Old masters and young revolutionaries had travelled from all over Europe to participate in the Fifth Solvay Conference, the most prestigious scientific gathering of the era. Never before or again were so many geniuses united beneath the same roof: seventeen of them had won, or would go on to win, the Nobel Prize, including Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Planck and Marie Curie, who had won it twice and was overseeing the conference committee along with Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein.
