He had not had the chance to think it over and over and over again. So it was a first draft. I said, would you please allow us to edit this before I put it in my journal, Daedalus at the time.

He said, I've often been told I should be edited. Yes, it's true. Will you please do that. And I did, together with one of my colleagues. A week later, I came back. I show him the edited work. He read it right away, and then said: "Oh" -- with his wonderful smile, which you, [to Len Cariou] so well present. He said to me, "This is very wonderful what you and your colleague, P.W. Bridgman have done. I have only one small plea. Would you please publish it just the way I gave it to you?"

I did it eventually, of course, but at the time I had the nerve to ask:

"But Professor Bohr, allow me, now having worked on this for a week, why is that you express yourself in such an obscure way sometimes? "

Then he gave me the wonderful Niels Bohr answer. He said, "I do not choose to write or speak more clearly than I think."

And that is in those draft letters of his which I'm about to show you, because again and again he goes over the same ground and he wants to make it clearer to himself -- above all to himself.

All right, so now, let's look, as long as the time allows me, at least at a couple of the documents. You can get them yourself and you should. It's easy to remember. It's of course on www.nba (like National Basketball Association, but it's Niels Bohr Archive), nbi, (which is for Niels Bohr Institute), dk (for Denmark) -- (www.nba.nbi.dk).

All right? And promise yourself to look at all those letters in English translation, if not in their original, in the handwriting of those to whom he dictated the drafts. Niels Bohr, of course, wasn't writing it himself. It is said he had even dictated his schoolwork to his mother and afterwards, he dictated, of course, to his wife and to his many associates. Only in a very few cases do you see in those letters his own handwriting, but it's all in his voice.

Here, in the first draft (which by the way, I was shown in 1985 by Erik Bohr, but have kept quiet about for all these years):

"Dear Heisenberg."

Of course, these European Professors, first addressed each other by their last names.

"Dear Heisenberg, I have seen the book 'Brighter than a Thousand Suns' by Robert Jungk, recently published in Danish, and I think that I owe it to you..."

What a way to put it, instead of: you owe it to me.

"I owe it to you to tell you that I'm greatly amazed to see how much your memory has deceived you in your letter to the author of the book, excerpts of which are published in the Danish edition..."

There's a complete change compared to Heisenberg's "perhaps," or "I may," etc.

"Personally, I remember every word of our conversation, which took place on a background of extreme sorrow and tension for us here in Denmark."

And, of course, he remembered because he talked it over at once, and again and again, with his son Aage Bohr, who published about it, and with all his people at the Institute after that frightening encounter, and with the British Intelligence people after Bohr fled for his life from Denmark.

Continuing:

"In particular, it made a strong impression both on Margrethe and me, and on everyone at the Institute that the two of you spoke to, that you and Weizsäcker expressed your definite conviction that Germany would win and that it was therefore quite foolish for us to maintain the hope of a different outcome of the war and to be reticent as regards to all German offers of cooperation."

What offers of cooperation were there? Well, to come and listen to lectures on physics, on astrophysics, and so on after the German Propaganda Institute in Copenhagen, and by your presence, as the most distinguished Dane to bring in all the others, and make them also comfortable with the Occupation. Because we Germans are going to win, and you don't want to be on the losing side. This is the same story Heisenberg told in many other countries as well. And, of course, he also might have worried about Niels Bohr whom he loved, and therefore wanted him not to be caught at the German Victory of the war as a non-cooperative kind of a person.

"I also remember quite clearly our conversation in my room at the Institute..."

Which was a puzzle because, as you know, they're supposed to be outside.

"In my room, at the Institute, where in vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm impressions that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons and that you said that there was no need to talk about details, since you were completely familiar with them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclusively on such preparation. I listened to this without speaking since a great matter for mankind was at issue..."

Indeed a "great matter for mankind." He wasn't an angry old man not even angry that his former co-worker had now become the head of a nuclear-energy project for the Nazi Regime. No, Bohr was worried about the next step, what this would mean in the war itself. Therefore, he says, of course, "a great matter for mankind."

He continues:

"Despite our personal friendship, we had to be regarded as representatives of two sides engaged in mortal combat. That my silence and gravity, as you write in the letter, could be taken as an expression of shock at your reports that it was possible to make an atomic bomb is a quite peculiar misunderstanding, which must be due to the great tension in your own mind."

Once more, Bohr offers Heisenberg an out. You had tension in your mind, therefore, of course, you did not quite remember or understand.

