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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The Solvay Conferences (French: Congrès Solvay) have been devoted to preeminent unsolved problems in both physics and chemistry. They began with the historic invitation-only 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics, considered a turning point in the world of physics, and are ongoing.[1]
Since the success of 1911, they have been organised by the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912 and 1913, and located in Brussels. The institutes coordinate conferences, workshops, seminars, and colloquia. Recent Solvay Conferences entail a three year cycle: the Solvay Conference on Physics followed by a gap year, followed by the Solvay Conference on Chemistry.[1]
The 1st Solvay Conference on Biology titled "The organisation and dynamics of biological computation" took place in April 2024.[1]
Hendrik Lorentz was chairman of the first Solvay Conference on Physics, held in Brussels from 30 October to 3 November 1911.[2] The subject was Radiation and the Quanta. This conference looked at the problems of having two approaches, namely classical physics and quantum theory. Albert Einstein was the second youngest physicist present (the youngest one was Frederick Lindemann). Other members of the Solvay Congress were experts including Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Ernest Rutherford and Henri Poincaré (see image for attendee list).
The third Solvay Conference on Physics was held in April 1921, soon after World War I. Most German scientists were barred from attending. In protest at this action, Albert Einstein, although he had renounced his German citizenship in 1896 and remained officially stateless until becoming a Swiss citizen in 1901,[3][4] declined his invitation to attend the conference. Because anti-Semitism had been on the rise, Einstein accepted the invitation by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization, for a trip to the United States to raise money.[5][6]
The fourth Solvay Conference on Physics was held in 1924. These conferences, supported by the King of Belgium, had become the leading international gathering for the discussion of the very latest developments in physics. The subject was "The electrical conductivity of metals and related topics". Scientists based in Germany and Austria were not invited to this Solvay meeting due to the tensions still prevailing after the First World War. So there was no Planck, Einstein, Sommerfeld or Born.[7]
Perhaps the most famous conference was the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics, which was held from 24 to 29 October 1927. The subject was Electrons and Photons and the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Seventeen of the 29 attendees were or became Nobel Prize winners, including Marie Skłodowska-Curie who, alone among them, had won Nobel Prizes in two separate scientific disciplines.[8] The anti-German prejudice that had prevented Einstein and others from attending the Solvay conferences held after the First World War had melted away. Essentially all of those names who had contributed to the recent development of the quantum theory were at this Solvay Conference, including Bohr, Born, de Broglie, Dirac, Heisenberg, Pauli, Planck, Lorentz, Compton, Ehrenfest, and Schrödinger. Heisenberg commented:[9]
Through the possibility of exchange between the representatives of different lines of research, this conference has contributed extraordinarily to the clarification of the physical foundations of the quantum theory. It forms, so to speak, the outward completion of the quantum theory.
