"No one understands my trip to Copenhagen. Time and time again I’ve explained it. To Bohr himself, and Margrethe. To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and historians. The more I've explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become. Well, I shall be happy to make one more attempt". These lines are from an award-winning 1998 play depicting this chap's legendary trip to Denmark, in the midst of the second world war more than half a century before the play opened. Apart from Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe (both mentioned in the line), this chap featured as the third character in the play. But the line also hints at his own identity, though in a gimmicky way!
He is known predominantly for one thing he discovered, mainly because it is also named after him. But the reality is that it was but one of his great achievements.
If we're surprised that he won the Nobel at the age of 31, we should check ourselves. Because it was only his second nomination, and he had been nominated once already, at the age of 27. And the signatory of that earlier nomination was one Prof Albert Einstein.
A lot of his path-breaking work was done before he was 35, when his career faced a setback. Mainly due to the Deutsche Physik movement which politicised scientific work and demanded that the scientists should conform to the National Socialism on the rise in Germany of the 1930s. And then, after being cleared by Himmler, he had to become one of the leads of the German effort to make a fission bomb. It was during the war that his aforementioned visit to Denmark happened. What he discussed with the old mentor of his continues to be a topic of speculation, and indeed, an entire play!
As it turned out, the German effort did not succeed. This chap was arrested by the allies and questioned. Once they realised he was mainly involved in the theoretical physics related to it, and that the German project had not made much progress, they released him. In later life, he became the head of the illustrious Max Planck Institute. Though his involvement in the German bomb remains a blot on his career (as compared to someone like Otto Hahn - the discoverer of fission - who stayed away from it and risked arrest), it might perhaps be unfair, as we do not know the drivers that dictated his decision.
His landmark achievement in the 1920s was the Matrix method, which really started the Quantum Mechanics movement, and which was done using differential equations by Schrodinger almost around the same time. It was for this that he got the Nobel eventually, and was gracious enough to acknowledge publicly that his partner in the research Max Born deserved it as much as him.
But what he is universally known for was published by him in 1927 and he used a term which is closer to 'imprecision' or 'inaccuracy', than 'uncertainty'. Nonetheless, we all identify it with the term 'uncertainty', and so universally that there's even a rumour (untrue) that his epitaph reads "he lies here, somewhere".
Happy 112th birthday Werner Heisenberg!
He is known predominantly for one thing he discovered, mainly because it is also named after him. But the reality is that it was but one of his great achievements.
If we're surprised that he won the Nobel at the age of 31, we should check ourselves. Because it was only his second nomination, and he had been nominated once already, at the age of 27. And the signatory of that earlier nomination was one Prof Albert Einstein.
A lot of his path-breaking work was done before he was 35, when his career faced a setback. Mainly due to the Deutsche Physik movement which politicised scientific work and demanded that the scientists should conform to the National Socialism on the rise in Germany of the 1930s. And then, after being cleared by Himmler, he had to become one of the leads of the German effort to make a fission bomb. It was during the war that his aforementioned visit to Denmark happened. What he discussed with the old mentor of his continues to be a topic of speculation, and indeed, an entire play!
As it turned out, the German effort did not succeed. This chap was arrested by the allies and questioned. Once they realised he was mainly involved in the theoretical physics related to it, and that the German project had not made much progress, they released him. In later life, he became the head of the illustrious Max Planck Institute. Though his involvement in the German bomb remains a blot on his career (as compared to someone like Otto Hahn - the discoverer of fission - who stayed away from it and risked arrest), it might perhaps be unfair, as we do not know the drivers that dictated his decision.
His landmark achievement in the 1920s was the Matrix method, which really started the Quantum Mechanics movement, and which was done using differential equations by Schrodinger almost around the same time. It was for this that he got the Nobel eventually, and was gracious enough to acknowledge publicly that his partner in the research Max Born deserved it as much as him.
But what he is universally known for was published by him in 1927 and he used a term which is closer to 'imprecision' or 'inaccuracy', than 'uncertainty'. Nonetheless, we all identify it with the term 'uncertainty', and so universally that there's even a rumour (untrue) that his epitaph reads "he lies here, somewhere".
Happy 112th birthday Werner Heisenberg!
