Jewish physics: 'The Man Who Broke Reality' spotlights Nazi-defying scientist Niels Bohr - review

In 1998, Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen opened to great acclaim on the London stage. It purported to elucidate a conversation between the great Danish scientist, Niels Bohr, and the German Werner Heisenberg, in the autumn of 1941.This conversation occurred during the occupation of Denmark by the Nazis, who regarded the country as a model for Aryan states. The Danes, with few resources, did not resist the Nazi takeover, but its social democratic government rebuffed German pressure to take action against its Jews.Frayn's brilliant and insightful play was marvelous theater, but the question is still unresolved as to whether it reflected the reality of history. In this excellent biography, The Man Who Broke Reality by Philip Ball, Bohr is revealed as a great humanitarian who tried to help many Jewish colleagues who had fled Nazism, and in particular after the introduction of the race laws.Many found refuge in Copenhagen before traveling on to other destinations. Bohr had a list of them, which he would take abroad on his travels in an effort to find them posts.The Nazis had realized that an atomic weapon could be manufactured from transuranium elements such as plutonium. Enormous amounts of energy would be emitted through nuclear fission. In 1938, a cyclotron began operating in Copenhagen, which hurled protons at atoms.A central location for the developing knowledge…