Let me jump down here:

"As I had to understand it, that Germany was participating vigorously in the race to be the first with atomic weapons. Besides at that time, I knew nothing about how far one had already come in England and America, which I learned only the following year when I was able to go to England after being informed that the German occupation forces in Denmark had made preparations for my arrest."

Then, at the very end, again a touching embrace of a sort to his former co-worker:

"I have always had the definite impression that you and Weizsäcker had arranged the symposium at the German Institute in which I did not take part myself as a matter of principle, and that the visit to us in order to assure yourselves that we suffered no harm, and to try in every way to help us in our dangerous situation."

This was the first-draft letter. Now, the next nine, 10, 11 go over that same ground, again and again. (e.g. "I carefully fixed in my mind every word that was uttered," and "It is therefore quite incomprehensible to me that you should think that you hinted to me that the German physicists would do all they could to prevent the application of atomic science" [as Jungk's book claimed]. And then: "...my alarm was not lessened by hearing from the others at the Institute that Weizsäcker had stated how fortunate it would be for the position of science in Germany after the victory that you could help so significantly toward this end." [All these excerpts from Document 11a] ).

After the war, when the tables had turned, and it was Bohr who had to console Heisenberg, they met at scientific conferences. The Heisenberg family, also visited the Bohrs. They talked about that '41 event again and again, but they never agreed on it.

So to his death in '62, Bohr kept writing that unwritten letter. And it is a huge irony that Bohr, who had nothing to hide and every reason to remember, didn't send his letter, because he felt the language was too strong, and that Heisenberg, who had good reasons to suppress things psychologically, to misremember, did have his letter published -- which eventually, before the Bohr documents were released, led to the production of a piece of successful fiction, a theater play.

JOCHEN HEISENBERG:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I thought in addition to saying a few things, I also would like to show you some pictures. They don't necessarily have to do with what I'm saying, but they should give you some impression of what my father was about. First, let me thank the organizers of this symposium and I also would like to thank Thomas Powers and Michael Frayn, the early champions of my father's historical records. Today, I want to talk to you about how I view this record.

"Copenhagen" has allowed for some ambiguity. Yet it has angered some people. My remarks are particularly directed at them.

I had the privilege of growing up with a father whose primary way of communication was through rational thought and argumentation. But also, who I consistently experienced as a warm, caring, compassionate and principled human being with tremendous inner strength and resources. He taught us children a love for the outdoors and for mountain climbing. He encouraged painting and played music with us. He recited poetry and made puns and jokes, played competitive as well as silly games with us and also talked to us about the spiritual, which he termed the 'central order.'

My high school in Göttingen was just across from his institute, and after school, I would walk over and pick him up to walk home for lunch. On the way, we talked about physics, most way over my head, as for example, the uncertainty relation was. I can remember occasions when he told me about how different the approaches to reality can be, and he compared Goethe's approach to colors with Newton's. They both were right. They just addressed different aspects of reality.

Thus he introduced me to those things that were of great importance to him.

Music was my father’s equivalent to emotional passion, if you will. He played regularly for himself and with others, and it provided a connection to people who were not his scientific peers. If I know him so well now, it is especially due to the many hours of music we played together. .

So when it comes to my father, I am surprisingly biased.

Werner Heisenberg

I will today go over those areas that illustrate how some public notions have clashed with what I know from him personally. My father has told us that the German scientists had only worked on designing and building a nuclear reactor. Other people want to believe he tried to build an atomic bomb and failed. I am biased and trust my father, but I had to find out. Last year, my wife and I went to Haigerloch and looked at the reconstructed reactor. As a physicist, I clearly recognized that this was indeed a reactor, albeit without too many safety features as was already mentioned, to put it mildly. The contrast to Los Alamos couldn't be greater.

Also, there was nothing of the industrial effort as in the V2-Rocket installations. My father also told us that he, Otto Hahn, and other scientists advised the Nazi brass, such as Speer, Milch, and others that building a nuclear weapon was possible but would take at least three years of development, knowing this would end any such program. Instead they wanted to develop a reactor.

I trust my father, but I am biased and I had to check it out.

So I read from Albert Speer's memoirs and it says there, [I quote], "After the talk I asked Heisenberg how nuclear physics can be used for the production of atomic bombs. His reaction was by no means encouraging..."

Further down Speer writes: “Following the recommendation by the nuclear physicists already in the fall of 1942 we gave up all claim to develop atomic bombs. After my renewed questions about deadlines I was informed that we could not count on anything before three or four years down the line. By that time the war had to be long decided. Instead, I gave permission to develop a Uranium reactor to power machines..."

