Gustav V., King of Sweden, behind him Princess Sybilla and Prince Gustav Adolf, hands over the Nobel prize for physics to the German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1932 for the explanation of quantum mechanics. Photography, 1933.
Rendezvous With Professor Werner Karl Heisenberg. Göttingen- March 5, 1958- Professor Werner Karl HEISENBERG, German physicist, founder of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize 1932 walks in the snow, near his home in the great German scientific university.
Scientist, physicist, Nobel laureate (1932), DKonrad Adenauer names Heisenberg (r.) Chairman of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, left Prof. W. Hallstein.
Professor Werner Karl Heisenberg, the German physicist, chatting to King Frederick and Queen Ingrid of Denmark after being formally presented with the Niels Bohr Gold Medal for his work developing the Quantum Theory. He received the Nobel Prize in 1936.
Atomic scientists (from left) John D. Kraus (1910-2004), Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), Clarence Yoakum and Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (1902-1978) posing for a group portrait at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, on Long Island, New York, United States, 23 July 1939.
Munich was the sight of the opening of the 96th meeting of the Society of German "natural philosophers and doctors" as shown here. The society was founded in 1822, and as the oldest German scientific society, it was constituted again in February 1950.
Nobel laureate Professor Werner Heisenberg during his celebratory speech on the occasion of the commemoration of the centenary recurrence of Max Planck's birthday on the 25th of April in 1958 in Berlin. In the background, the projected, much-discussed formula of his proposal for the matter equation.
Conference of nuclear physicists. Werner Heisenberg, Christian Möller, and Julius Robert Oppenheimer. Nuclear research center Meyrin (today: CERN) Meyrin near Geneva. Switzerland. 2nd July 1958.
Physicist, Nobel Prize Winner (1932), DFest meeting on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Max Planck in the Berlin Congress Hall (continuation of an event of the previous day in the State Opera (Berlin-East); W.H. in conversation with Professor Gustav Hertz (Leipzig) 25.4.1958.
Nobel prize-winning physicists Werner Heisenberg (L), Paul Adrian Dirac (2R), Edward M. Purcell (3L), Gustav Hertz (R), Emilio Segre (5R), Isidor I. Rabi (6R) and Lennart Graff Bernadotte (C), at reunion meeting at Lindau resort on lake Constance.
The front row of this picture shows Christian Klein (1849-1925), Niels Bohr (1885-1962), Werner Heisenberg (1901- 1976), Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), George Gamow (1904-1968), Lev Landau (1908-1968) and Kramers.
From left to right: the Russian writer Ivan Bunin, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, and the German physicist Werner Heisenberg on the awarding of the Nobel Prizes in Stockholm, Sweden.
(In this classic, based on lectures delivered at the Unive...)
In this classic, based on lectures delivered at the University of Chicago, Heisenberg presents a complete physical picture of quantum theory. He covers not only his own contributions, but also those of Bohr, Dirac, Bose, de Broglie, Fermi, Einstein, Pauli, Schrodinger, Somerfield, Rupp, ·Wilson, Germer, and others in a text written for the physical scientist who is not a specialist in quantum theory or in modern mathematics.
Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
(Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg's classic account ex...)
Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg's classic account explains the
central ideas of the quantum revolution, and his celebrated Uncertainty
Principle. The theme of Heisenberg's exposition is that words and
concepts familiar in daily life can lose their meaning in the world of
relativity and quantum physics. This in turn has profound philosophical
implications for the nature of reality and for our total world view.
(These essays, which originally appeared under the title P...)
These essays, which originally appeared under the title Philosophical problems of Nuclear Science, present an illuminating view of the development and significance of quantum theory.
(In nine essays and lectures composed in the last years of...)
In nine essays and lectures composed in the last years of his life, Werner Heisenberg offers a bold appraisal of the scientific method in the twentieth century - and relates its philosophical impact on contemporary society and science to the particulars of molecular biology, astrophysics, and related disciplines. Are the problems we define and pursue freely chosen according to our conscious interests? Or does the historical process itself determine which phenomena merit examination at any one time? Heisenberg discusses these issues in the most far-ranging philosophical terms, while illustrating them with specific examples.
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German physicist and Nobel Prize winner. He propounded the theory of quantum mechanics that has dominated the development of nuclear and atomic physics since 1925. In 1927 he formulated his uncertainty principle, upon which he built his philosophy and for which he is best known.
Background
Werner Heisenberg was born on December 5, 1901, in Würzburg, Germany. He was the son of Doctor August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. His father later became a Professor of the Middle and Modern Greek languages at the University of Munich.
