-
Birth
Werner Karl Heisenberg was born in Würzburg, Germany, to Kaspar Ernst August Heisenberg [de],[5] 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, and his wife, Annie Wecklein. -
Period: to
World War 1
In 1914 World War I began and the Gymnasium was occupied by troops. Lessons were arranged in different buildings and as a result of the disruption Heisenberg undertook much independent study. His mathematical abilities were such that in 1917 he tutored a family friend who was at university in calculus. During this period he belonged to a paramilitary organization which operated in the Gymnasium with the intention of preparing the young men for later military service. -
Period: to
College Years/Doctoral
He studied physics and mathematics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Georg-August University of Göttingen. At Munich, he studied under Arnold Sommerfeld and Wilhelm Wien. At Göttingen, he studied physics with Max Born and James Franck and mathematics with David Hilbert. He received his doctorate in 1923, at Munich under Sommerfeld. At Göttingen, under Born, he completed his habilitation in 1924 with a Habilitationsschrift (habilitation thesis) on the anomalous Zeeman effect. -
Major
7 September 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,"Quantum theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations." 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. -
The Matrix Mechanics published
Matrix mechanics is a formulation of quantum mechanics created by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925.
Matrix mechanics was the first conceptually autonomous and logically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics. Its account of quantum jumps supplanted the Bohr Model's electron orbits. It interpreted the physical properties of particles as matrices that evolve in time. -
Uncertainty Principle published
In quantum mechanics, Heisenberg stated his famous principle of uncertainty, which lays it down that the determination of the position and momentum of a mobile particle necessarily contains errors the product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant h and that, although these errors are negligible on the human scale, they cannot be ignored in studies of the atom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQKELOE9eY4 -
Heisenburg Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
n 1928, Albert Einstein nominated Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan for the Nobel Prize in Physics,The announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932 was delayed until November 1933. It was at that time that it was announced Heisenberg had won the Prize for 1932 "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen". -
German Nuclear Weapons Program Stood Up
The German nuclear weapons program, known as Uranverein, was formed on 1 September 1939, the day World War II began. The Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) had squeezed the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council) out of the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Ministry of Education) and started the formal German nuclear energy project under military auspices. The project had its first meeting on 16 September 1939. -
Period: to
World War 2: Questionable Involvement
As a theoretical scientist, Heisenberg was initially held in low regard and was even considered suspect by the Nazi government. However, when World War II began, the government appointed him as director of the German uranium project, and he worked on developing an atomic bomb for Germany. Heisenberg was arrested and placed in captivity in England from April 1945 until the summer of 1946. His role during the war continues to be a source of great debate. -
President of German Research Council
Heisenberg became the first president of the German Research Council, a consortium of the Max Planck Society and the various West German academies of science that sought to promote German science in the international arena and to influence federal science funding through the newly elected chancellor Konrad Adenauer. -
Death
Heisenberg died of cancer of the kidneys and gallbladder at his home, on 1 February 1976. The next evening, his colleagues and friends walked in remembrance from the Institute of Physics to his home and each put a candle near the front door. He is buried at Munich Waldfriedhof.
