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© 2025. All rights reserved.
Site created with
Hakyll.
Modified theme
lanyon-hakyll
based on
Lanyon.
Bohr’s first collection, assembled for the University of Copenhagen’s 1929 Festskrift and issued in English by Cambridge in 1934. Four papers from 1925–1929 with an introductory survey written for the volume and an addendum of 1931 — the essays in which complementarity is first stated in print.
Eight volumes are planned, four Danish and four English; this is volume I of each. Both sides are transcriptions of published texts, not translations made here: the English is Bohr’s own published English, most of it written by him in that language. The Danish follows Filosofiske Skrifter, Bind I (Forlaget Philosophia, København 2013, with the Niels Bohr Arkiv); the English follows Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press, 1987. Reprint of Cambridge University Press, 1934.
| # | Danish | English | First published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Forord | (Danish only) | Skrevet til genudgivelsen Atomteori og Naturbeskrivelse, J.H. Schultz Forlag, København 1958. Dateret København, oktober 1957 |
| 1 | Indledende Oversigt | Introductory Survey | Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1934, pp. 1–24 |
| 2 | Atomteori og Mekanik | Atomic Theory and Mechanics | Nature 116 (1925) 845–852 |
| 3 | Kvantepostulatet og Atomteoriens seneste Udvikling | The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory | Nature (Suppl.) 121 (1928) 580–590 |
| 4 | Virkningskvantet og Naturbeskrivelsen | The Quantum of Action and the Description of Nature | Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1934, pp. 92–101 |
| 5 | Atomteorien og Grundprincipperne for Naturbeskrivelsen | The Atomic Theory and the Fundamental Principles underlying the Description of Nature | Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1934, pp. 102–119 |
Status: skeleton. 6 pieces scaffolded; no text transcribed yet.
This edition’s one substantive addition to the existing printings is dual marginal pagination. Bohr is normally cited from the collected volumes — “PWNB I, p. 74” — but the arguments were first made in journals, congress proceedings and Festschriften, and it is that pagination the contemporary correspondence and the Niels Bohr Collected Works cite. A reader working between the two has had to convert by hand. Here both are marked:
[n], bold, in the left margin — page n of the original
publication named in that essay’s First published line above.|n|, italic, in the right margin — page n of the collected
volume: Ox Bow Press in English, Philosophia in Danish.Ox Bow is the touchstone for the English series — that is what a “PWNB I, p. n” citation means to a reader. As it happens the choice costs nothing for vols I–III: each was checked against the printed Ox Bow copy and each reproduces its source photographically, so Ox Bow and the first printings (Cambridge 1934, Wiley 1958, Interscience 1963) agree page for page.
Markers sit at the exact word the page turns on. They are set with marginnote
rather than \marginpar so that they survive inside block quotations, lists and
footnotes, where \marginpar silently drops them. Because the collected editions
reset the type, the two series interleave irregularly; that is the point.
One departure from this repository’s usual practice has to be stated plainly. The Danish here follows Filosofiske Skrifter (Philosophia 2013), which keeps Bohr’s titles in their original orthography but modernises the prose — legemernes ligevægt og bevægelser where 1925 printed Legemernes Ligevægt og Bevægelser. So the Danish is not a diplomatic transcription of a first printing in the way the rest of this collection is.
That is deliberate. Most of these pieces were written and first published in English or German; Philosophia’s Danish is itself a translation, and for them there is no original Danish to be faithful to. Setting the minority that were first printed in Danish from their own first printings, while taking the rest from Philosophia, would produce a volume in two orthographies. Philosophia throughout is the coherent choice.
Within that text the transcription is diplomatic in the usual sense: set as
printed, errors preserved and logged in a % comment at the site, never
silently corrected.
Because of this, [n] on the Danish side marks the first printing of the text
in whatever language it appeared: a Danish printing where one exists,
otherwise the English or German article whose pagination the literature cites.
Each essay’s First published line names it, so it is always clear which.
Each essay’s First published line carries a DOI, or two: the original article’s own DOI where the publisher has registered one, and the Niels Bohr Collected Works chapter, which reproduces essentially everything Bohr published. Both are live links in the PDF.
The Collected Works link matters most for the pieces that will never have a DOI of their own — the Danish articles in Fysisk Tidsskrift, Naturens Verden, Tilskueren and Ingeniøren, and the congress volumes and Festschriften. Every piece with a separate printing carries at least one resolvable link; only the prefaces, which were written for their volumes, carry none.
Where a piece appeared in more than one place, both are given: Bind I’s Atomteorien og Grundprincipperne, for instance, links its Danish first printing in the 1929 Naturforskermøde proceedings and its German printing in Naturwissenschaften 18. Where no DOI exists but the article is on JSTOR, a stable JSTOR URL stands in.
Each link was verified by matching the registered volume and page range against the citation recorded here, not merely by matching a title.
Unlike everything else in this collection, these texts are not public domain. Bohr died in 1962; the Danish edition (Philosophia 2013) and the English (Ox Bow Press) are both in copyright. Permission to publish has been obtained, and this volume is live on the site. The permission covers the eight volumes described here; further Bohr material — correspondence, the Collected Works, the unpublished manuscripts in the Niels Bohr Arkiv — is not covered by it and should not be added without checking.