A congress of legends

In 1911, Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay organized a meeting of world-renowned scientists to discuss current problems in Physics and encourage debate to give way to the elucidation of questions regarding the foremost theories of the day.  This congress, called the Solvay Conference, was attended by more than 20 participants from both sides of the Atlantic.  It was followed by many other Solvay Conferences over the years, yet the most famous of these were conducted in 1911 and 1927 (the First and Fifth Solvay Conferences, respectively).  It was here where Albert Einstein, who in 1911 was the youngest of the attendees, demonstrated his opposition to quantum mechanics, beginning a legendary debate with its Danish proponent, Niels Bohr.

"The more success the quantum physics has, the sillier it looks. ... I think that a 'particle' must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it. ... God does not play dice with the universe," said Einstein at one point of the debate.

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do. Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum physics cannot possibly have understood it. .... When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature," responded Bohr.

Forty-five physicists, mathematicians, chemists, meteorologists, and inventors attended the 1911 and 1927 conferences combined, 23 of which were Nobel laureates or were future Nobel Prize laureates. The following picture was taken during the 1927 conference, where the theme was about electrons and photons.

Front row: Irving Lagmuir, Max Planck, Madame Marie Curie, Henrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugene Guye, C. T. R. Wilson, Sir Owen Richardson

Middle Row: Peter Debye, Martin Hans Christian Knudsen, Sir William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr

Back Row: Auguste Piccard, Emile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Edouard Herzen, Theopile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules Emile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Sir Ralph Howard Fowler, Leon Nicolas Brillouin