The photo taken of this conference's participants is sometimes entitled "The Most Intelligent Photo Ever Taken," for its depiction of the world's leading physicists gathered together in one shot.[10][11]
| No | Year | Title | Translation | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1911 | La théorie du rayonnement et les quanta | The theory of radiation and quanta | Hendrik Lorentz (Leiden) |
| 2 | 1913 | La structure de la matière | The structure of matter | |
| 3 | 1921 | Atomes et électrons | Atoms and electrons | |
| 4 | 1924 | Conductibilité électrique des métaux et problèmes connexes | Electric conductivity of metals and related problems | |
| 5 | 1927 | Electrons et photons | Electrons and photons | |
| 6 | 1930 | Le magnétisme | Magnetism | Paul Langevin (Paris) |
| 7 | 1933 | Structure et propriétés des noyaux atomiques | Structure & properties of the atomic nucleus | |
| 8 | 1948 | Les particules élémentaires | Elementary particles | Lawrence Bragg (Cambridge) |
| 9 | 1951 | L'état solide | The solid state | |
| 10 | 1954 | Les électrons dans les métaux | Electrons in metals | |
| 11 | 1958 | La structure et l'évolution de l'univers | The structure and evolution of the universe | |
| 12 | 1961 | La théorie quantique des champs | Quantum field theory | |
| 13 | 1964 | The Structure and Evolution of Galaxies | J. Robert Oppenheimer (Princeton) | |
| 14 | 1967 | Fundamental Problems in Elementary Particle Physics | Christian Møller (Copenhagen) | |
| 15 | 1970 | Symmetry Properties of Nuclei | Edoardo Amaldi (Rome) | |
| 16 | 1973 | Astrophysics and Gravitation | ||
| 17 | 1978 | Order and Fluctuations in Equilibrium and Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics | Léon Van Hove (CERN) | |
| 18 | 1982 | Higher Energy Physics | ||
| 19 | 1987 | Surface Science | F. W. de Wette (Austin) | |
| 20 | 1991 | Quantum Optics | Paul Mandel (Brussels) | |
| 21 | 1998 | Dynamical Systems and Irreversibility | Ioannis Antoniou[12] (Brussels) | |
| 22 | 2001 | The Physics of Communication | ||
| 23 | 2005 | The Quantum Structure of Space and Time | David Gross (Santa Barbara) | |
| 24 | 2008 | Quantum Theory of Condensed Matter | Bertrand Halperin (Harvard) | |
| 25 | 2011 | The Theory of the Quantum World | David Gross | |
| 26 | 2014 | Astrophysics and Cosmology | Roger Blandford (Stanford) | |
| 27 | 2017 | The Physics of Living Matter: Space, Time and Information in Biology | Boris Shraiman (Santa Barbara) | |
| 28 | 2022 | The Physics of Quantum Information | David Gross (Santa Barbara) Peter Zoller (Innsbruck U.) | |
| 29 | 2023 | The Structure and Dynamics of Disordered Systems | David Gross (Santa Barbara) Marc Mézard (Bocconi U.) Giorgio Parisi (Sapienza U.) | |
The following list of participants is extracted from the proceedings of the Solvay Conferences in Physics stored in the Solvay archives [13]
1948: (scientific committee – present) Sir Lawrence Bragg, Niels Bohr, Théophile De Donder, Sir Owen Willans Richardson, Jules-Émile Verschaffelt, Hendrik Kramers (scientific committee – absent) Peter Debye, Abram Fedorovich Ioffé, Albert Einstein, Frédéric Joliot-Curie (speakers) C. F. Powell, P. Auger, Felix Bloch, Patrick Blackett, Homi J. Bhabha, Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat on behalf of Louis de Broglie, Rudolf Peierls, Walter Heitler, Edward Teller, R. Serber, Léon Rosenfeld (additional participants) H. Casimir, J. Cockroft, P. Dee, Paul Dirac, Ferretti, O. Frisch, Oskar Klein, Leprince-Ringuet, Lise Meitner, Christian Møller, Francis Perrin, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, P. Scherrer, Erwin Schrödinger (auditeurs) J. Timmermans, G. Balasse, J. Errera, O. Goche, P. Kipfer, L. Flamache, M. Occhialini, Marc de Hemptinne (secrétaires) E. Stahel, J. Géhéniau, Miss Dilworth, Ilya Prigogine, L. Groven, Léon Van Hove, Yves Goldschmidt, MM Van Styvendael, Demeur, Van Isacker (administrative commission) Jules Bordet, Ernest-John Solvay, Dr F. Héger-Gilbert, E. Henriot, F. van den Dungen.
