• 
• 
• 

Shelter Island Conference

During June 2-4, 1947, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) sponsored the Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics at the Ram's Head Inn in the bucolic setting of Long Island's Shelter Island. Known as the Shelter Island Conference, the meeting was planned as an informal way of subjecting fundamental problems in quantum mechanics to the "concentrated consideration of a highly qualified group," as then-NAS President Frank B. Jewett put it. "Highly qualified" is an understatement. Among the 24 attendees at this first of three NAS-sponsored meetings on quantum physics were Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, John von Neumann, John A. Wheeler, I.I. Rabi, Richard Feynman, and Julian Schwinger.

In this picture from the conference, Feynman is shown with pen in hand, while (from left to right) Willis Lamb, Abraham Pais, Wheeler (standing), Herman Feshbach, and Schwinger look on. In 1965, Feynman and Schwinger shared the Nobel Prize (with S. Tomonaga) for their work in quantum electrodynamics, the development of which was greatly facilitated by the NAS conferences.