Physics and Philosophy

A winner of the Nobel Prize, Werner Heisenberg was born in 1901 in Wurzberg, Germany. He studied physics at the University of Munich and for his Ph.D. wrote a dissertation on turbulence in fluid streams. Interested in Niels Bohrs account of the planetary atom, Heisenberg studied under Max Born at the University of Gottingen and then, in 1924, went to the Universitets Institut for Teoretisk Fysik in Copenhagen, where he studied under Bohr. In 1925 he published a paper, `About the Quantum-theoretical Reinterpretation of Kinetic and Mechanical Relationships', in which he proposed a reinterpretation of the basic concepts of mechanics, and this was followed by the publication of his indeterminacy principle in 1927. In that year he became professor at the University of Leipzig and held the post until 1941, when he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. After the war he organized and became director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics at Gottingen, later moving with the institute, in 1958, to Munich. As a public figure, he actively promoted the peaceful use of atomic power and, in 1957, led other German scientists in opposing a move to equip the West German army with nuclear weapons. In 1970 he became Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute. Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 and received numerous other honours. He died in 1976.