Organization
The conference was conceived by Duncan MacInnes, a scientist studying electrochemistry at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Once the president of the New York Academy of Sciences, MacInnes had already organized a number of small scientific conferences. However, he believed that the later conferences had suffered from a bloated attendance, and over this issue, he resigned from the Academy in January 1945. That fall, he approached the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with the idea of a series of 2–3 day conferences limited to 20–25 people. Frank Jewett, the head of the NAS, liked the idea; he envisioned a "meeting at some quiet place where the men could live together intimately", possibly "at an inn somewhere", and suggested that MacInnes focus on a couple of pilot programs. MacInnes' first choice was "The Nature of Biopotentials", a subject close to his own heart; the second would be "The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics", which later became "Foundations of Quantum Mechanics".
Karl K. Darrow, a theoretical physicist at Bell Labs and secretary of the American Physical Society, offered his help in organizing the quantum mechanics conference. The two decided to try to emulate the success of the early Solvay Congresses, and they consulted with Léon Brillouin, who had some experience in that area. In turn, Brillouin suggested consulting Wolfgang Pauli, the recent Nobel medalist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
In January 1946, MacInnes, Darrow, Brillouin, and Pauli met in New York and exchanged letters. Pauli was enthusiastic about the topic, but he was primarily interested in bringing together the international physics community after the ordeal of the war. He suggested a large conference, including many older, foreign physicists, much to MacInnes' chagrin. With Jewett's encouragement, MacInnes asked Pauli for suggestions of "younger men" such as John Archibald Wheeler, explaining that the Rockefeller Foundation would support only a small conference. Pauli and Wheeler replied that MacInnes' conference might be merged with Niels Bohr's conference on Wave Mechanics in Denmark in 1947; they pointed out that the Niels Bohr Institute had close ties with the Rockefeller Foundation anyway. Darrow wrote to Wheeler that Bohr's conference was a poor replacement because it would draw few Americans. Finally, Shelter Island was explicitly an American conference. Darrow was chairman of the conference.
Read more about this topic: Shelter Island Conference
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