![Sixth Conference, 1930. 1st row: Th. De Donder, P. Zeeman, P. Weiss, A. Sommerfeld, M. Skłodowska-Curie, P. Langevin, A. Einstein, O. Richardson, B. Cabrera, N. Bohr, W. J. De Haas; 2nd row: E. Herzen, E. Henriot, J. Verschaffelt, C. Manneback, A. Cotton, J. Errera, O. Stern, A. Piccard, W. Gerlach, C. Darwin, P. A. M. Dirac, H. Bauer, P. Kapitsa, L. Brillouin, H. A. Kramers, P. Debye, W. Pauli, J. Dorfman (ru), J. H. Van Vleck, E. Fermi, W. Heisenberg[14]](viewer.php?source=wikipedia&q=File%3ASolvay%20conference%201930.jpg&result=0#selected-result)
![Ninth Conference, 1951. Left to right, sitting: Crussaro, Allen, Cauchois, Borelius, Bragg, Møller, Sietz, Hollomon, Frank; middle row: Rathenau [nl], Koster, Rudberg [sv], Flamache, Goche, Groven, Orowan, Burgers, Shockley, Guinier, C.S. Smith, Dehlinger [de], Laval, Henriot; top row: Gaspart, Lomer, Cottrell, Homes, Curien](viewer.php?source=wikipedia&q=File%3ASolvay%20conference%201951%20g.jpg&result=0#selected-result)
| No | Year | Title | Translation | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1922 | Cinq Questions d'Actualité | Five topical questions | William Jackson Pope (Cambridge) |
| 2 | 1925 | Structure et Activité Chimique | Structure and Chemical Activity | |
| 3 | 1928 | Questions d'Actualité | Topical Questions | |
| 4 | 1931 | Constitution et Configuration des Molécules Organiques | Constitution and Configuration of Organic Molecules | |
| 5 | 1934 | L'Oxygène, ses réactions chimiques et biologiques | Oxygen, and its chemical and biological reactions. | |
| 6 | 1937 | Les vitamines et les Hormones | Vitamins and Hormones | Frédéric Swarts (Ghent) |
| 7 | 1947 | Les Isotopes | Isotopes | Paul Karrer (Zurich) |
| 8 | 1950 | Le Mécanisme de l'Oxydation | The mechanism of oxidation | |
| 9 | 1953 | Les Protéines | Proteins | |
| 10 | 1956 | Quelques Problèmes de Chimie Minérale | Some Problems of Inorganic Chemistry | |
| 11 | 1959 | Les Nucléoprotéines | Nucleoproteins | Alfred Ubbelohde (London) |
| 12 | 1962 | Transfert d'Energie dans les Gaz | Energy transfer in gases | |
| 13 | 1965 | Reactivity of the Photoexcited Organic Molecule | ||
| 14 | 1969 | Phase Transitions | ||
| 15 | 1970 | Electrostatic Interactions and Structure of Water | ||
| 16 | 1976 | Molecular Movements and Chemical Reactivity as conditioned by Membranes, Enzymes and other Molecules | ||
| 17 | 1980 | Aspects of Chemical Evolution | ||
| 18 | 1983 | Design and Synthesis of Organic Molecules Based on Molecular Recognition | Ephraim Katchalski (Rehovot) & Vladimir Prelog (Zurich) | |
| 19 | 1987 | Surface Science | F. W. de Wette (Austin) | |
| 20 | 1995 | Chemical Reactions and their Control on the Femtosecond Time Scale | Pierre Gaspard (Brussels) | |
| 21 | 2007 | From Noncovalent Assemblies to Molecular Machines | Jean-Pierre Sauvage (Strasbourg) | |
| 22 | 2010 | Quantum Effects in Chemistry and Biology | Graham Fleming (Berkeley) | |
| 23 | 2013 | New Chemistry and New Opportunities from the Expanding Protein Universe | Kurt Wüthrich (ETH Zurich) | |
| 24 | 2016 | Catalysis in Chemistry and Biology | Kurt Wüthrich (ETH Zurich) & Robert Grubbs (Caltech, USA) | |
| 25 | 2019 | Computational Modeling: From Chemistry to Materials to Biology | Kurt Wüthrich (ETH Zurich) & Bert Weckhuysen (Utrecht U., The Netherlands) | |
| 26 | 2022 | Chemistry Challenges of the 21st Century | Kurt Wüthrich (ETH Zurich) & Ben Feringa (Groningen U., The Netherlands) | |
| No | Year | Title | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2024 | The organisation and dynamics of biological computation | Thomas Lecuit (IBDM Marseille) |
The following Nobel prize-winning scientists either attended Solvay Conferences before 1934 or were recipients of a Solvay subsidy.[15] (Before 1934 seven Solvay conferences on physics and four Solvay conferences on chemistry were held.)
