ABSTRACT
Ernest Solvay was a Belgian chemist, who founded his own company and became a successful industrialist, having developed an important process for producing soda ash, a critical ingredient for making glass. The Institute for Physics was founded in 1912 after the first “Conseil Solvay” in 1911. The ideas that grew into the Solvay conferences arose from discussions between Walther Nernst and Max Planck. The scandal became an underlying theme for the Solvay conference, as many attendees were at odds as to how they should treat the couple—singly or as a pair. Erwin Schrodinger and Hendrik Lorentz met in Pasadena, and this helped Lorentz with his understanding of the wave theory, and probably helped to cement his later selection as a speaker at Solvay. Lorentz had to travel to Belgium for an audience with the king to convince him to open the conference to the Germanic scientists. Born discussed a problem proposed by A. Einstein, concerning a-particles.