My father told us that he had informed the people in the government that the bomb would require a critical mass roughly the size of a pineapple. Some people want to believe he mistakenly thought it would take several tons.

I am biased but checked Diebner’s official report of the so-called Uranium Club to the Army Ordnance Ministry. I read that the estimate was of 10 to 100 kg of U-235 for a nuclear bomb, which translates to just about the size of a pineapple, confirming his truthfulness.

This was known at the time my father went to Copenhagen.

My father spoke to us about the atrocities Germany committed during the Nazi era, but he was opposed to the Nazi’s ideology, their anti-Semitism, and their leaders from the start. Others want to believe that this was not true on all three counts and that he worked for them.

I looked for evidence in his long philosophical treaties, ‘Ordnung der Wirklichkeit’ written between 1941 and 1942. He clearly articulates his views on the political state that the Nazis had established, a state in violation of basic law. He writes that political power is always accrued by criminal means and that revolutions hate the law, but that, in the end, the wrongs do right themselves throughout history.

For the same reasons, he was a staunch anti-Communist as well. He predicted during the 1970s what nobody could conceive of it, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany before the year 2000.

My father told us that he examined the role of the scientist vis a vis a political system and that he was ethically opposed to building nuclear bombs for the Nazi regime.

Knowing him, I believe him, but I am biased and I had to check it out.

Again, in 1942, in "Ordnung der Wirklichkeit' (Reality and its Order), he wrote, "Against his will, the scientist has become the people's magician to whom the forces of nature are obedient. But this power can only turn to good when he is simultaneously a priest and acting only as mandated by the deity or by destiny."

We learned from my father that the right to free speech had been taken away, which necessitated extreme caution as the survivors’ strategy. I accepted it as part of those dark times.

Helmut Rechenberg who heads the Werner Heisenberg archives in Munich documents it in his recent article, "Copenhagen and the Nature of the German Uranium Project," which will soon appear in the "Festschrift" in honor of my father's 100th birthday-- how my father's remark on a trip to Zurich got him in trouble with the authorities. Six months before the end of the war, he dared to say that Germany will lose the war and Walter Gerlach, the project manager had to intercede for him with Nazi officials. Earlier trips abroad, notably the Copenhagen and Holland ones, found him much more blatantly pronouncing the Nazi version of reality. He was always under watch and considered quite expendable to the regime, which was brought home to him early on when he fought for quote "Jewish Physics."

We now know that the misunderstanding between my father and Niels Bohr at the 1941 Copenhagen meeting started even before he got there.

Bohr describes his reference point in the recently released documents as, "... we had to be regarded as representatives of two sides engaged in mortal combat." My father's reference point can be found in "Reality and Its Order" and, quote, "We have to continuously be mindful that it is more important to act humanely towards one another than to fulfill any professional obligations or national obligations or political obligations."

And in that spirit, I think he went to Copenhagen.

My father told us that one of the reasons he came to Copenhagen was to ensure that the Institute remained under Danish control. He achieved that.

According to him, the second reason was to use his influence for Bohr's safety.

I am biased, but Bohr's document says ""I have always had the definite impression that you and Weizsäcker had arranged the symposium at the German Institute,[ ...], and the visit to us in order to assure yourselves that we suffered no harm and to try in every way to help us in our dangerous situation."

Further, C.F. von Weizsäcker describes their actions in Copenhagen : "Anyway, we were able to talk openly and with ease to those delegates at the embassy that were close to the circle around my father. We naturally touched upon our concern about Bohr and did get assurances that they were willing to do for Bohr's welfare whatever was within their means."

My father told us that on their walk he spoke only between the lines and, as a result, Bohr misunderstood him immediately.

Naturally, I'm biased. But fortunately, this too was confirmed in both documents.

Bohr says, "... Where in vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done to develop weapons ..."

So, it confirms what my father said.

Do I believe that he actually tried to convey the very opposite? Of course I do, because that is what the scientists actually did when it came to that decision in Germany.

Let me fast forward to April 1945. When the American Alsos mission came upon the tiny cave in the mountain where the research installation of the nuclear reactor was hidden, their expectations were dumbfounded. The deserted place showed no evidence of any bomb building whatsoever. And on a chalkboard was the witty ditty, "Deine Ruh, die sei Dir heilig, nur Verrueckte haben's eilig" (Keep your holy calm. Only fools are madly rushing). Which is hardly the motto for a feverish race towards anything.