Education
Werner studied physics and mathematics from 1920 to 1923 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. At Munich, he studied under Arnold Sommerfeld and Wilhelm Wien. At Göttingen, he studied physics with Max Born and James Franck, and he studied mathematics with David Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1923 at Munich under Sommerfeld. He completed his Habilitation in 1924, at Göttingen under Born.
Heisenberg's doctoral thesis, the topic of which was suggested by Sommerfeld, was on turbulence, the thesis discussed both the stability of laminar flow and the nature of turbulent flow. The problem of stability was investigated by the use of the Orr-Sommerfeld equation, a fourth order linear differential equation for small disturbances from laminar flow.
From 1924 to 1927, Heisenberg was a Privatdozent at Göttingen. From 17 September 1924 to 1 May 1925, under an International Education Board Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, Heisenberg went to do research with Niels Bohr, director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. His seminal paper, Über quantentheoretischer Umdeutung, was published in September 1925. He returned to Göttingen and with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, over a period of about six months, developed the matrix mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics.
On 1 May 1926, Heisenberg began his appointment as a university lecturer and assistant to Bohr in Copenhagen. It was in Copenhagen, in 1927, that Heisenberg developed his uncertainty principle while working on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. On 23 February, Heisenberg wrote a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, in which he first described his new principle. In his paper on the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg used the word "Ungenauigkeit" (imprecision).
In 1927, Heisenberg was appointed an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) of theoretical physics and head of the department of physics at the Universität Leipzig. He gave his inaugural lecture on 1 February 1928. In his first paper published from Leipzig, Heisenberg used the Pauli exclusion principle to solve the mystery of ferromagnetism.
In early 1929, Heisenberg and Pauli submitted the first of two papers laying the foundation for relativistic quantum field theory. Also in 1929, Heisenberg went on a lecture tour in China, Japan, India, and the United States. In the spring of 1929, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he lectured on quantum mechanics.
Shortly after the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932, Heisenberg submitted the first of three papers on his neutron-proton model of the nucleus. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics.
In 1928, the British mathematical physicist Paul Dirac had derived the relativistic wave equation of quantum mechanics, which implied the existence of positive electrons, later to be named positrons. In 1932, from a cloud chamber photograph of cosmic rays, the American physicist Carl David Anderson identified a track as having been made by a positron. In mid-1933, Heisenberg presented his theory of the positron. His thinking on Dirac's theory and further development of the theory were set forth in two papers. The first, Bemerkungen zur Diracschen Theorie des Positrons (Remarks on Dirac's theory of the positron) was published in 1934, and the second, Folgerungen aus der Diracschen Theorie des Positrons (Consequences of Dirac's Theory of the Positron), was published in 1936.
After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Heisenberg was attacked in the press as a "White Jew" by elements of the Deutsche Physik (German Physics) movement for his insistence on teaching about the roles of Jewish scientists. As a result, he came under investigation by the SS. This was over an attempt to appoint Heisenberg as successor to Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich. The issue was resolved in 1938 by Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. While Heisenberg was not chosen as Sommerfeld's successor, he was rehabilitated to the physics community during the Third Reich.
On 29 June 1936, a Nazi Party newspaper published a column attacking Heisenberg. On 15 July 1937, he was attacked in a journal of the SS. This was the beginning of what is called the Heisenberg Affair.
In mid-1936, Heisenberg presented his theory of cosmic-ray showers in two papers. Four more papers appeared in the next two years.
In June 1939, Heisenberg bought a summer home for his family in Urfeld am Walchensee, in southern Germany. In February 1943, Heisenberg was appointed to the Chair for Theoretical Physics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. He also traveled to the United States in June and July, visiting Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. However, Heisenberg refused an invitation to emigrate to the United States. He did not see Goudsmit again until six years later when Goudsmit was the chief scientific advisor to the American Operation Alsos at the close of World War II. Heisenberg was arrested under Operation Alsos and detained in England under Operation Epsilon.
Following World War II, he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, which soon thereafter was renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics. He was director of the institute until it was moved to Munich in 1958 when it was expanded and renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.
Heisenberg died of cancer of the kidneys and gall bladder at his home, on 1 February 1976. The next evening, his colleagues and friends walked in remembrance from the Institute of Physics to his home and each put a candle near the front door.
Heisenberg was raised and lived as a Lutheran Christian, publishing and giving several talks reconciling science with his faith.
Politics
Heisenberg had political views which he expressed with remarkable consistency and frankness. When Hitler took power Bohr remarked to his assistant Leon Rosenfeld, that he had never seen Heisenberg so happy. In the course of his visit to Bohr in 1941 Heisenberg expressed satisfaction at the subjection of Eastern Europe, arguing that "these countries were not able to govern themselves," and looked forward to Germany defeating Russia. He argued that it was Germany's historic mission to defend Europe against Eastern barbarism and that a German-ruled Europe might be the lesser of two evils.
