Werner Heisenberg
1901 – 1976 German physicist
The physicist who formulated the uncertainty principle.
- Religion
- A Lutheran who wrote thoughtfully on the relation between science and religious faith.
- Affiliations
- Nobel laureate; led Germany's wartime nuclear research. No secret society.
Heisenberg created one of the first complete forms of quantum mechanics and stated the uncertainty principle, that we cannot know both a particle's position and momentum exactly. This set a fundamental limit on knowledge of the physical world. He led Germany's atomic program during the war, a role still debated.
Connections
- mentor of Niels Bohr — Bohr guided his early work and later debated its meaning with him.
- mentor of Niels Bohr — He guided Heisenberg's work on quantum mechanics.
In the timeline
- 1943 Bohr escapes to Scotland with Heisenberg's reactor drawing mentioned