Even more telling is a diary entry dated May 24th, 1945 -- that's before the American bombs were dropped -- by Erich Bagge, one of the German scientists. Quote, "An amusing piece of news reached us this noon. The stars and stripes are featuring a 50-line piece on the failed attempts of the Germans to build an atomic bomb."

The myth of failure had begun.

After the war, my father did what he always had said he needed to do. He helped rebuild and shape the science of Germany. He continued to oppose arming Germany with nuclear weapons by signing the Declaration of the Göttingen 18, in 1958. And to the end of his days as president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he was actively expressing his belief that science is international.

Yes, I am biased, now more than ever, because whenever I was searching out the supporting evidence, I found that my biased view was verifiable by the historical records. I encourage you to use the same approach, and I'm giving you a Web site address if you choose to follow my advice.

The Web site is http://pauli.unh.edu. That is like Pauli who was my father's best scientific friend. My computer's also named after him as is my older brother. Thank you very much.

BRODY:

I'm going to leave it to the company of "Copenhagen" now to respond in any way they want to.

HANK STRATTON:

I'm a little intimidated and quite overwhelmed by the company that we're sharing this panel with. I have had the great pleasure of sitting on a number of these panels across the country as we've toured with "Copenhagen" because of Dr. Schwartz.

What has struck me more than anything, and I'll keep my remarks very brief because I'm far more interested in what you have to say than what I have to say, is that it constantly overwhelms me that we are gathered here on a Monday night to talk about something that happened in 1941 because of theater. I'm so proud to be a part of it, and I'm so proud to have met the people that I have met along the journey of inhabiting these ideas on stage. I'm overwhelmed at the curiosity that I find in all of you because of what we're doing on stage, and I don't have anything else to say.

MARIETTE HARTLEY:

I am as overwhelmed as Mr. Stratton. Also overwhelmed by doing a play that is so extraordinary, so brilliant, so dense. I sit and listen to it a lot and I learned things all the time. I don't come from a physics background and neither did Margrethe. I'm lucky enough not to have to know physics, and this I can learn. I've had a wonderful experience getting into a world that's unknown to me.

I will talk just a little bit about Margrethe because it's such an honor to play her, and she is not a shadow figure in this play. Frayn has given her voice, and I don't know how particularly liked it was by the Bohr Family because they didn't know her this way. They knew her as a wonderful wife, a helpmate, a partner and someone who's obviously in the '40s and did not express herself the way Mr. Frayn has her express herself in the play. And sometimes that's very vocipherously and quite aggressively. It's funny because she's difficult for me to play at times because I have a tendency to be very sympathetic to Heisenberg and not just because I adore Hank and his take-off on Mr. Heisenberg.

As I listen to the play and read about it and study it, I have great empathy for both sides. The interesting thing to me about this play that not many people mention is its spirituality. I think why I love playing this part so much is that she's not a symbol. She is a real woman, and not much has been written about Margrethe. I hope one day that Will Bohr will write a book on his grandmother, and I hope I will have something to do with that. That would be quite exciting. I had a chance to meet him. We all met him in Washington, DC and he got to see the play again and seemed to like this one, which was nice. My take on Margrethe is that she was -- and from the people who have written me about her, people who knew her, people who have seen the production -- that she was an amazing hostess, that there was a charm about her and there had to be a humor about her, particularly living with a man who spoke the way he thought.

Mariette Hartley as Margrethe Bohr —Photo by Joan Marcus

There's a wonderful description of physicists and that is that physicists are bigamists. I don't know who said this, but it was quite a wonderful, I think it was a physicist. I don't know who it was, I think it was either Dr. [Ulrich] Becker or -- I don't remember who it was.

But I think it's probably true that physics comes first often for physicists. And it probably is of necessity. But how does one fit oneself inside that relationship, inside that family? I think people with that kind of brilliance need someone who is grounded.

How many people have seen the play here by the way? Oh, my gosh. Oh. How thrilling. Don't tell me if you liked it or not. I don't want to hear about.

By the way, I was very curious. You [to Alan Brody] mentioned everybody else's awards. I don't know why you didn't mention my Emmy. I got an Emmy for "The Incredible Hulk," which is always astonishing to me. You guys get awards for really doing things that matter. I went to bed with Bill Bixby and woke up with Lou Ferrigno and got an Emmy for it.

I wanted to meet the Bohrs, and I was very nervous about it because I knew they were very, very private, so I thought gee, how could I get inside? OK, I'll tell them that I was Spock's girlfriend. Maybe that way I can get in, but even that didn't work.

