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it was thought that he had suffered a heart attack, but then an enlargement of the heart was diagnosed. Later Einstein told his friend Michele Besso that he had felt 'close to croaking', before adding, 'which of course one shouldn't put off unduly'.71 Once back in Berlin under Elsa's watchful eye, visits by friends and colleagues were strictly rationed. She was once more Einstein's gatekeeper and nurse, as she had been after he had fallen ill following his Herculean effort in formulating the general theory of relativity. This time Elsa needed help and hired a friend's unmarried sister. Helen Dukas was 32 and became Einstein's trusted secretary and friend.72

As he recuperated, a paper by Bohr was published in three languages: English, German and French. The English version, entitled 'The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory', appeared on 14April 1928. A footnote stated: 'The content of this paper is essentially the same as that of a lecture on the present state of quantum theory delivered on September 16, 1927, at the Volta celebrations in Como.'73 In truth, Bohr had produced a more refined and advanced exposition of his ideas surrounding complementarity and quantum mechanics than he had presented in either Como or Brussels.

Bohr sent a copy to Schrödinger, who replied: 'if you want to describe a system, e.g. a mass point by specifying its [momentum] p and [position] q, then you find that this description is only possible with a limited degree of accuracy.'74 What was therefore needed, Schrödinger argued, was the introduction of new concepts with respect to which this limitation no longer applies. 'However,' he concluded, 'it will no doubt be very difficult to invent this conceptual scheme, since – as you emphasize so impressively – the new-fashioning required touches upon the deepest levels of our experience: space, time and causality.'

Bohr wrote back thanking Schrödinger for his 'not altogether unsympathetic attitude', but he did not see the need for 'new concepts' in quantum theory since the old empirical concepts appeared inseparably linked to the 'foundations of the human means of visualization'.75 Bohr restated his position that it was not a question of a more or less arbitrary limitation in the applicability of the classical concepts, but an inescapable feature of complementarity that emerges in an analysis of the concept of observation. He ended by encouraging Schrödinger to discuss the contents of his letter with Planck and Einstein. When Schrödinger informed him of the exchange with Bohr, Einstein replied that the 'Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing philosophy – or religion? – is so delicately contrived that for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot very easily be aroused. So let him lie there.'76

Four months after collapsing, Einstein was still weak but no longer confined to his bed. To continue his convalescence he rented a house in the sleepy town of Scharbeutz on the Baltic coast. There he read Spinoza and enjoyed being away from the 'idiotic existence one leads in the city'.77 It was almost a year before he was well enough to return to his office. He would work there all morning before going home for lunch and a rest until three o'clock. 'Otherwise he was always working,' recalled Helen Dukas, 'sometimes all through the night.'78

During the Easter vacation of 1929 Pauli went to see Einstein in Berlin. He found Einstein's 'attitude regarding modern quantum physics reactionary' because he continued to believe in a reality where natural phenomena unfolded according to the laws of nature, independently of an observer.79 Shortly after Pauli's visit, Einstein made his views perfectly clear as he received the Planck medal from Planck himself. 'I admire to the highest degree the achievements of the younger generation of physicists which goes by the name quantum mechanics and believe in the deep level of truth of that theory,' he told the audience, 'but I believe that the restriction to statistical laws will be a passing one.'80 Einstein had