Werner Heisenberg

Werner Heisenberg         One cannot fully appreciate the work of Werner Heisenberg unless one examines his contributions in the context of the time in which he lived. Werner Karl Heisenberg was born in Wuerzburg, Germany, on December 5, 1901, and grew up in academic surroundings, in a household devoted to the humanities. His father was a professor at the University of Munich and undoubtedly greatly influenced young Werner, who was a student at the Maximilian Gymnasium.          Heisenberg had …

…If anyone were to prove his uncertainty principle wrong the foundations of quantum mechanics would fall.         Heisenberg spent the final years of his career trying to derive the properties of such elementary particles as electrons, protons, and so on, from a departure from quantum field theory by having the field itself construct its own particles. Unfortunately, this approach led to a very complex mathematical formulation which some say spoiled the great beauty of quantum mechanics.