But one of the fascinating things to me about Margrethe is that she speaks for women. She is to me very much the feminine voice. She's the woman who protects the children of the world, protects the ghosts of the world but the children particularly. If there's a subtext to her, it is the deep protection of the children in the world.

Niels Bohr mentions God once in a kind of perfunctory way. It's a very interesting thing. My feeling is that Margrethe mentions it in a profound way, but it's never said. And that is when she turns to Niels and says, "If we really are the center of the universe, if we really are all that's keeping it in being, what will be left?"

And he says, "Darkness, total and complete darkness."

I feel that Frayn has done an amazing, amazing thing to combine all of it. Margrethe's role in it is to, number one, take off the rose-colored glasses. With Niels and with Heisenberg, it's to tell the truth, to pull their covers, as they say, and to keep them apart on some level, to keep them truthful on some level, to balance the piece out.

Also, on another level -- for those people who are in the audience that are not physicists -- to allow, she's almost the channel through which many people watch and listen and process the play.

It's such an honor. It feels like being a part of a chamber music orchestra, if that's the right word for it. A trio. It's very musical, this play, and it's been a joy to work with both of these men who have worked in their own way. It's been a profoundly changing experience for me, and I hope that I will continue to do the work.

Thank you for inviting all of us here. It's been a wonderful experience.

I have to say one thing about Jochen Heisenberg. What a courageous man. I mean, I sit here and I listen to what's said often about him and I read what's said, and for him to open himself up to this and to handle it with such grace to me, more grace actually than Hank does. Hank takes it very personally. But no, Hank and Len have been wonderful people to work with, and I learned from them constantly.

Again, I come to you with great humility. Thank you again for asking us.

LEN CARIOU:

What can I say? The play is about to come to an end for us. We've been doing it now for six months. I was thinking about that today. We're about to close a chapter in our lives, and this play has been I think a profound experience for all of us. It was the mother of all plays to learn. We don't know too many people who talk like we do in this play. So, we had to really create a new chip for the computer and put it in there because there were no reference points. There was nothing that we could kind of bounce off of. The only similarities at all was that the play is like doing a play in blank verse, but it's a wonderful, fascinating play to do.

I think the most important aspect of it is that while it's about this meeting and the science involved, what it really is about in my mind is the relationship between these three people. I think that's something that we all decided we were going to do as soon as we began work on the play and back in October. It was a pretty sobering time because we had come, we began rehearsal almost a month exactly after 9/11 -- in New York City. And it was still a war zone. It was still hurting, and it was still bleeding and you could see the smoke.

Frayn happened to be in New York and said to us you know, this is going to be a very different play, it's going to sound differently in this country now than it certainly ever, than I ever thought it would when I wrote it in 1998. I think that that has been our experience, that people have said my God, how close are we to this happening again, like tomorrow maybe, who knows what's going on over there in the Middle East? We know who has those kind of weapons. We don't know, and Lord knows what Bin Laden has.

But at any rate, the relationship between these people is, I think, as important as the subject matter. The love that was lost, if you will -- that had been found --between Niels and Werner When they did all that incredible discovery in the 'mid 20s, they became very close. You have to keep in mind that Heisenberg had lost his father, and also you have to remember that Bohr had lost two of his children. His eldest child had been drowned in an accident, and there was some obvious role playing between the two of them. Margrethe, I think, because Niels insisted that she take this young man and finally acquiesced and said yes, but as she says in the play, I never entirely liked him. But, because I did and because I loved him and was like a father to him, that was most important. But also, that's why I think Frayn, in his brilliance takes Margrethe, and calls Heisenberg to task. Bohr, while he might want to, and he certainly does with the science, he doesn't want to do it on the personal level. I think Margrethe says, "Wait. This is reality. You guys, you may be brilliant but guess what? You go to the bathroom just like I do and et cetera, et cetera."

Len Cariou and Mariette Hartley as Niels and Margrethe Bohr in "Copenhagen" —Photo by Joan Marcus

STRATTON:

You don't know that.

HARTLEY:

That's true. I don't know that.

CARIOU:

Anyway, I think that's enough said from us. I guess you want to open it up to questions.

BRODY:

You know, the shape of this evening reminds me of something that the great Victor Weisskopf, who we lost only a few months ago had said in his autobiography. He said there were two major theories about the creation, and one is the Big Bang and the other is Haydn; You've got to know both if you're going to exist in the world. And somehow, bringing together all of these people here reminded me of that. Let's open it to questions now. Please keep your questions brief so that the panel can answer them and has time to.