Nazi policies excluding "non-Aryans" or the politically "unreliable" from the civil service meant the dismissal or resignation of many professors and academics - including, for example, Born, Einstein, and Schrödinger and several of Heisenberg’s students and colleagues in Leipzig. Heisenberg’s response was mostly quiet interventions within the bureaucracy rather than overt public protest, guided by a hope that the Nazi regime or its most extreme manifestations would not last long.
Heisenberg also became the target of ideological attacks. A coterie of Nazi-affiliated physicists promoted the idea of a "German" or "Aryan" physics, opposed to a supposedly "Jewish" influence manifested in abstract mathematical approaches - above all, relativity and quantum theories. Johannes Stark, a leader of this movement, used his Nazi Party connections to assert influence over science funding and personnel decisions. Sommerfeld had long regarded Heisenberg as his eventual successor, and in 1937 Heisenberg received a call to join the University of Munich. Thereupon the official SS journal published an article signed by Stark that called Heisenberg a “white Jew” and the “Ossietzky of physics.” (German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize for Peace, had been imprisoned in 1931 for treason for his reporting of Germany’s secret rearmament efforts, given amnesty in 1932, and then rearrested and interned in a concentration camp by the Nazis in 1933.)
Heisenberg, relying on the acquaintance of his mother’s family with Heinrich Himmler’s family, sent a request to the SS chief to intervene on his behalf in acquiring the professorship in Munich. Himmler, after an investigation, decreed a compromise: Heisenberg would not succeed Sommerfeld in Munich, but he would be spared further personal attacks and (essentially) promised another prominent post in the future.
Views
Heisenberg was responsible for what has come to be called the indeterminacy or ‘uncertainty’ principle in quantum mechanics. This states that in determining, by measurement, the position of a particle such as an electron or photon we make its momentum indeterminate, and that in determining its momentum we make its position indeterminate. In the Bohr-Heisenberg or Copenhagen - interpretation of quantum mechanics this principle is understood to mean not merely that we cannot simultaneously and exactly measure the position and momentum of an electron but rather that an electron does not at any time have an exact position and momentum.
Positions and momentums are, in effect, produced by the measuring process. The legitimacy of this ‘ontological’ or ‘objective’ interpretation of the indeterminacy principle has been questioned, not least because of its connection with the verificationism of logical positivism. It was rejected by Schrodinger and by Einstein, though it has been adopted as the standard interpretation by most physicists.
Heisenberg's view about the significance of the indeterminacy principle was that it signaled a revolution in our attempts to understand the physical world. It implied a radical dichotomy between, on the one hand, the experimental level at which measurements could be undertaken and where classical physics with its concept of causality was applicable, and on the other hand, the submicroscopic level where causal concepts could not be applied and where, therefore, the future is not determined by the past nor the past by the future. The methods which led to the quantum theory are continuous with those used in classical physics, but they lead to an understanding of the concept of reality which is discontinuous with the past. We cannot know what ‘really happens’ at the quantum level between observations because, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum formalism, there is no way of describing what happens.
The questions that this raises about the completeness of quantum theory have remained a prominent topic in the philosophy of physics.
Quotations:
"Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables."
"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them."
"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."
"Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached."
Membership
Heisenberg was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1955. He was also a member of the German Physical Society, American Philosophical Society, the Academies of Sciences of Göttingen, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, Romania, Norway, Spain, The Netherlands, Rome (Pontifical), and the American Academy of Sciences.
Royal Society of London
,
United Kingdom
1955 - 1976
German Physical Society
,
Germany
American Philosophical Society
,
United States
Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities
,
Germany
Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
,
Germany
Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities
,
Germany
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
,
Sweden
Romanian Academy of Sciences
,
Romania
Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences
,
Spain
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
Netherlands
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
,
Vatican
American Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Personality
Even though his strongest interest in life was science, music was a lifetime companion for Heisenberg. As a boy he began playing the piano early and was playing master compositions by the age of thirteen.
Interests
philosophy of quantum mechanics, playing the piano
Sport & Clubs
mountaineering
Music & Bands
classical music
Connections
In January 1937 Heisenberg met Elisabeth Schumacher at a private music recital. Elisabeth was the daughter of a well-known Berlin economics professor, and her brother was the economist E.F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful.
Heisenberg married her on 29 April. Fraternal twins Maria and Wolfgang were born in January 1938, whereupon Wolfgang Pauli congratulated Heisenberg on his "pair creation" – a word play on a process from elementary particle physics, pair production. They had five more children over the next 12 years: Barbara, Christine, Jochen, Martin and Verena. Jochen became a physics professor at the University of New Hampshire.