Talk:Werner Heisenberg

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The date of 1938 for nuclear fission does not tally with the page on nuclear fission. Consulting Richard Rhodes' "The History of Atomic Bomb" it seems that either date could reasonably be claimed. I have changed the date to be in line with the fission page at 1939. --Richard Clegg 20:27, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is a classic case of trying to figure out what "discovery" means. Doesn't matter too much for the purposes employed here (just to note that it occured on the eve of the second World War and that Germans were involved with it, hence setting up the whole impetus for the Manhattan Project). --Fastfission 22:57, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Didn't Heisenberg travel to India and stay with Narayana Guru before coming back to Germany to propound the Uncertainty Principle? He is supposed to have been a Sanskrit scholar, like Schrodinger, and therefore deeply interested in Vedanta. How come there is no mention of this?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.39.64 (talk) 03:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Heisenberg as Philosopher

Heisenberg published a number of works on philosophy and civilization in general and these need to be mentioned on the page

Physics and Philosophy, 1958

[edit] Wry

An anonymous editor commented out the wisecrack about Heisenberg's loyalty vs his competence ("one can know either Heisenberg's morality in this respect, or his competence, but not both"), asking that it be attributed. Some rummaging turned up a 1999 post to Usenet, which I'm pretty sure is what I was thinking of. "(I)f you know how practical Heisenberg was, you can't know how loyal he was" (in a context where "practical" refers to his skill at leading a nuclear-weapons project, and "loyal" refers to the possibility that he was deliberately sabotaging the Nazis). Good enough? DS 13:18, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Um, well it's not a very notable thing if just one person on usenet said it. But I believe something like this might have been said in Frayn's Copenhagen as well, but I could be wrong. --Fastfission 16:00, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Who cares? It's damn funny, it's probably been said by numerous people, and it's quotable. By it not being in the article yet talking about it we create even more attention about it, and one way or another, it becomes a quotable statement. I don't see any problem with having it in there, if not for the sheer comedic value. Unless any of you hardcore Wikipedians want to attack it as POV too. --24.130.46.188 06:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
See our policy on citing sources. --Fastfission 17:03, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

REligous Beliefs was heisenberg a lutheran yes or or no? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.199.245.118 (talk) 03:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ...Revealed the atomic bomb program's existence to Bohr?

In the main text it says somewhere that "Heisenberg revealed the atomic bomb program's existence to Bohr at a conference in Copenhagen in September 1941." I don't believe for a second that Heisenberg revealed that to Bohr; after all Bohr was a foreigner, and believe me: revealing a state-secret like that to a foreigner could have landed Heisenberg before a firing squad. I am still puzzled about what really was discussed during that mysterious meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr (which btw was not at a conference, but in a private meeting outside). One thing seems certain, and that is that Heisenberg tried to convince Bohr that Nazism was the lesser of two evils compared to communism, and that collaboration with the nazi's might be the best option; he seems to have mentioned something similar to that to Casimir during a wartime visit to Holland. That alone may have upset Bohr sufficiently to break off his friendship with Heisenberg; Casimir was not pleased by it either. What else? Perhaps Heisenberg hinted at the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction (just a month before his team had discovered that fission produces excess neutrons), and may have suggested that scientists at the two sides of the fence should not go down that garden path. Heisenberg seemed to have been genuinely concerned that the Allies might use it against Germany. But all of that is conjecture; it is not certain. If somebody can clear this up I would appreciate it; else I may do it myself, but not now since I am too uncertain about what really transpired. JdH 10:00, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • As the text below it states, exactly what was said and revealed is somewhat unknown and very contested, so a line like that shouldn't be there anyway. The text further down from that goes over the historical controversy fairly carefully. --Fastfission 14:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
We don't know what really transpired, and from Bohr's and Heisenberg's accounts, it seems that neither of them were entirely sure about what the thrust of their conversations was actually about, either. It seems to have been a verbal dance of half-hints and allusions and possible misunderstandings, where each side may not have completely appreciated what the other was trying to say. Since they were on different sides, "plain speaking" wasn't an option. Heisenberg may have been trying to drop hints to Bohr about the state of the Nazi research programme (without going so far as to commit treason), or he may have been hoping that Bohr might let slip some useful information himself. Bohr may have been uncertain whether Heisenberg was trying to tell him something, or trying to pump him for information.
Frayn's stage play, Copenhagen makes good use of the heavy irony that the two men's work on uncertainty and the impossibility of making exact measurements on a system was mirrored in the thick fog of uncertainty enveloping this meeting, where each was probably trying desperately hard to measure the other's political and technical position, without giving away too much about their own (with neither of them seeming to get anywhere). We will probably never know exactly what happened, and, as a point of principle, we may have to resign ourselves to the idea that it might be theoretically impossible for us ever to be sure what really went down. After all, H and B didn't seem to be able to get to the bottom of things afterwards, and they had the unfair advantage, over us, that they were both there! ErkDemon 17:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Racist beliefs

