Quantum_ Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality - Manjit Kumar [84]
Immediately afterwards he began a year of compulsory military service that was cut short because of asthma. After spending six months in Cambridge as an advanced student, where he attended the lectures of J.J. Thomson, Born returned to Breslau to begin experimental work. But quickly discovering that he possessed neither the patience nor the skills required to be even a competent experimenter, Born turned to theoretical physics. By 1912 he had done enough to become a privatdozent in the world-renowned mathematics department at Göttingen, where they believed that 'physics is much too hard for physicists'.15
Born's success in tackling a string of problems by harnessing the power of mathematical techniques unknown to most physicists led in 1914 to an extraordinary professorship in Berlin. Just before war broke out, another newcomer arrived at the epicentre of German science: Einstein. Before long the two men, who shared a passion for music, became firm friends. When war came, Born was called up for military service. After a spell as a radio operator with the air force, he spent the rest of the war conducting artillery research for the army. Fortunately stationed near Berlin, Born was able to attend seminars at the university, meetings of the German Physical Society, and musical evenings at Einstein's home.
After the war, in the spring of 1919, Max von Laue, an ordinary professor at Frankfurt, suggested to Born that they swap posts. Laue had won the 1914 Nobel Prize for the theory behind the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, and wanted to work with Planck, his former supervisor and a scientist he idolised. Born, encouraged by Einstein to 'definitely accept', agreed, as the exchange meant promotion to a full professorship and independence.16 Less than two years later, he moved to Göttingen to head the university's institute of theoretical physics. It consisted of one small room, one assistant, and a part-time secretary, but Born was determined to build on these humble beginnings an institute to rival Sommerfeld's in Munich. High on his list of priorities was getting Wolfgang Pauli, whom he described as 'the greatest talent in the physics area that has emerged in the last years'.17 Born had already tried once before and failed, as Pauli opted to stay in Munich to finish his doctorate. This time he got his man.
'W. Pauli is now my assistant; he is amazingly intelligent, and very able', Born wrote to Einstein.18 Soon he discovered that the hired help had his own way of doing things. Pauli might have been brilliant, but he put in long hours of hard thinking as he continued his practice of working into the middle of the night and sleeping late. Whenever Born was unable to give his eleven o'clock lecture, the only way he could ensure Pauli would be there to teach in his place was by sending the maid to wake him up at 10.30am.
It was clear from the beginning that Pauli was an 'assistant' in name only. Born admitted later that he learnt more from Pauli, despite his bohemian ways and poor time-keeping, than he was able to teach the 'infant prodigy'. He was sad to see him go when in April 1922 Pauli left to become an assistant at Hamburg University. Swapping the quiet life of the small university town that he could hardly bear for the bustling nightlife of the big city was not the only reason he left so quickly. Pauli trusted his sense of physical intuition in pursuit of a logically flawless argument when tackling any physics problem. Born, however, turned much more readily to mathematics and allowed it to lead his search for a solution.
Two months later, in June 1922, Pauli was back in Göttingen to hear Bohr's celebrated lecture series and met the great Dane for the first time.