Werner Heisenberg (redirected from Karl Heisenberg)

Heisenberg, Werner 

Born Dec. 5, 1901, in Würzburg. German physicist; one of the creators of quantum mechanics.

In 1923, Heisenberg graduated from the University of Munich, where he attended the lectures of A. Sommerfeld. From 1923 to 1927 he was an assistant to M. Born, and from 1927 to 1941 he was a professor at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. Since 1941 he has been a professor at and director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics first in Berlin, then in Göttingen, and since 1955 in Munich.

In 1925, together with M. Born, Heisenberg developed the so-called matrix mechanics, the first variant of quantum mechanics, making it possible to calculate the intensities of the spectral lines emitted by the simplest quantum system, the linear oscillator. He performed the quantum-mechanical calculation of the helium atom, showing the possibility of its existence in two different states. In 1927 he formulated the uncertainty relation, which expresses the connection between the momentum and coordinates of a microparticle caused by its corpuscular-wave nature. Heisenberg received a Nobel Prize in 1933 for his work in quantum mechanics. He worked out (independently of and simultaneously with Ia. I. Frenkel’) the theory of the spontaneous magnetization of ferromagnets and the exchange interaction that orients the elementary magnets during the magnetization of a substance. He is the author of works on the structure of the atomic nucleus, in which he revealed the exchange character of the interaction of nucleons in the nucleus as well as of works on relativistic quantum mechanics and the unified field theory, a nonlinear theory that poses the problem of creating a unified theory of all existing physical fields.

WORKS

“Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen.” Zeitschrift für Physik, 1925, vol. 33, issue 12.
“Mehrkörperproblem und Resonanz in der Quantenmechanik.” Zeitschrift für Physik, 1926, vol. 38, issues 6-7 and vol. 41, issues 4-5.
“Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoritschen Kinematik und Mechanik.” Zeitschrift für Physik, 1927, vol. 43, issues 3-4.
“Zur Theorie des Ferromagnetismus.” Zeitschrift für Physik, 1927, vol. 49, issues 9-10.
In Russian translation:
Fizicheskie printsipy kvantovoi teorii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1932.
Fizika atomnogo iadra. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947.
Teoriia atomnogo iadra. Moscow, 1953.
Filosofskie problemy sovremennoi atomnoi fiziki. Moscow, 1953.
Vvedenie v edinuiu polevuiu teoriiu elementarnykh chastits. Moscow, 1968.

REFERENCE

Hörz, H. Werner Heisenberg und die Philosophie. Berlin, 1966.