Werner Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg (December 5, 1901 – February 1, 1976) was a celebrated German physicist and Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. He was born in Würzburg, Germany and died in Munich. Heisenberg was the head of Nazi Germany's nuclear energy program, though the nature of his work in this capacity has been heavily debated.

Quantum mechanics

As a student, he met Niels Bohr in Göttingen in 1922. A fruitful collaboration developed between the two. He invented matrix mechanics, the first formalization of quantum mechanics in 1925. His uncertainty principle, discovered in 1927, states that the determination of both the position and momentum of a particle necessarily contains errors, the product of these being not less than a known constant. Together with Bohr, he would go on to formulate the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. He received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932 "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen". During the early days of the Nazi regime in Germany, Heisenberg was harassed as a "White Jew" for teaching the theories of Albert Einstein in contrast with the Nazi-sanctioned Deutsche Physik movement. After a character investigation that Heisenberg himself instigated and passed, SS chief Heinrich Himmler banned any further political attacks on the physicist.

Work during the War

Nuclear fission was discovered in Germany in 1938. Heisenberg remained in Germany during World War II, working under the Nazi regime. He led Germany's nuclear weapon/nuclear power program, but the extent of his cooperation in the development of weapons has been a subject of historical controversy. He revealed the program's existence to Bohr at a conference in Copenhagen in September 1941. After the meeting, the lifelong friendship between Bohr and Heisenberg ended abruptly. Bohr later joined the Manhattan Project. Germany did not succeed in producing an atomic bomb. It has been speculated that Heisenberg had moral qualms and tried to slow down the project. Heisenberg himself attempted to paint this picture after the war, and Thomas Power's book Heisenberg's War and Michael Frayns play Copenhagen adopted this interpretation. Part of this interpretation is based on the fact that Heisenberg did not champion the project to Albert Speer in a way which got it any attention or very much funding (which Samuel Goudsmit of the ALSOS project interpreted as being partially because Heisenberg himself was not fully aware of the feasibility of an atomic bomb). At best (for Heisenberg), he may have tried to hinder the German project; at worst, he may have just been ignorant of how to create an atomic bomb (it has been wryly commented that one can know either Heisenbergs morality in this respect, or his competence, but not both). In February 2002, a letter written by Bohr to Heisenberg in 1957 (but never sent) emerged. In it, Bohr relates that Heisenberg, in their 1941 conversation, did not express any moral problems with the bomb making project, that Heisenberg had spent the past two years working almost exclusively on it, and that he was convinced that the atomic bomb would eventually decide the war. The context of this letter, however, was the publication of the journalist Robert Jungks Brighter Than a Thousand Suns, which painted Heisenberg as having single-handedly and purposely derailed the German project. Jungk printed an excerpt from a personal letter from Heisenberg -- taken out of context -- to justify the claim (in the full letter, Heisenberg was more demure about whether he had taken a strong moral stance). Bohr was understandably flustered by this apparent claim as it did not match with his own perception of Heisenbergs war work at all. Some historians of science take this as evidence that the previous interpretation of Heisenberg's resistance was wrong, but others have argued that Bohr profoundly misunderstood Heisenberg's intentions at the 1941 meeting, or an overly passionate reaction to Jungk's work. As a piece of evidence, it has had little effect on overall historical conclusions.

Looking back

"'''He lies somewhere here'''" has been his epitaph. According to an apocryphal story, Heisenberg was asked what he would ask God, given the opportunity. His reply was: "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." This story is probably untrue , as it bears an uncanny likeness to the following reported incident : The difficuly of explaining and studying turbulence in fluids was wittily expressed in 1932 by the British physicist Horace Lamb, who, in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, reportedly said, "I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic." Ref : Turbulence - Scientific American : http://turb.seas.ucla.edu/~jkim/sciam/turbulence.html

References

• James Glanz, "New Twist on Physicist's Role in Nazi Bomb". The New York Times, February 7, 2002.
• Irving, David, Virus House, a history of the Nazi atomic bomb project, directed by Heisenberg. See Irving link to get a sense of his reliability as historian and link to the online book.
• Mark Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Thomas Powers. Heisenberg's War

• Heisenberg, Werner. Across the frontiers ; translated from the German by Peter Heath. 1990
• -- Encounters with Einstein: and other essays on people, places, and particles. 1989
• -- Introduction to the unified field theory of elementary particles. 1966
• -- Natural law and the structure of matter English version by the author. 1970
• -- Nuclear physics. 1953
• -- et al ,''On modern physics''. English translation by M. Goodman and J.W. Binns. 1961
• -- Philosophic problems of nuclear science. Translated by F. C. Hayes. 1952
• -- Physical principles of the quantum theory, translated into English by Carl Eckart and Frank C. Hoyt ... 1930
• -- Physicist's conception of nature. Translated from the German by Arnold J. Pomerans. 1970
• -- Physics and beyond; encounters and conversations. Translated from the German by Arnold J. Pomerans. 1971
• -- Physics and philosophy : the revolution in modern science, introduction by F.S.C. Northrop. 1999
• -- Tradition in science. 1981
• -- Two lectures. 1949
• -- et al. Uncertainty principle and foundations of quantum mechanics : a fifty years' survey , edited by William C. Price, Seymour S. Chissick. 1977
• -- The Part and The Whole about his life, his friendship with Bohr, and the evolution of quantum physics.

One author wrote that Heisenberg was an unexpectedly good essayist.

See also

• ALSOS
• Moe Berg

External links

• Critical Resources: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 1932
• About Werner Heisenberg

Heisenberg, Werner Karl Heisenberg, Werner Karl Heisenberg, Werner Heisenberg, Werner Heisenberg, Werner da:Werner Heisenberg de:Werner Heisenberg es:Werner Heisenberg fr:Werner Heisenberg ko:베르너 하이젠베르크 it:Werner Heisenberg he:ורנר הייזנברג lv:Verners Heizenbergs nl:Werner Heisenberg ja:ヴェルナー・ハイゼンベルク pl:Werner Karl Heisenberg pt:Werner Karl Heisenberg sr:Вернер Хајзенберг sv:Werner Heisenberg zh:海森堡

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