Copenhagen - Michael Frayn [3]
Margrethe It’s not something to do with the war?
Bohr Heisenberg is a theoretical physicist. I don’t think anyone has yet discovered a way you can use theoretical physics to kill people.
Margrethe It couldn’t be something about fission?
Bohr Fission? Why would he want to talk to me about fission?
Margrethe Because you’re working on it.
Bohr Heisenberg isn’t.
Margrethe Isn’t he? Everybody else in the world seems to be. And you’re the acknowledged authority.
Bohr He hasn’t published on fission.
Margrethe It was Heisenberg who did all the original work on the physics of the nucleus. And he consulted you then, he consulted you at every step.
Bohr That was back in 1932. Fission’s only been around for the last three years.
Margrethe But if the Germans were developing some kind of weapon based on nuclear fission …
Bohr My love, no one is going to develop a weapon based on nuclear fission.
Margrethe But if the Germans were trying to, Heisenberg would be involved.
Bohr There’s no shortage of good German physicists.
Margrethe There’s no shortage of good German physicists in America or Britain.
Bohr The Jews have gone, obviously.
Heisenberg Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Born … Otto Frisch, Lise Meitner .… We led the world in theoretical physics! Once.
Margrethe So who is there still working in Germany?
Bohr Sommerfeld, of course. Von Laue.
Margrethe Old men.
Bohr Wirtz. Harteck.
Margrethe Heisenberg is head and shoulders above all of them.
Bohr Otto Hahn—he’s still there. He discovered fission, after all.
Margrethe Hahn’s a chemist. I thought that what Hahn discovered …
Bohr … was that Enrico Fermi had discovered it in Rome four years earlier. Yes—he just didn’t realise it was fission. It didn’t occur to anyone that the uranium atom might have split, and turned into an atom of barium and an atom of krypton. Not until Hahn and Strassmann did the analysis, and detected the barium.
Margrethe Fermi’s in Chicago.
Bohr His wife’s Jewish.
Margrethe So Heisenberg would be in charge of the work?
Bohr Margrethe, there is no work! John Wheeler and I did it all in 1939. One of the implications of our paper is that there’s no way in the foreseeable future in which fission can be used to produce any kind of weapon.
Margrethe Then why is everyone still working on it?
Bohr Because there’s an element of magic in it. You fire a neutron at the nucleus of a uranium atom and it splits into two other elements. It’s what the alchemists were trying to do—to turn one element into another.
Margrethe So why is he coming?
Bohr Now your curiosity’s aroused.
Margrethe My forebodings.
Heisenberg I crunch over the familiar gravel to the Bohrs’ front door, and tug at the familiar bell-pull. Fear, yes. And another sensation, that’s become painfully familiar over the past year. A mixture of self-importance and sheer helpless absurdity—that of all the 2,000 million people in this world, I’m the one who’s been charged with this impossible responsibility .… The heavy door swings open.
Bohr My dear Heisenberg!
Heisenberg My dear Bohr!
Bohr Come in, come in …
Margrethe And of course as soon as they catch sight of each other all their caution disappears. The old flames leap up from the ashes. If we can just negotiate all the treacherous little opening civilities …
Heisenberg I’m so touched you felt able to ask me.
Bohr We must try to go on behaving like human beings.
Heisenberg I realise how awkward it is.
Bohr We scarcely had a chance to do more than shake hands at lunch the other day.
Heisenberg And Margrethe I haven’t seen …
Bohr Since you were here four years ago.
Margrethe Niels is right. You look older.
Heisenberg I had been hoping to see you both in 1938, at the congress in Warsaw …
Bohr I believe you had some personal trouble.
Heisenberg A little business in Berlin.
Margrethe In the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse?
Heisenberg A slight misunderstanding.