The archives of the Solvay conferences from 1910 to 1962 are kept at the Free University of Brussels and at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI Paris). In 2023, these archives were added by UNESCO to its Memory of the World International Register, recognising them as globally important documentary heritage.[16]
"H. A. Lorentz chaired the meeting with incomparable tact and unbelievable virtuosity. He speaks all three languages equally well and has a unique scientific acumen." (Albert Einstein in a letter to H. Zangger, 7 November 1911.)
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Solvay Conferences (French: Congrès Solvay) have been devoted to preeminent unsolved problems in both physics and chemistry. They began with the historic invitation-only 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics, considered a turning point in the world of physics, and are ongoing. Since the success of 1911, they have been organised by the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912 and 1913, and located in Brussels. The institutes coordinate conferences, workshops, seminars, and colloquia. Recent Solvay Conferences entail a three year cycle: the Solvay Conference on Physics followed by a gap year, followed by the Solvay Conference on Chemistry. The 1st Solvay Conference on Biology titled "The organisation and dynamics of biological computation" took place in April 2024.
The Bohr–Einstein debates were a series of public disputes about quantum mechanics between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Their debates are remembered because of their importance to the philosophy of science, insofar as the disagreements—and the outcome of Bohr's version of quantum mechanics becoming the prevalent view—form the root of the modern understanding of physics. Most of Bohr's version of the events held in the Solvay Conference in 1927 and other places was first written by Bohr decades later in an article titled, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics". Based on the article, the philosophical issue of the debate was whether Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which centered on his belief of complementarity, was valid in explaining nature. Despite their differences of opinion and the succeeding discoveries that helped solidify quantum mechanics, Bohr and Einstein maintained a mutual admiration that was to last the rest of their lives. They were friends all their lives and enjoyed using each other as a foil.
Jules-Émile Verschaffelt (27 January 1870 in Ghent – 22 December 1955) was a Belgian physicist. He worked at Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory in Leiden from 1894 to 1906 and once again from 1914 to 1923. From 1906 to 1914 he worked at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and from 1923 to 1940 at the Ghent University. He was one of the participants of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium.
Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie (French: [də bʁɔj] ; 15 August 1892 – 19 March 1987) was a French theoretical physicist and aristocrat known for his contributions to quantum theory. In his 1924 Ph.D. thesis, he postulated the wave nature of electrons and suggested that all matter has wave properties. This concept is known as the de Broglie hypothesis, an example of wave–particle duality, and forms a central part of the theory of quantum mechanics. In 1929, de Broglie won the Nobel Prize in Physics, after the wave-like behaviour of matter was experimentally confirmed in 1927. This confirmation earned George Paget Thomson and Clinton Davisson the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1937. The wave-like behaviour of particles theorized by de Broglie was used by Erwin Schrödinger in his formulation of wave mechanics. De Broglie presented an alternative interpretation of these mechanics called the pilot-wave concept at the 1927 Solvay Conferences, but then abandoned it. In 1952, David Bohm developed a new form of the concept which became known as the de Broglie–Bohm theory. De Broglie revisited the idea in 1956, creating another version that incorporated ideas from Bohm and Jean-Pierre Vigier. Louis de Broglie was the sixteenth member elected to occupy seat 1 of the Académie Française in 1944, and served as Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. De Broglie became the first high-level scientist to call for establishment of a multi-national laboratory, a proposal that led to the establishment of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Among his publications were The Revolution in Physics and Matter and Light. He was honorary president of the French Association of Science Writers and received the inaugural Kalinga Prize from UNESCO for his efforts to popularize science.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
