By Sheeva Azma
What was life like for Nobel Prize-winning physicists of the early 20th century?
The Nobel Prizes represent the pinnacle of scientific achievement, and the work that leads to them is often not straightforward and has often involved significant setbacks. Science – just like the rest of life – does not follow a linear path, nor does it occur outside of society. The early 20th century was the setting for the invention of the airplane, two World Wars, a US stock market crash and the Great Depression, and the threat of fascism overtaking the world, among other events. Despite it all, science kept plugging along. We hope that, in reading this blog, you can appreciate the social context of these achievements as much as the technical aspects.
I am not a physicist, but one motivation for writing this article (beyond challenging myself to revisit the physicists whose work I learned about an MIT student) was the idea that science doesn’t happen in a vacuum – in other words, it isn’t entirely about the data generated, but also about the people who perform the work, and the societies in which they do science. Because I am not a physicist, I chose Nobel Prize winners from this time period whose work I could understand and explain easily, though of course, there are many more who won Nobel Prizes (and many who did not, for various reasons, whether due to a lack of recognition or barriers facing them in their pursuit of a career in science). I hope that by considering the social context of science, we can do better science that, in turn, better serves society.
Max Planck (1918, awarded in 1919)
The 1918 Physics Nobel Prize was announced on November 13, 1919, just a couple of days short of the one year anniversary of World War I. Max Planck, who came from a family of academics, received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of Planck’s constant, which recognizes the idea that energy is transmitted in discrete units called quanta. Interestingly, he did not believe in his own discovery of “quantized” energy at first! These ideas, which became the basis for quantum physics, were new and challenged established norms.
Max Planck’s receipt of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 was deeply influenced by the social and scientific context of his time. Planck’s work laid the foundation for quantum theory, a revolutionary concept that challenged classical physics and provided a new framework for understanding atomic and subatomic processes. During this period, the scientific community was undergoing significant changes, with new ideas and theories emerging that questioned established norms.
Working as a physicist during World War I affected international research collaborations. Planck sought to maintain scientific exchanges and minimize disruptions to research. During World War II, Planck opposed the persecution of Jews but felt a sense of duty to stay in his position in Germany and “defend independent research despite the concessions this required with a regime he disliked,” writes the Nobel Prize website. Unfortunately, his house was bombed in the last weeks of World War II, and he suffered great hardship.
His Nobel Prize biography also states that his colleagues appreciated his “great personal qualities” and that, as a talented pianist, he once considered a career in music.
Albert Einstein (1921, awarded in 1922)
Albert Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to theoretical physics, particularly his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Underscoring his discoveries was the idea that light was made up of discrete packets of energy known as quanta or photons. Einstein’s work, like that of others of this time, was important for the establishment of quantum theory.
Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect was part of a series of groundbreaking studies he conducted in 1905. This work also led to the now famous equation: E = M * (C ^ 2).
Though friendly to his social circle, Einstein could be aloof to family members, as F. David Winter, Jr., writes. His personal life was marked by his emigration from Germany to the United States in response to the rise of the Nazi regime. While he co-signed a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 to alert him to the German nuclear weapons program and suggest the US initiate their own program, Einstein never participated in the Manhattan Project directly. Einstein spent his later years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Niels Bohr (1922)
Though Planck was skeptical of his own work at first, it gained traction thanks to Niels Bohr’s discoveries about the atom’s structure, which led to Bohr receiving the 1922 Physics Nobel Prize. The Bohr model of the atom, named after Niels Bohr, combined the atom’s nuclear structure mapped by Ernest Rutherford, recipient of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with the quantum theory of Max Planck. Bohr’s idea of quantized electrons orbiting around the outer part of the atom was revolutionary for atomic physics and helped explain the stability of atoms, among other properties.
Bohr won the Nobel Prize just a couple of years into his professorship at the University of Copenhagen, fleeing from Denmark to Sweden in World War II, and helping other scientists emigrate from Nazi Germany as well. His colleagues found him friendly and personable. He also loved soccer, and his brother played on Denmark’s national soccer team, according to the Hattiesburg American.
