Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg (pronounced [ˈvɛʁnɐ kaʁl ˈhaɪzn̩bɛʁk] ; 5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976)[2] was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics, and a principal scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program during World War II. He published his Umdeutung paper in 1925, a major reinterpretation of old quantum theory. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, his matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics".[3][a]
"Heisenberg" redirects here. For other uses, see Heisenberg (disambiguation).
Werner Heisenberg
1 February 1976 (aged 74)
- Copenhagen interpretation
- Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
- Heisenberg commutation relation
- Heisenberg cut
- Heisenberg's entryway to matrix mechanics
- Heisenberg ferromagnet
- Heisenberg group
- Heisenberg limit
- Heisenberg's microscope
- Heisenberg model (classical)
- Heisenberg model (quantum)
- Heisenberg picture
- Heisenberg–Langevin equations
- Euler–Heisenberg Lagrangian
- Kramers–Heisenberg formula
- Isospin
- Matrix mechanics
- C*-algebra
- Exchange interaction
- Electron hole theory
- Mott problem
- Generalized optical theorem
- Quantum field theory
- Quantum fluctuation
- Quantum spacetime
- Resonance (chemistry)
- S-matrix
- S-matrix theory
- Spin isomers of hydrogen
- Proton–neutron model of the nucleus
- Vacuum polarization
- Wave function collapse
- Uranprojekt
- Matteucci Medal (1929)
- Barnard Medal (1930)
- Nobel Prize in Physics (1932)
- Max Planck Medal (1933)
- ForMemRS (1955)[1]
- Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1957)
- Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1961)
- Niels Bohr International Gold Medal (1970)
Heisenberg also made contributions to the theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles. He was also instrumental in planning the first West German nuclear reactor at Karlsruhe, together with a research reactor in Munich, in 1957.
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. He then became director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics from 1960 to 1970.
Heisenberg was also president of the German Research Council,[4] chairman of the Commission for Atomic Physics, chairman of the Nuclear Physics Working Group, and president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[1]
Early life and education[edit]
Early years[edit]
Werner Karl Heisenberg was born in Würzburg, Germany, to Kaspar Ernst August Heisenberg,[5] and his wife, Annie Wecklein. His father was a secondary school teacher of classical languages who became Germany's only ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) of medieval and modern Greek studies in the university system.[6]
Heisenberg was raised and lived as a Lutheran Christian.[7] In his late teenage years, Heisenberg read Plato's Timaeus while hiking in the Bavarian Alps. He recounted philosophical conversations with his fellow students and teachers about understanding the atom while receiving his scientific training in Munich, Göttingen and Copenhagen.[8] Heisenberg later stated that "My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing"[9] and that "Modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language".[10]
In 1919 Heisenberg arrived in Munich as a member of the Freikorps to fight the Bavarian Soviet Republic established a year earlier. Five decades later he recalled those days as youthful fun, like "playing cops and robbers and so on; it was nothing serious at all;"[11] his duties were restricted to "seizing bicycles or typewriters from 'red' administrative buildings", and guarding suspected "red" prisoners.[12]
Academic career[edit]
Göttingen, Copenhagen and Leipzig[edit]
From 1924 to 1927, Heisenberg was a Privatdozent at Göttingen, meaning he was qualified to teach and examine independently, without having a chair. 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 quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen" ("Quantum theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations") also called the Umdeutung (reinterpretation) paper, was published in September 1925.[28] 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.[29] In his paper on the principle,[30] Heisenberg used the word "Ungenauigkeit" (imprecision), not uncertainty, to describe it.[2][31][32]
In 1927, Heisenberg was appointed ordentlicher Professor (professor ordinarius) of theoretical physics and head of the department of physics at the University of Leipzig; he gave his inaugural lecture there on 1 February 1928. In his first paper published from Leipzig,[33] Heisenberg used the Pauli exclusion principle to solve the mystery of ferromagnetism.[2][14][31][34]
During Heisenberg's tenure at Leipzig, the high quality of the doctoral students and post-graduate and research associates who studied and worked with him is clear from the acclaim many later earned. At various times they included Erich Bagge, Felix Bloch, Ugo Fano, Siegfried Flügge, William Vermillion Houston, Friedrich Hund, Robert S. Mulliken, Rudolf Peierls, George Placzek, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Fritz Sauter, John C. Slater, Edward Teller, John Hasbrouck van Vleck, Victor Frederick Weisskopf, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Gregor Wentzel, and Clarence Zener.[35]
At 25 years old, Heisenberg gained the title of the youngest full-time professor in Germany and professorial chair[36] of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig. He taught lectures that physicists like Edward Teller and Robert Oppenheimer would attend[36] who would later work on the Manhattan Project[37] for the United States.
In early 1929, Heisenberg and Pauli submitted the first of two papers laying the foundation for relativistic quantum field theory.[38] Also in 1929, Heisenberg went on a lecture tour of China, Japan, India, and the United States.[31][35] In the spring of 1929, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he lectured on quantum mechanics.[39]
In 1928, the British mathematical physicist Paul Dirac had derived his 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,[40] and the second, "Folgerungen aus der Diracschen Theorie des Positrons" ("Consequences of Dirac's Theory of the Positron"), was published in 1936.[31][41][42] In these papers Heisenberg was the first to reinterpret the Dirac equation as a "classical" field equation for any point particle of spin ħ/2, itself subject to quantization conditions involving anti-commutators. Thus reinterpreting it as a (quantum) field equation accurately describing electrons, Heisenberg put matter on the same footing as electromagnetism: as being described by relativistic quantum field equations which allowed the possibility of particle creation and destruction. (Hermann Weyl had already described this in a 1929 letter to Albert Einstein.)
Heisenberg was awarded a number of honors:[2]
The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte (Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.[173][174]
In popular culture[edit]
Heisenberg's surname is used as the primary alias for Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston), the lead character in AMC's crime drama series Breaking Bad, throughout White's transformation from a high-school chemistry teacher into a meth cook and a drug kingpin. In the spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul, a German character named Werner directs the construction of the meth lab belonging to antagonist Gus Fring that Walt cooks in for much of Breaking Bad.
Heisenberg was the target of an assassination by spy Moe Berg in the film The Catcher Was a Spy, based on real events. Heisenberg is also credited with building the atomic bomb used by the Axis in the Amazon TV series adaptation of the novel The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Atomic bombs in this universe are referred to as Heisenberg Devices.
Daniel Craig portrayed Heisenberg in the 2002 film Copenhagen, an adaptation of Michael Frayn's play. Matthias Schweighöfer portrayed Heisenberg in the 2023 biopic Oppenheimer.
Heisenberg is the namesake of Resident Evil Village secondary antagonist Karl Heisenberg. Heisenberg's research on ferromagnetism served as inspiration for the character's magnetic abilities.
In the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the "Heisenberg compensator" is an essential component of transporter technology to ensure the integrity of transported matter. The compensator counteracts effects of the applied characteristics identified in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. To accurately isolate matter prior to its entry into the transporter buffer, all particles must be located, their velocity observed, and tracked; the compensators allow this to happen.