David C. Cassidy - Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg

Cassidy, David Charles, 1945

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Uncertainty

THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF

Werner

Heisenberg

THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF

David C. Cassidy

W. H. Freeman and Company New York

All photographs not specifically credited

are courtesy of the Werner Heisenberg-Archiv,

Munich.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cassidy, David C., 1945

Uncertainty : the life and science of Werner Heisenberg / by David C. Cassidy.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical reference and indexes.

ISBN 0-7167-2243-7

1. Heisenberg, Werner, 1901-1976. 2. Physics History.

3. Quantum theory History. 4. Physicists Germany Biography. I. Title.

QC16.H35C37 1991 530'.092 dc20

[B]

91-13818

CIP

Copyright 1992 by David C. Cassidy

No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public or private use, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

1234567890 VB 998765432

For Janet

Contents

Preface vii

PART ONE Young Werner 1

1 Family Matters 3

2 A Great War 20

3 Gymnasiast 38

4 Red and White 50

5 Pathfinding 65

PART TWO Quantum Mechanics 89

6 Sommerfelds Seminar 91

7 Cutting to the Core 110

8 Fair-Haired Farm Boy 131

9 Principles and Politics 155

10 Quantum Multiplying 181

11 Quantum Mechanic 204

12 Certain of Uncertainty 226

13 Spreading the Spirit 247

14 Fresh Fruits 267

PART THREE The Lonely Years 297

15 A New Regime 299

16 Herr Professor 314

17 Political Science 331

18 Sommerfelds Successor 346

19 An Unending Loneliness 365

20 Himmlers Henchmen 379

21 German Physics 397

part four A World at War 415

22 A Fine Line 417

23 A Copenhagen Interpretation 433

24 An Ordered Reality 447

25 Target Number One 475

26 Reconstructing 501

27 Candles at the Door 523

Appendix A: Chronology 547

Appendix B: Heisenbergs Textbooks and Readings at the Maximilians-Gymnasium 553 Notes 555 Name Index 643 Subject Index 655

P reface

Werner Heisenberg, born at the dawn of the twentieth century, became one of its greatest physicists. He is also among its most controversial. While still in his early twenties, he was among the handful of bright young men who created quantum mechanics, the basic physics of the atom, and he became a leader of nuclear physics and elementary particle research. He is best known for the uncertainty principle, a component of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of the meaning and uses of quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg was also a man who chose to reside in Germany throughout his life. Born into an academic German family, Heisenberg experienced all the upheavals of the cultural elite in Germany: two lost world wars, a soviet revolution, military occupation, two republics, and Hitlers Third Reich. As the leading non-Jewish theoretical nuclear physicist to remain in Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933, Heisenberg, although not a Nazi, played a prominent role in German nuclear research during World War II, traveled frequently to German occupied territories, and helped to establish West German science after the war. He died in 1976. This is the story of his sometimes difficult life and his often brilliant science.

In approaching the life of this man, several questions immediately present themselves. How did this child, born in 1901, climb so quickly to the top of his profession, attaining a full professorship in theoretical physics at the age of 25 and the Nobel prize at the age of 32? What impact did the most turbulent period of his life, the events surrounding

the end of World War I the lost war, soviet revolution, and the German youth movement have upon his mature political and scientific views? What impact did his private and professional lives have upon his scientific achievements? Why did this brilliant young man, this product of the best that Germany could offer, hold a prominent professorship under Hitlers Third Reich and perform nuclear fission research for Germany throughout World War II, working feverishly right up to end of the war?

Every biography, and especially this one, brings together three lives: the subjects, the authors, and the readers. A biography is one persons life as seen, researched, and interpreted through the efforts and sensitivities of another person. And, like other historical writing, the less the biographer intrudes the better. While I have attempted to adhere to this ideal throughout, it has not always been possible, or appropriate. Some of the questions raised by Heisenbergs life and science are difficult and profound, touching the lives of us all. For some questions, there are no easy answers; for others, the available sources are simply inadequate.

Especially difficult and controversial is a retrospective evaluation of Heisenbergs activities during the Third Reich and particularly during World War II. Since the end of the war, an enormous range of views about this man and his behavior have been expressed, views that have been fervently, even passionately, held by a variety of individuals. It is as if, for some, the intense emotions unleashed by the unspeakable horrors of that war and regime have combined with the many ambiguities, dualities, and compromises of Heisenbergs life and actions to make Heisenberg himself subject to a type of uncertainty principle a principle that encompasses ambiguities and dualities by allowing for mutually exclusive perceptions of events whence the title of this book.