Werner Heisenberg

The Early Life of Werner Heisenberg

Dec 5, 1901

Werner Karl Heisenberg was born on December 5, 1901, in Würzburg, Germany. Son to August Heisenberg. A secondary school teacher of classical languages and Annie Heisenberg "Annie Wecklein". Werner was raised and lived as a Lutheran Christian. As a boy Heisenberg began playing the piano early and was playing master compositions by the age of thirteen. It was his father's commitment to academic learning, however, that led him to pursue the science he loved

Ludwig Maximilian University Of Munich

1920

Heisenberg entered the University of Munich in 1920, becoming a student of Arnold Sommerfeld, an expert on atomic spectroscopy and exponent of the quantum model of physics. (The idea that certain properties in atomic physics are not continuous and take on only certain discrete, or quantized, values at small scales had been developed by Danish physicist Niels Bohr in 1913.) Heisenberg finished his formal work for a doctorate in 1923 with a dissertation on hydrodynamics.

Physics Assistant

1922

Heisenberg moved to Göttingen in October 1922 to work as Max Born’s physics assistant. Born wrote a letter to Sommerfeld describing Heisenberg as a person of “exceptional talent, modest ways, zeal, enthusiasm, and good humor.” Born later described Heisenberg in a letter to Bohr as “a young boy of rare charm and genius.”