Faust in Copenhagen: Gwen Kennedy

Dr. Gino Segre spoke on "Faust in Copenhagen" as part of an ongoing series of 60-second lectures featuring faculty from the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences.

"If you are going to write a non-fiction book..., you had better choose ... characters that you want to get to know better because you are [going to spend] a lot of time with them.

My last book was about what a group of physicists said to [each other] in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Since the letters of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and others have been assembled and preserved, I often had the feeling of eavesdropping on their conversations ....

... they were developing quantum mechanics.... I learned the subject in school, taught as if it had been handed down from on high inscribed on stone tablets so it was especially exciting to see these extraordinary individuals struggling to understand all the puzzles they were facing, while knowing that in the end, they were going to come out with something great.

On the other hand, I felt powerless to warn them that Hitler was about to take power and their lives would be shattered."