Historical Figure
Werner Heisenberg
1901–1976
German theoretical physicist (1901–1976)
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Biography
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II.
In Their Own Words (5)
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971), p. 70 , 1971
If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature. It may be that these forms also cover our subjective relationship to nature, that they reflect elements of our own thought economy. But the mere fact that we could never have arrived at these forms by ourselves, that they were revealed to us by nature, suggests strongly that they must be part of reality itself, not just of our thoughts about reality. ... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared.
Conversation with Einstein, recalled English translation of his book Physics and Beyond (1971), pp. 68-69. , 1971
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
"Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Corpuscular Theory" in The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) as translated by Carl Eckhart and Frank C. Hoyt, p. 20; also in "The Uncertainty Principle" in The World of Mathematics : A Small Library of the Literature of Mathematics (1956) by James Roy Newman, p. 1051 , 1930
The problem of values is nothing but the problem of our acts, goals and morals. It concerns the compass by which we must steer our ship if we are to set a true course through life. The compass itself has been given different names by various religions and philosophies: happiness, the will of God, the meaning of life-to mention just a few. The differences in the names reflect profound differences in the awareness of different human groups. I have no wish to belittle these differences, but I have the clear impression that all such formulations try to express man's relatedness to a central order.
Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971), p. 214 , 1971
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
Initial statement of the Uncertainty principle in "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik" in Zeitschrift für Physik, 43 (1927) , 1927
Timeline
The story of Werner Heisenberg, told in moments.
Publishes his Umdeutung paper. He's recovering from hay fever on the island of Helgoland when the math clicks. With Max Born and Pascual Jordan, he develops matrix mechanics. It's the first rigorous formulation of quantum theory. He is 23.
Publishes the uncertainty principle. You can know a particle's position or its momentum. Not both. Not because of bad instruments. Because that's how reality works at the quantum scale. The paper is three pages. It upends three centuries of physics.
Wins the Nobel Prize in Physics at 31 "for the creation of quantum mechanics." He's the youngest theoretical physicist to win it. His mother writes to Bohr's mother to ask whether Niels is upset that Werner won alone. She never gets a clear answer.
Leads Germany's nuclear energy project during the war. Whether he intentionally slowed the development of an atomic bomb or simply failed to build one is one of the most debated questions in the history of science. He visits Bohr in occupied Copenhagen. Neither man ever agrees on what was said.
Dies of kidney and gallbladder cancer in Munich at 74. He spent his postwar career directing the Max Planck Institute for Physics. His name now means two things: a pillar of quantum mechanics, and a question about what scientists owe the world when the world is at war.
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