Hats Off Gentlemen: Copenhagen
Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate is an eclectic progressive rock band from London, UK. Led by singer/multi-instrumentalist/producer Malcolm Galloway and bassist/co-producer Mark Gatland, with flautist Kathryn Thomas (Galliard Ensemble).
Their new single entitled 'Copenhagen' was inspired by the meeting between quantum physicist Niels Bohr and his friend and former student Werner Heisenberg in September 1941 in Copenhagen.
The content of this conversation was disputed. Heisenberg was a German scientist leading the Nazi state's atomic research programme. Bohr was a Danish scientist of Jewish heritage in an occupied country.
There is no surviving documentation from the time about the content of the meeting. In 1956 Heisenberg wrote a letter to a journalist claiming that he intended to discuss moral concerns about nuclear weapons. Bohr denied this and claimed that Heisenberg was happy to work on the atomic bomb for Germany.
Was Heisenberg trying to get Bohr's help in making an atomic weapon? Or was he seeking moral advice? Or absolution? Or trying to get information to the Allies? Did he even know himself what he was trying to achieve? Complicating this is the likelihood that either or both men may have been under surveillance, and may have been aware of this.
The uncertainty around this meeting in Copenhagen between the architects of the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics remains unresolved.
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