Niels Bohr a memorial tribute

Victor F. Weisskopf

doi:10.1063/1.3050563

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Niels Bohr a memorial tribute

OCT 01, 1963

On November 23, 1962, five days after the death of Niels Bohr, a ceremony to honor his memory was held at CERN, the international laboratory located near Geneva, Switzerland, which Professor Bohr had aided materially in creating a decade ago. This tribute was presented at the CERN memorial session by V. F. Weisskopf, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has been on leave of absence for the past two years while serving as director general of CERN. Professor Weisskopf has recently agreed to continue at CERN in that capacity for an additional one‐year term—until August of next year.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3050563

Victor F. Weisskopf

We are assembled to pay tribute to Niels Bohr. Niels Bohr is the symbol, he is the origin, he is the main architect of our work. It was through him, by him, and with him that all this on which our work and our existence stands was created. He was a great man. What is greatness? A great man is one who creates a new period, a new way of thinking, and truly he and his life correspond to this definition. The influence of what he started is seen in every aspect of our life. Modern science has reshaped our world. It became the determining factor in our thinking, in our culture, even in politics, and it establishes the direction in which mankind will move in the next decades. The real significance of the development which was initiated by Bohr cannot yet be judged by us. We are too close to his life. Only from a distance can one see how much Mont Blanc towers over the other mountains of the Alps.

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Victor F. Weisskopf, CERN.