WOMAN:

I have a factual question, which I guess I should ask the playwright, but he's not here. In the third conjecture, when they talk about the man from the embassy giving the people of Denmark (and Bohr) the exact date and time when the SS was going to come...

STRATTON:

There's a wonderful exhibit in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. about the saving of Denmark and Georg Duckwitz is very well represented in that little section of it. You might want to look at that the next time you're in D.C.

MAN:

I was struck by the impression that Heisenberg made on the scientists he visited through Europe. The whole issue is very difficult; who knows what actually happened. What struck me was that Bohr was in one place and he had one encounter, so his total focus would have been on one encounter, while Heisenberg was almost doing a grand tour. It struck me that the response other people had to Heisenberg has some validity and power to it. I'd like to ask his son -- with all his bias -- was this an important signal that Bohr's having one meeting that he remembered well and the responses of the others to this "tour' of Heisenberg's makes me think there's more consistency in their combined reaction to Heisenberg.

HEISENBERG:

I tried to point out that in fact, my father was always under the Gestapo’s supervision as well. If he wanted, for instance, in his visit to Copenhagen, to achieve that the Institute stay under Danish control, he certainly could not present his true view of what he thought of the Nazis. When he talked in public, he had to say something that was acceptable to the people who were listening to him. As I tried to point out, in one instance he didn’t do it, and he was immediately reprimanded and put into jeopardy and had to be bailed out. I think he avoided that by trying to say things that seemed plausible but didn’t represent his view. Already, on his trip to America, he made the statement that he believed the Germans would lose the war. He believed that was true, even though there may have been times when that wasn’t quite clear that it would happen. As soon as the U.S. would get into the game, Germany would have no chance. So, I think that is what his real views were, but he could not express those. He had to say things that were in line with what the government requested in order for him to do what he needed to do.

MAN:

Early in 1941, I know three very high-ranking Japanese officers recommended that Japan not have a war with the U.S. because we would out-produce them and crush them eventually. All three of you people observed the fact that it may not have been do-able to produce the atomic bomb in Germany. Is that, in no small part, due to the fact that the Germans were fighting a two-front war. They were putting together this massive killing machine -- even with all of their technical expertise and even doing everything right, they still would not have had the industrial power to put the whole plant together to build an atomic bomb. Even with everything going their way. It was only the U.S. --with the huge industrial might that we had --that it was do-able.

TISZA:

I suppose that is correct. No one outside the U.S. could have built the bomb. Heisenberg was in this sense correct -- the Germans couldn't have done it. I agree there are many testimonials to the fact that Heisenberg expected Germany to lose the war. I think the 1941 visit to Copenhagen was probably singular. At that time the war went so well that I think he emphasized the outlook of victory. Casimir also mentions that his main point was that he wanted to be in place when a reconstruction comes -- to be the colonel of German reconstruction of science.

HOLTON:

We must remember there was a change in everybody's expectations as the war went on. Heisenberg started to work on the use of nuclear energy for war purposes on the 9th of September -- just a few days after the start of the war -- together with very distinguished groups of other scientists. For a while it went rather well. 1941 may have been the high point -- before Stalingrad. It was thought do-able and in fact, you will want to read two items in addition to those that have been mentioned. One of those is the Farm Hall Recordings ("The Secret Recordings of Farm Hall -- Hitler's Uranium Club" which was put out by Jeremy Bernstein -- much admired by Frayn -- but also a good physicist. He thought this through and annotated it.). One can see in these recordings -- in the six months when the ten German nuclear scientists were interned in England -- how they reminisced about various stages. And in further discussions later on -- Heisenberg for example, has an interview in which he discusses some of the errors that were being made. For example, that Boethe had too much air between the uranium materials in order to make a good measurement. For two years, he said to Niels Bohr, we've been working on it all the time and we're doing a good job. But errors came through. They were being less and less regarded as successful by the German authorities which were diminishing their support. As the war becomes sour for them, they too become much more ready to accept the fact that the best they could do was to possibly made a reactor -- hopeful that they would be making the first ones -- not knowing that Fermi had already done that. Let's think about it in terms of time.

The second item you may want to look for is something that will be published not long from now in The American Journal of Physics -- again by Bernstein, who has gone through this very thoroughly -- called "Heisenberg and the Critical Mass." This is namely all the problems that intervened preventing Heisenberg from actually calculating the proper critical mass which is a key concept one has to have in order to make it work.

