My costume this Halloween was going as that of Niels Bohr, the 1922 Physics Nobel Prize winner from Denmark. I dressed in a severe dark brown suit, and shaved a little off my hairline and dyed my hair white, as was his before his death in 1962. Then I put bags under my eyes, and constructed a nondescript cleft chin. I'd walk around Halloween parties talking about how I incorporated Max Planck's quantum theory into Rutherford's atomic model of negatively charged electrons moving in circular orbits about a positively charged nucleus.
I imagined most people guessed who I was immediately, but just in case, I had witty lines ready like, "Who do you think I am? I only envisioned specific discrete energy levels for the electrons within which they could move yet not emit radiation-that's all, you stupid fucks!"
Or maybe I'd say "Did any of you other fucking freaks hypothesize how an incoming particle could strike a nucleus and create an excited "compound" nucleus? Huh?" "Does the goddamn Schledinger Wave Equation ring a bell with any of you pussies?" Then I'd smash a bottle of Newcastle Ale against my head, as Niels used to do with his science counterparts at cocktail parties hosted by the Royal Academy of Science. He was a gas, that Neils Bohr-- physicist, chemist, citizen of Denmark, lover of thousands, heavyweight prize fighter with a vicious haymaker.

