8 - Einstein versus Bohr

Summary

Between 1927 and 1936 no one had a greater influence on Bohr's thinking than Einstein. It was Einstein's unremitting criticism which provided the severest test of Bohr's interpretation of quantum physics, and which forced him to clarify and refine his arguments. The debate between Bohr and Einstein concerning the interpretation of quantum physics is generally recognised as one of the great intellectual disputes in the history of science. What was the nature of the disagreement between them, and what were the arguments with which each defended his position?

The fifth Solvay Conference, 1927

Einstein was not present at the Volta Centennial Conference at Como in September 1927, where Bohr first presented his theory of complementarity; Einstein first learned of Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics at the fifth Solvay Conference of Physics at Brussels in October 1927. In the discussion following Bohr's paper Einstein examined an imaginary experiment in which an electron passes through a slit in a diaphragm and impinges at a point on a hemispherical screen. This experiment, Einstein suggested, could be interpreted in either of two ways: the de Broglie–Schrödinger waves represent either (a) an ensemble of electrons spread out in space (but not an individual electron), or (b) a wave-packet corresponding to an individual electron. There is, he noted, a difficulty with the latter interpretation.