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Werner Heisenberg Intro and Early Life
Born in Würzburg, Germany in 1901, Werner Heisenberg was a pioneering theoretical physicist who founded quantum mechanics. He attended the University of Munich from 1920 to 1923, earning his doctorate in only 3 years. Heisenberg met and married Elisabeth Schumacher in 1937, and the two had a total of seven children over the next twelve years. -
Genesis of the Uncertainty Principal
He is also known for his uncertainty principle which was a paradigm shift in the then current theory of electron orbits. This principal was, and still is, key to understanding quantum theory. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle was developed in 1927, and posited that electron position and velocity mathematically in the form of matrices. -
Publishing the Principal
Schrödinger’s formulation maintained as the norm until 1927 when Heisenberg wrote a 14-page letter, which was published, describing this thought experiment. In his principal, Heisenberg theorized that the more precise a measure you try to take on atomic position, the more uncertain it became. That same year, the University of Leipzig hired Heisenberg as a full professor of theoretical physics. -
National Geographic's The Uncertainty Principle: Einstein disagrees with his friend and fellow physicist Dr. Niels Bohr about a fundamental concept of quantum physics
National Geographic's The Uncertainty Principle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mXJK86GCsI -
Confirming Uncertainty
The math was identified as matrices by Max Born, which supported the observations of atoms to that point in time. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal was validated by the absolute square of Erwin Schrödinger’s wave formulation, which was eventually popularized over Heisenberg’s principal as the math applied was more familiar to the physicists of the day. -
Winning the Nobel Prize
Heisenberg won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for the work he had done in quantum mechanics. -
Leading Germany's Fission Effort
In 1939, he traveled to the U.S. and was invited to emigrate by Samuel Goudsmit, but declined the offer. Later that year, he became one of the leading scientists who worked nuclear fission research and development for Germany. Though not a Nazi supporter, he was patriotic, even after having been treated so poorly by German theoretical physicists after Adolph Hitler became the self-appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933. -
Death
Werner Heisenberg died in Munich, Germany, at the age of 74 in 1976.
