Werner Heisenberg


Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
Related to Werner Heisenberg: Erwin Schrodinger

Heisenberg, Werner

(vĕr`nər hī`zənbĕrk), 1901–76, German physicist. One of the founders of the quantum theory, he is best known for his uncertainty principleuncertainty principle,
physical principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, that places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of certain pairs of simultaneous, related measurements.
..... Click the link for more information. , or indeterminacy principle, which states that it is impossible to determine with arbitrarily high accuracy both the position and momentum (essentially velocity) of a subatomic particle like the electron. The effect of this principle is to convert the laws of physics into statements about relative probabilities instead of absolute certainties. In 1926, Heisenberg developed a form of the quantum theoryquantum theory,
modern physical theory concerned with the emission and absorption of energy by matter and with the motion of material particles; the quantum theory and the theory of relativity together form the theoretical basis of modern physics.
..... Click the link for more information.  known as matrix mechanics, which was quickly shown to be fully equivalent to Erwin SchrödingerSchrödinger, Erwin
, 1887–1961, Austrian theoretical physicist. He was educated at Vienna, taught at Breslau and Zürich, and was professor at the Univ. of Berlin (1927–33), fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford (1933–36), and professor at the Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. 's wave mechanics. His 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics cited not only his work on quantum theory but also work in nuclear physics in which he predicted the subsequently verified existence of two allotropic forms of molecular hydrogen, differing in their values of nuclear spin.

Heisenberg was a student of Arnold SommerfeldSommerfeld, Arnold Johannes Wilhelm
, 1868–1951, German physicist and teacher. He received a Ph.D. at Königsburg Univ. in 1891 and was a professor of physics at the Univ. of Munich from 1906 to 1940.
..... Click the link for more information. , an assistant to Max BornBorn, Max,
1882–1970, British physicist, b. Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1907. He was head of the physics department at the Univ. of Göttingen from 1921 to 1933.
..... Click the link for more information. , and later a close associate of Niels BohrBohr, Niels Henrik David
, 1885–1962, Danish physicist, one of the foremost scientists of modern physics. He studied at the Univ. of Copenhagen (Ph.D. 1911) and carried on research on the structure of the atom at Cambridge under Sir James J.
..... Click the link for more information. . He taught at the universities of Leipzig (1927–41) and Berlin (1942–45). During World War II he headed German efforts in nuclear fission research, which failed to develop a nuclear reactor or atomic bomb. Although he claimed after the war to have had qualms about building nuclear weapons, it seems likely that the reasons Germany failed to do so were technical and logistical.

In 1958 he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, now located in Munich. His later work concerned the so-called S-matrix approach to nuclear forces and the possibility that space and time are quantized, or granular, in structure. His Physics and Philosophy (1962) and Physics and Beyond (1971) remain popular accounts of the revolutions in modern physics.

Bibliography

See D. C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg (1993); R. P. Brennan, Heisenberg Probably Slept Here: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Physicists of the 20th Century (1996).

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.
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
Werner Heisenberg da la respuesta en reiteradas ocasiones al momento de explicar distintos aspectos de la fisica cuantica, de manera que, simplificando, nos planteamos:
Propuesta bachelardiana acerca de la objetividad
One sees a similar inevitable opacity and fear in the much-discussed meeting between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in 1941 in which Heisenberg's mention of the generic possibility of bomb projects alarmed and angered Bohr.
The last time we were at "global zero"
He surveys the ideas of Blaise Pascal, Kurt GA[paragraph]del, and Werner Heisenberg, and finds that theories of uncertainty, game theory, and risk analysis can help world leaders and decision makers come to terms with the persistent unknowns in the current environmental debate.
Betting the Earth
What if America and Britain had accepted at face value the signals that Werner Heisenberg may have tried to transmit via Bohr, that there was not any real German nuclear weapons program that the Manhattan Project had to preempt?
Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly
Scientists such as Albert Einstein, Hermann von Helmholtz and Werner Heisenberg described their creative processes in similar terms to Poincare.
Moments of genius are not sudden but result from long conscious work
Once, at a conference of scientists organized by Werner Heisenberg to help them with their research (or so I was told), Arakawa unassumingly asked what the smallest thing was--which provoked a heated and inconclusive discussion.
Arakawa: (1936-2010)
In 1927, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg introduced the "Uncertainty Principle", according to which the act of measuring the physical properties of a particle alters its behaviour; that is, locating it in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain, whereas measuring precisely its momentum makes the position uncertain (Heisenberg, 1927).
The 'Herbivory Uncertainty Principle': application in a cerrado site/O 'Principio da Incerteza da Herbivoria': aplicacao em uma area de cerrado
In Berlin he has taken courses with Einstein, at Goettingen with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg, the latter being also his thesis adviser.
Ion Placinteanu (1893-1960)
has expanded upon his previous biography on Werner Heisenberg in this new book that explores this noted scientist's involvement with the development of the atomic bomb.
Beyond uncertainty; Heisenberg, quantum physics, and the bomb
Drawing on his lifelong engagement with the work of the physicist Werner Heisenberg, Lukacs finds even scientists improperly focused on false "facts" in creating an illusory objectivity.
Personal history
Merton, with the temperament of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the strength of John Henry Newman, as well as the inquisitiveness of a Werner Heisenberg was born into the twentieth century, yet to a large degree he was educated in the nineteenth.
A bibliographical note: Merton's complete journal as emblem of the spiritual journey
Many senior scientists--such as Carl Friedrich Weizsacker, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Planck, who constantly denied that they were Nazis, acquiesced in the dismissals while distancing themselves from Nazism itself.
Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism

Encyclopedia browser ?
Full browser ?