Solvay Conferences on Physics
The Solvay Conferences are invitation-only meetings in Brussels, begun in 1911 under Ernest Solvay’s patronage, where a small group of leading scientists received reports and argued over unresolved problems in physics. The early meetings became a working arena for the transition from classical physics to quantum theory. The first matrix tracks the 29 people named in the 1927 participant photograph across the first seven physics conferences, from 1911 through 1933; a shaded cell marks a conference at which the person participated. The second matrix uses the same rows to show interpretive probability estimates across all 16 MBTI labels, with only the top three estimates displayed.
shaded cells indicate participation.
Participants by conference year
The chart counts the shaded participation cells in the first matrix. It shows the 29-person comparison set used in this article, not a complete census of every delegate at each conference.
Estimated MBTI profiles
These cells are interpretive probability estimates, not historical test results. They allocate confidence across all 16 MBTI labels from public biographies, documented working habits, and public conduct. Only the three highest estimates are shown, so the visible values in a row do not sum to 100%.
| Name | ISTJ | ISFJ | INFJ | INTJ | ISTP | ISFP | INFP | INTP | ESTP | ESFP | ENFP | ENTP | ESTJ | ESFJ | ENFJ | ENTJ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auguste Piccard | 17% | 30% | 38% | |||||||||||||
| Émile Henriot | 42% | 28% | 18% | |||||||||||||
| Paul Ehrenfest | 35% | 22% | 28% | |||||||||||||
| Édouard Herzen | 39% | 30% | 19% | |||||||||||||
| Théophile de Donder | 17% | 40% | 31% | |||||||||||||
| Erwin Schrödinger | 18% | 45% | 25% | |||||||||||||
| Jules-Émile Verschaffelt | 40% | 20% | 27% | |||||||||||||
| Wolfgang Pauli | 30% | 42% | 16% | |||||||||||||
| Werner Heisenberg | 30% | 42% | 17% | |||||||||||||
| Ralph Howard Fowler | 31% | 39% | 20% | |||||||||||||
| Léon Brillouin | 18% | 32% | 40% | |||||||||||||
| Peter Debye | 38% | 32% | 20% | |||||||||||||
| Martin Knudsen | 44% | 23% | 18% | |||||||||||||
| William Lawrence Bragg | 30% | 20% | 39% | |||||||||||||
| Hendrik Anthony Kramers | 27% | 20% | 42% | |||||||||||||
| Paul Dirac | 15% | 18% | 55% | |||||||||||||
| Arthur Holly Compton | 20% | 28% | 38% | |||||||||||||
| Louis-Victor de Broglie | 28% | 20% | 40% | |||||||||||||
| Max Born | 30% | 20% | 37% | |||||||||||||
| Niels Bohr | 20% | 28% | 40% | |||||||||||||
| Irving Langmuir | 20% | 27% | 40% | |||||||||||||
| Max Planck | 44% | 18% | 30% | |||||||||||||
| Marie Curie | 31% | 44% | 15% | |||||||||||||
| Hendrik Lorentz | 37% | 32% | 20% | |||||||||||||
| Albert Einstein | 40% | 30% | 20% | |||||||||||||
| Paul Langevin | 22% | 31% | 36% | |||||||||||||
| Charles-Eugène Guye | 40% | 20% | 29% | |||||||||||||
| Charles Thomson Rees Wilson | 30% | 20% | 36% | |||||||||||||
| Owen Willans Richardson | 31% | 39% | 21% |
10-19% 20-29% 30-39% 40-49% 50% and above. Empty cells are outside the row's top three.
Conference chronology follows the International Solvay Institutes archive. The participant rows follow the named people in the 1927 group photograph and their appearances in the early conference participant record. Person and year links use Wikipedia fallback pages where a stable Grokipedia page could not be verified. The MBTI matrix is an interpretive reconstruction, not evidence that any participant took an MBTI assessment.