Volume 47, Number 9 · May 25, 2000
The Unanswered Question
By Thomas Powers
Copenhagen
a play by Michael Frayn, directed by Michael Blakemore, opened April 11, 2000.
Play published by Methuen Drama, 96 pp., $10.95 (paper)
Something happened—some terrible offense was given which could never be recalled—during the wartime visit of the German physicist Werner Heisenberg to the man who probably meant most to him in the world, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. It would be forgotten now, certainly Michael Frayn never would have written a play about it, if the offense had not somehow involved Heisenberg's role as a leader of the German effort to invent atomic bombs. But the bomb was part of it and scientists and historians have been arguing about what happened ever since.
Review, 3868 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |