'Copenhagen' Is Fiction


February 12, 2002 




 

To the Editor: 

A Feb. 9 letter writer seems upset that I regard Michael
Frayn's play "Copenhagen" as fiction. But though it is a
gripping drama, it is still a work of fiction. That is why
it got a Tony, not a medal of science. 

And now that we at last have Niels Bohr's own, striking
account of the events with which the play tries to
struggle, Mr. Frayn's version of Werner Heisenberg is more
fictitious than ever - for example, when he says on stage,
"I wasn't trying to build a bomb." 

GERALD HOLTON 
Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 9, 2002 
The writer is emeritus
professor of physics and history of science at Harvard
University. 


Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company