On an autumn night in 1941, two of the world’s pre-eminent scientists held a secret meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark: Werner Heisenberg, the German creator of the Uncertainty Principle, and his mentor, Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who conceived the Principle of Complementarity. That these two Nobel laureates spent an evening together at Bohr’s home is the core fact underlying Michael Frayn’s award-winning play Copenhagen. That they went for a walk so as to escape the hidden surveillance in the Bohr home is also quite likely. Speculation about what happened during this fateful wartime meeting—which ruptured a long and deep friendship—comprises the two-act drama, whose three characters are speaking from the afterlife. The …
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Citation: Blansfield, Karen. "Copenhagen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 March 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12538, accessed 22 November 2024.]