So, it was a trajectory. It starts on a high level and goes lower and lower. In the same phase, Heisenberg's ten lectures outside the country which begin in triumph and become more realistic as they discover the war is not going so well.

WOMAN:

I'd like to ask this of Jochen Heisenberg. I'm a Japanese so I'd like to know your father's reaction on August 6 (Hiroshima Day) and August 9, 1945 (Nagasaki Day). What was his reaction especially as I understand he was against the A Bomb being used on a human target.

HEISENBERG:

That is certainly true. He didn’t believe in the beginning that it was a nuclear device that was dropped. He thought it might have been a large conventional bomb, but then after it was mentioned a second time, he realized that it was indeed a nuclear bomb. In a short time he figured out exactly how it worked. His reaction was --I think all the scientists were quite devastated. I think they probably accepted it as part of the war. I think the one that was most devastated was Otto Hahn because he had, after all, first discovered fission. He threatened to commit suicide because he was so devastated by the effect. That is what I know about it.

WOMAN:

Have any of your family members visited Japan?

HEISENBERG:

Yes, my father visited Japan but I'm not sure if he saw either of these two cities.

HOLTON:

Don't forget -- the American scientists -- many of them had the very same reaction to it. When they knew that it was going to be tried out it wasn't clear in what way. There are stories that they would never make a drop on Germany because they were so unsure whether it really would work. And the dud might be clues to German scientists how to make one. So the thought was to use it on Japan instead. And even there the first choice was, according to one of these stories, to only drop it on a fleet so that when it misses it will be sinking and not be used. But in a way in which can be shown through documents James Franck, Donald Hughes, Leo Szilard, J.C. Stern, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, JJ Nixon and a number of other scientists pleaded with the authorities to make it only a demonstration, not on human beings. And they, of course, were voted down by those who used it. Truman took full responsibility for the final use.

MAN:

Heisenberg himself never claimed to have intentionally sabotaged the Nazi Bomb Project. What he said was fortunately we were able to tell the authorities in all honesty that it was impossible, or very difficult, and therefore we were spared the moral dilemma of having to decide what to do. There is however, a very interesting letter, which was published in a book by a woman named Ruth Anshen, in which she claimed to have received a letter from Heisenberg which said, and I'm quoting almost verbatim, that Hahn, von Laue and I falsified the mathematics in order to deny Hitler the bomb. This letter sounds very peculiar because, in the first place Hahn was a chemist and would not have had much opportunity to falsify the mathematics, and von Laue never worked on the project. What I would like to ask Professor Heisenberg is, do you have any information whether this letter was genuine? The letter never appeared. She published it in her book but the letter somehow got lost and there's some question, is that letter genuine as far as you know and did Heisenberg claim to have actually done that, to sabotage the project?

HEISENBERG:

I don’t know anything about miscalculations. I don’t know about the letter. He usually, in his correspondence had all duplicates, which should now be in the Heisenberg archive. So if it isn’t in the Heisenberg archive it’s likely that this letter was not written. I never heard a claim that he purposely miscalculated certain things. He always said, - and it’s in the official report to the, “Heereswaffenamt,” -that the mass is between 10 and 100 kilograms and that’s what he said all the time and that it would take three or four years.

I think one would have to look in more detail into what is actually in Speer’s report. In Speer’s memoirs it says, that first Heisenberg said: it takes at least two years and at that point Speer was quite gung-ho, saying OK, I make all the means available to you that I have in my power. Build as many cyclotrons as you want, even bigger ones than the United States has and you can get all the resources.

Heisenberg said no, it would be useless because we wouldn’t have the people to run these cyclotrons. Then two months later he came back and said, well, it takes more like three or four years. At that time Speer realized it would not be, could not be done during the duration of the war. So the estimate was purposefully increased in order to fall below that threshold that would go to a full project. And I think that is what one could refer to as purposeful.

MAN:

On this question of the mass, you mentioned about the pineapple and the ten kilograms, but there's also the fact that in those Farm Hall transcripts that Gerry Holton referred to he gives an actual derivation to Hahn on a back of the envelope calculation in which he concludes that what you need is two tons of uranium. That is inconsistent with the remark about the ten kilograms. That's part of the debate that's been going on. If you're so sure that he believed the critical mass to be ten kilograms how do you account for this calculation which led to the result of two tons?

