Danish Hidden Gem: A Pilgrimage for Physics Enthusiasts 🔬

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of quantum mechanics. A key purpose of this trip to Denmark is to trace the footsteps of Niels Bohr, a founding father of quantum mechanics, and explore the Copenhagen School that led the development of quantum mechanics. Bohr was the first to introduce the concept of quantization to explain the energy levels of hydrogen atoms, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 🏅. In 1921, he established the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen (later renamed the Niels Bohr Institute). It was here that the Copenhagen School, the mainstream school of quantum mechanics, emerged. The school proposed the wave function description of quantum objects and the measurement collapse hypothesis. In the spring of 1940, after Denmark was occupied by Germany, Bohr had a conversation with his German student Werner Heisenberg about the Nazi atomic bomb project. This unhappy dialogue remains a mystery to this day 🕵️♂️. Later, Bohr participated in the Manhattan Project and promoted international atomic energy cooperation (in the film Oppenheimer, there is a scene where Bohr is warmly welcomed by many scientists upon arriving in the United States, and he reminds Oppenheimer to help the world understand atomic energy correctly). In 1957, Nordita (the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics) was established in Sweden, with Bohr as its first director. Coincidentally, Nordita is also the organizer of the conference we attended on this trip 🎉. It’s a great fortune to visit this land—so crucial in the history of science and even human civilization—in this significant anniversary year. #Denmark #Copenhagen #NielsBohr #CopenhagenSchool #QuantumMechanics #Heisenberg #Oppenheimer #HiddenGems #BohrInstitute #NordicTravel