The Crisis That Hit Physics 100 Years Ago and the Solvay Council

“The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.” ~Albert Einstein 1912

An instructive article in Wired Science on the Solvay Council that inspires a number of questions:

One hundred years ago, the greatest scientific minds of Europe met to address a perilous state of affairs. During the previous 20 years, curious scientists had uncovered new phenomena — including X-rays, the photoelectric effect, nuclear radiation and electrons — that were rocking the foundations of physics.

While researchers in the 19th century had thought they would soon describe all known physical processes using the equations of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell, the new and unexpected observations were destroying this rosy outlook. Leading physicists, such as Max Planck and Walther Nernst, believed circumstances were dire enough to warrant an international symposium that could attempt to resolve the situation.

The Crisis That Hit Physics 100 Years Ago
Adam Mann
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:15:23 GMT

1911 Solvay conference attendees.

Historical landscape of the Solvay council

Max Planck is considered the father of quantum mechanics mainly due to his black-body radiation experiments in 1900, which challenged then current electron theory. By 1905, Walther Nernst, a prominent physicist, published what would become the 3rd law of Thermodynamics based on Einstein’s paper which applied Planck’s quantum ideas to matter and challenged classic Dulong-Petit laws.

Einstein at the time was still a relatively obscure associate professor in Zurich, having only recently accepted the position from his job as a patent clerk where he had been passed over for promotion until he better mastered technology. He had published the four papers which would change our understanding of space and time in 1905 (the miracle year), but his star was still rising due to only partial acceptance of his postulations.

The established scientific community was far behind on the implication of quantum theory. And remember that access to scientific thought and experimental laboratories was severely limited at the time by both technology and politics. Prestigious academic journals played a weighty role in legitimizing and providing or limiting access to current thought. A significant portion of the Solvay Council was taken up detailing to the world’s greatest minds the state of current quantum research.

It was the famous Nernst who saw the earth shattering implication of Einstein’s quantum theories (he considered them the ‘most remarkable thought experiments ever’) as applied to matter, visited the scientist (at 32, Einstein was the youngest scientist at Solvay and likely unknown to at least some of his famous brethren) and orchestrated the first Solvay Council. It jump started Einstein’s career, for it was his famous colleagues who paved the way for his two promotions in the next 2 years.

Consequences of the Solvay Council

In his article, Mr. Mann makes the case that reverberations from the meeting are still being felt today, although I am not sure he explains why he thinks so. In that meeting Einstein implored the group to explore Planck’s quantum mechanics theories even though they defied the classical physics of the day. And even though Einstein thought nothing positive came from the meeting, in 1927 at the same conference, Einstein was arguing on the opposite side that quantum mechanics had jumped the shark and reduced subatomic particles to probabilities. They still are.

Mr. Mann goes on to say:

Despite its goals, the 1911 meeting accomplished little. At its conclusion, Ernest Solvay addressed the scientists, saying, “In spite of the beautiful results achieved at this congress, you have not solved the real problems that remain at the forefront.” It would take at least two decades before experimental evidence and scientific debates firmly established quantum mechanics as a true theory.

But it did have some effect, if only to quell the public criticism of quantum theory research. Certainly no consensus was reached although the discussion was brisk and thorough and detailed. Two interesting insights arise from inspection of those 1911 notes; the key issues of quantum mechanics today were laid out a hundred years ago, and there remains to this day no established interpretation of quantum theory.

One could argue that the first Solvay Council at least gave legitimacy to a formal break between the ‘classic’ physics of the past and the dawning new physics which were to come. Perhaps that is all we can ask of science; to allow ideas to prosper.

Science questions

The Solvay conference inspires a number of questions regarding science and organizations in general.

1. How exactly does science advance? Surely not by consensus, as this illustrious council attests. And surely consensus would be to politicize science. But science is messy and social science is exponentially messier. How exactly did the Solvay Council add any value at all, other than personal pleas to allow perspective, respect and a difference of opinion to flourish?
2. Is it possible for an appeal to authority (the Solvay Council in this example) to advance science beyond its empirical research? We think not.
3. Some of the most intelligent minds on the planet needed to convene a meeting to remind each other that scientific research should have no master in its direction. Is that hypocritical? We think not. For we are all human.

Image: Wikimedia

Seated (L-R): Walther Nernst, Marcel Brillouin, Ernest Solvay, Hendrik Lorentz, Emil Warburg, Jean Baptiste Perrin, Wilhelm Wien, Marie Curie, and Henri Poincaré.

Standing (L-R): Robert Goldschmidt, Max Planck, Heinrich Rubens, Arnold Sommerfeld, Frederick Lindemann, Maurice de Broglie, Martin Knudsen, Friedrich Hasenöhrl, Georges Hostelet, Edouard Herzen, James Hopwood Jeans, Ernest Rutherford, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Langevin.