A review by johnr
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn

5.0

A brilliant five star read that I happened to stumble upon. I hadn't known that there was a Neils Bohr- Heisenberg meeting in Copenhagen in 1942, the minutiae of which is still under speculation. The two had a father-son relationship before German tanks took over Bohrs' Danish towns. Despite the exile of several scientists from Germany (Einstein, Pauli, Wolfgang), Heisenberg stays on and leads the German science program. This book is in fact a speculative play where the ghosts of Heisenberg, Bohr and Bohr's wife discuss and try to recollect what they discussed then. Bohrs' apparent misunderstanding and reading of Heisenberg's speculations of an atomic bomb as boasts while Heisenberg attempts to explain that he was cautiously trying to obtain a false consensus that could delay the German effort at creating the bomb. Fearing the Gestapo's surveillance, neither could communicate clearly enough and this gap is fictitiously (and quite impressively) being filled in this work. At the heart of it all, is the uncertainty principle and the unraveling of its moral and philosophical ramifications - that of not being able to determine what is the right action to take at any juncture in life -, experienced by the one who discovered it himself. Brilliantly penned, the movie is on my to watch list next.