Werner Heisenberg

Overview

Werner Heisenberg formulated quantum mechanics in 1925 at the age of twenty-three, by discarding unobservable quantities such as electron orbits and building a theory only from what a spectrometer can measure. The resulting scheme, developed with Born and Jordan into matrix mechanics, was the first internally consistent quantum theory. In 1927 he derived the uncertainty relation between position and momentum, which he read as a limit on what can be simultaneously defined rather than merely measured. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1932. He remained in Germany through the war and led its nuclear research programme, and his conduct and intentions in that role are still disputed by historians. The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, based on his Chicago lectures, is the clearest presentation of his own view.

Where to start reading

• Quantum-Theoretical Re-interpretation of Kinematic and Mechanical Relations 1925

  The paper that began matrix mechanics, restricting the theory to relations between observable quantities.

• The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory 1930

  His lecture course on the interpretation and use of the theory, including the uncertainty relations and the thought experiments behind them.

Part of

• Quantum mechanics

Sources

1. Werner Heisenberg Nobel Prize
2. Werner Heisenberg AIP Center for History of PhysicsA documentary exhibit covering both the physics and the wartime record.
3. Werner Heisenberg Britannica