Werner Heisenberg BiographyWerner Heisenberg was born on 5th December, 1901, at Würzburg. He was the

son of Dr. August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. His father later becameProfessor of the Middle and Modern Greek languages in the University of Munich. It wasprobably due to his influence that Heisenberg remarked, when the Japanese physicistYukawa discovered the particle now known as the meson and the term "mesotron" wasproposed for it, that the Greek word "mesos" has no "tr" in it, with the result that thename "mesotron" was changed to "meson".

Heisenberg went to the Maximilian school at Munich until 1920, when he went tothe University of Munich to study physics under Sommerfeld, Wien, Pringsheim, andRosenthal. During the winter of 1922-1923 he went to Göttingen to study physics underMax Born, Franck, and Hilbert. In 1923 he took his Ph.D. at the University of Munich andthen became Assistant to Max Born at the University of Göttingen, and in 1924 he gainedthe venia legendi at that University.

From 1924 until 1925 he worked, with a Rockefeller Grant, with Niels Bohr, at theUniversity of Copenhagen, returning for the summer of 1925 to Göttingen.

In 1926 he was appointed Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at the University ofCopenhagen under Niels Bohr and in 1927, when he was only 26, he was appointedProfessor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig.

In 1929 he went on a lecture tour to the United States, Japan, and India.

In 1941 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Berlin andDirector of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics there.

At the end of the Second World War he, and other German physicists, were takenprisoner by American troops and sent to England, but in 1946 he returned to Germanyand reorganized, with his colleagues, the Institute for Physics at Göttingen. This Institutewas, in 1948, renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics.

In 1948 Heisenberg stayed for some months in Cambridge, England, to givelectures, and in 1950 and 1954 he was invited to lecture in the United States. In the winterof 1955-1956 he gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland,these lectures being subsequently published as a book.

During 1955 Heisenberg was occupied with preparations for the removal of theMax Planck Institute for Physics to Munich. Still Director of this Institute, he went with itto Munich and in 1958 he was appointed Professor of Physics in the University of Munich.His Institute was then being renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics andAstrophysics.

Heisenberg's name will always be associated with his theory of quantummechanics, published in 1925, when he was only 23 years old. For this theory and theapplications of it which resulted especially in the discovery of allotropic forms ofhydrogen, Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932.

His new theory was based only on what can be observed, that is to say, on theradiation emitted by the atom. We cannot, he said, always assign to an electron a positionin space at a given time, nor follow it in its orbit, so that we cannot assume that theplanetary orbits postulated by Niels Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities, such asposition, velocity, etc. should be represented, not by ordinary numbers, but by abstractmathematical structures called "matrices" and he formulated his new theory in terms ofmatrix equations.

Later Heisenberg stated his famous principle of uncertainty, which lays it downthat the determination of the position and momentum of a mobile particle necessarilycontains errors the product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant h andthat, although these errors are negligible on the human scale, they cannot be ignored instudies of the atom.

From 1957 onwards Heisenberg was interested in work on problems of plasmaphysics and thermonuclear processes, and also much work in close collaboration with theInternational Institute of Atomic Physics at Geneva. He was for several years Chairman ofthe Scientific Policy Committee of this Institute and subsequently remained a member ofthis Committee.

When he became, in 1953, President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,he did much to further the policy of this Foundation, which was to invite scientists fromother countries to Germany and to help them to work there.

Since 1953 his own theoretical work was concentrated on the unified field theoryof elementary particles which seems to him to be the key to an understanding of thephysics of elementary particles.

Apart from many medals and prizes, Heisenberg received an honorary doctorate ofthe University of Bruxelles, of the Technological University Karlsruhe, and recently (1964)

of the University of Budapest; he is also recipient of the Order of Merit of Bavaria, and theGrand Cross for Federal Services with Star (Germany). He is a Fellow of the Royal Societyof London and a Knight of the Order of Merit (Peace Class). He is a member of theAcademies of Sciences of Göttingen, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, Rumania, Norway,Spain, The Netherlands, Rome (Pontificial), the German Akademie der NaturforscherLeopoldina (Halle), the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome), and the American Academy ofSciences. During 1949-1951 he was President of the Deutsche Forschungsrat (GermanResearch Council) and in 1953 he became President of the Alexander von HumboldtFoundation.

One of his hobbies is classical music: he is a distinguished pianist. In 1937Heisenberg married Elisabeth Schumacher. They have seven children, and live in Munich.

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series LesPrix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the

source as shown above.

Werner Heisenberg died on February 1, 1976.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1932