Niels Bohr's Writing

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

Niels Bohr's colleagues and friends were alternately amused and frustrated by his rigid and labor-intensive relationship to dictation, drafting, and revision. In most accounts these writing practices have the status of an entertaining puzzle or peripheral anecdote that, while always deserving mention, is set to the side so that other more pressing questions about his contributions to science can be explored. This talk will describe Bohr's writing practices as a central part of his scientific practice. Particular attention will be paid to Bohr's practice of dictating his first drafts to an amanuensis. The talk will explore the origins and effects of this dictation practice, along with the ways that it has been accounted for by Bohr, his colleagues, and the secondary literature.

Megan Shields Formato is a Ph.D. student in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. In her dissertation, "Writing the Atom: Niels Bohr and the Communication of Early Quantum Theory," she tells the story of the development of the Bohr atom by tracking Bohr's writing: the writing practices themselves, Bohr's prescriptions for the ideal writing of quantum theory, and the responses these ideals and practices evoked from his colleagues. She argues that writing practices are constitutive of and essential for understanding the development of the Bohr atom and quantum theory and that Bohr's strange writing practices and rules for publication prompted his colleagues to respond with their own ideas for the ways science should be written and communicated. Megan's research interests include the literary dimensions of scientific practice, history of technology, book history, and the history of 20th-century physics.