He went on to work on the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear technology that led to atomic weapons – though he was a proponent of its peaceful use throughout his life. In 1950, Bohr wrote a letter to the United Nations about the grave danger nuclear technology could pose without international cooperation on tough issues.
Louis de Broglie (1929)
Louis de Broglie grew up in an “illustrious family of soldiers and statesmen” in France, and to some extent, he followed in their footsteps. The youngest kid of five, his family described him as “charming” and having “a prodigious memory,” predicting he would become “a great statesman.” He studied both history and science as an undergraduate at the University of Paris, and then applied his math and science expertise working as an electrician in World War I, which took him away from his scientific interests. As his brother recounts in an article produced by the Royal Society: “My brother regretted the interruption of his meditations and will complain later of his inspiration broken to pieces and recovered only after several years.”
He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1929 for his discovery of the wave nature of electrons, which was, like the work of Planck and Bohr, yet another exciting development for quantum mechanics as its own subset of physics. However, when he published this idea in his PhD thesis in 1924, many physicists were skeptical. Albert Einstein was an enthusiastic supporter of electrons’ wave nature, but the larger scientific community demanded more evidence that electrons could have wave-like properties.
Werner Heisenberg (1932, awarded in 1933)
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings website describes Werner Heisenberg as “enigmatic.” A student of Niels Bohr, Heisenberg received the Nobel Prize in 1932 for “the creation of quantum mechanics.” Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle showed that a particle’s momentum and position cannot both be determined precisely at the same time. The principle is a foundation of quantum theory and influenced other fields such as chemistry and electronics.
The same year Heisenberg won the Nobel Prize, Adolf Hitler rose to power, and this caused an exodus of Jewish scientists from Germany – visionaries such as Einstein who were forced to relocate to other nations. In Nazi Germany, science became highly politicized and dogmatic, and “German theoretical physicists were constantly under attack” from other physicists, writes Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Heisenberg sought to defend and continue the theoretical research in his home country and became a key scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program during World War II, though his decision to stay in Germany in World War II was controversial among his contemporaries. He also sought to rebuild West German science post-WWII.
Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac (1933)
Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.” Schrödinger is famous for his thought experiment “Schrödinger’s Cat,” which illustrates the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics. Dirac is renowned for reconciling quantum mechanics with general relativity and for formulating the Dirac Equation, which described various aspects of quantum physics in mathematical form. Their achievements were crucial in shaping modern physics and had profound implications for technology and philosophy, influencing areas such as electronics, computing, and our understanding of the universe.
The social context in which Schrödinger and Dirac worked was marked by significant scientific and political upheavals. Schrödinger, who was deeply opposed to Nazism, left Germany in 1933, the same year he received the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize website states that his personal life – living with both his wife and his mistress – complicated his pursuit of a permanent faculty position, but he worked in development and management at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin starting in 1940. Dirac, an introvert known for his great focus, was known for being socially awkward. He faced challenges in gaining recognition for his theoretical predictions, but when experimental research validated his theory in 1932, Dirac became known as a visionary.
Both Schrödinger and Dirac’s contributions were shaped by the collaborative and competitive environment of early 20th-century physics, where new ideas were rapidly transforming the field. Their Nobel Prize not only recognized their individual achievements but also symbolized the broader scientific revolution that was reshaping our understanding of the natural world.
Wolfgang Pauli (1945)
Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 recognized his discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle, which was key to understanding atomic structure and interactions. The Pauli exclusion principle states that no two electrons in an atom can occupy the same quantum state. This principle laid the groundwork for advancements in various fields, including chemistry and solid-state physics, leading to the development of advanced technologies such as semiconductors.
In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, so he relocated to the United States in 1940, joining the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Pauli remained deeply connected to the European scientific community and returned to Zurich after the war. His personal life was marked by tragedy, including his mother’s suicide and a brief, tumultuous marriage, which led him to seek psychological counseling from Carl Jung, and they wrote a joint work in 1952. WIRED describes Pauli as “cursed,” as his physical presence would reportedly cause lab equipment to fail, recounting a number of strange occurrences which led him to be banned from the lab of Nobel Prize winner Otto Stern.
Fancy Comma, LLC 