HEISENBERG:

I don’t know that part. I only know that one number that he always mentioned to us and that indeed is confirmed in the report to the “Heereswaffenamt,” which was the official report to the government. . I could imagine that after the decision was made he no longer was very careful as to how much the mass really would be and he would sometimes say one number and sometimes another, just because it no longer mattered. I could imagine that it was something like that.

MAN:

I'm just struck, hearing the description of Heisenberg as being under the watchful eye of Gestapo minders and the similar images of what was going on at Los Alamos at the time with the Red scares going on and of course the real spy at Los Alamos, but also the suspicions of the loyalties of many of the European scientists that ultimately felled Oppenheimer. In some ways, you know, we say this is sort of the vice of totalitarianism coming home to roost and derailing the bomb project and the virtues of democracy triumphing in Los Alamos. But in fact the situations weren't that far apart and the moral qualms of the Los Alamos physicists could very well have derailed that project. I'm sure there was probably temptation to sabotage the numbers at Los Alamos and probably discussion of doing that, certainly discussion of the fears of what happens when we turn this over to the government. What are they going to do with it? In many ways the reason for the difference may have come down perhaps to the relationship between General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer, that they were able to make a successful coupling of power and science that kept this herd of Young Turks in line long enough to complete the project. There was no similar core of government sponsorship and scientific talent in Germany that could bring the thing to fruition. So maybe in looking for the explanation for the different fates of the two bomb projects we have to look more to somewhere in that locus of Oppenheimer and Groves.

BRODY:

Do you want to turn that into a question?

MAN:

Just a thought for any reactions to it.

BRODY:

One more question..

WOMAN:

I have a very difficult time understanding some of these approaches to the history of the whole thing. First of all, Heisenberg planned the trip to Copenhagen. He planned on what he wanted to say to Bohr. He was thinking about it ahead of time, it just didn't happen. And Bohr, when he did say in his convoluted way what he was trying to say and Bohr misunderstood it and got terribly upset, Heisenberg I think was traumatized at the same time and the two of them couldn't even remember for sure where they had spoken to one another. But the thing is, history seems to accept the fact that Bohr says, after 16 years, "I remember clearly." Heisenberg says in the Jungk letters, "I may be wrong after all this time."

Now I can't understand accepting Bohr's memory as being so perfect and Heisenberg's memory as being so faulty! Can anybody explain that to me?

STRATTON:

Thank you, Mom

HEISENBERG:

I think you are right.

BRODY:

I think that in certain ways Mariette, Hank and Len answer that question every night.

STRATTON:

Hank Stratton as Werner Heisenberg —Photo by Joan Marcus

You know what's interesting is that you see it's this thing, it's not me. As I sit here listening to these very fascinating lectures the words in Bohr's letter, and I'm paraphrasing so correct me if I'm wrong, he said something about you spoke vaguely and yet I am certain. I'm sort of piggybacking on what you're saying, because that's exactly what we're saying every night in the play and the wonderful thing about the playing of it is that we're not answering any questions. We're presenting a landscape upon which you the observer can project yourselves onto it. But I mean I've done about six of these symposiums now, or maybe I'm forgetting how many I've done and as Mariette talks about, I tend to take it a little personally, so I kept my remarks very, very brief because no one could acquit Heisenberg better than his son or the man himself.

HOLTON:

Well, maybe I can add to that. These are very honorable people. When Bohr says "I remember it very well," he has very good reason for doing so because he completely and immediately talked it over and over and over with people like Aage Bohr, who published part of this earlier than those letters and coincides with those letters. Others at the Institute also were involved. He also was soon debriefed by the British secret service. So to the Danes this was a very remarkable event that they talked about.

As Bhor said, it was a very important thing for mankind. They were extremely worried about that. So he says in 11 different letters over and over again, I remember very clearly what you said, whereas Heisenberg's letter says, well, I don't quite remember.

One of them has reason to misremember and the other one does not. That is to be put into that equation here. After the war they still couldn't agree. They met again several times. They even wrote to each other about it and they stayed with it, stayed with their contrary things.

Michael Frayn

That is just ideal for Michael Frayn because he can then make a play out of that molehill. Because, you know, nothing happened in 1941! The Germans went on and on and on and finally realized they can't do it. The Americans went on and on. They didn't know about this 1941 affair until much later. The German armies went on to Stalingrad and were repelled and so on. So except for the fact that Frayn made this play we wouldn't be here-- we wouldn't be talking about it.

BRODY:

First of all, I want to congratulate all the standees tonight for your stamina and especially I want to thank the entire panel. You were absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much.

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