About the bit added by Jim Tour:

The racist beliefs of the Nazis may have, in this case, caused them to automatically dismiss an Asiatic's intellectual work when in direct conflict with that of an "Aryan"

I am not sure about that; perhaps that would be true for de Nazi's, but not for Heisenberg. Again, just like that discussion with Bohr we are just guessing, we don't know what really happened. For some reason or another the project was not given the priority needed for it to succeed; most likely because Germany at that point in time didn't have enough uranium and other resources, and the Nazi leadership in Berlin decided to give a higher priority to Wernher von Braun's V-2 project, and to the development of jet fighters. JdH 08:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello JdH. "Germany at that point in time didn't have enough uranium" only if you use Heisenberg's incorrect calculations involving amount of uranium needed for critical mass. The Manhattan Project's test bombs, as well as the two actual bombs dropped on Japan, combined used a small fraction of the uranium the German's had in hand.. Of course, the Germans were operating under the belief they didn't have enough... About the racist beliefs and their effect on programs, I can't agree with you that we are simply guessing. My additions today were not "original research" but pretty close paraphrases of statements made by respected historians. I hope to return in a few days with citations... These historians themselves don't claim certainty in statements like this. But they do furnish evidence that elevates the matter quite a ways above simple guessing. Jim Tour 08:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Whether this is true or not, this is an article about Heisenberg. I know that Nazis and bombs are fascinating but we are talking about just a few years in the life of one of the most important physicists there is. This article is already over-burdened with the war years. In some ways those are the most fascinating years of his life but this article is not the place to speculate over Nazi racism and the possible influence of the Japanese bomb program. --Richard Clegg 10:04, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Perhaps those two subjects (the Bohr-Heisenberg meeting of 1941, and the Nazi atomic bomb program) deserve separate articles, if such articles do not exist already? JdH 14:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
There is German nuclear energy project already. Perhaps the material could go there? --Richard Clegg 14:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Jim -- they didn't have enough enriched uranium, and they hadn't developed pile technology to the point where they could breed plutonium. Having raw uranium ore gets you nowhere if you can't turn it into fissile material. And of course it is because of the bad calculations (and perhaps other things) that led them to not vigorously pursue enrichment technologies. --Fastfission 15:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
That remark about 'not enough uranium' was based on a sentence found on Michael Thorwart's website about the B8 experiment at Haigerloch: "The ratio of measurement with to the measurement without uranium and the heavy water is called the multiplication factor. It came to about seven. By this, the reactor didn't become critical. Further calculations showed that a functioning nuclear reactor would have had to be about 1.5 times the size of this reactor. However, expanding the reactor was no longer possible in April 1945 due to the lack of both heavy water and additional quantities of uranium blocks."
See also the DOE website "When Germany surrendered in May 1945, its atomic researchers were still struggling to reach critical mass with a pile". According to that website that failure had to do with design: they mistakenly ruled out graphite as a possible moderator, and used heavy water instead. JdH 22:53, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why the deletion of the Nishina paragraph?

If somebody disagreed with my expansion of that para, it would have been better to trim whatever bothered him/her than to blow it away completely. Would someone please restore it with whatever changes seem best? Jim Tour 20:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I deleted it as it mentions above in the talk page. This article is supposed to be about the physicist Werner Heisenberg but more than half of the material is about the war years and almost none is given to his achievements in physics. A lot of contributors have put in a lot of material about the German bomb program, which is interesting and certainly some should be included but it is not the overwhelming focus of Heisenberg's life. Material about the Japanese bomb program is definitely wide of the mark. Perhaps German nuclear energy project would be a more appropriate place for that discussion? --Richard Clegg 12:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that we should probably shuttle most of the wartime work questions to the German bomb program article (since we already have an entire article on it), and really try to expand on both his earlier work and life as well as his postwar work and life. --Fastfission 15:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] was he a jew

was heisenberg a jew. the current page doesnt make it clear about his believes. it just says that he was accused of being a white jew by nazi's?nids 21:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

No, he was not a Jew. By "white Jew" the Nazis mean, "an Aryan who acts like a Jew" or something like that—it was meant as a slur. --Fastfission 00:50, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hair color?

I know this is odd, but what hair color was he? I couldn't tell from the b&w picture.--RNAi 06:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

He is depicted as blond or blondish in some of the popular literature; I don't think that I've ever seen a color photograph of him from his lifetime. Rlquall 13:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Basic biography? Where is it?

Where is a basic bio (place/date of birth, parents names/occupation, schooling, married/not married? children etc.)? There's a bit at the bottom under Misc. about his parents, but isn't the first entry usually a persons overall bio? That would seem to be standard in this kind of entry. Jeremy Bender 07:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)Jeremy Bender

Most of this info is in fact in the Misc. section. I have just added (from the German Wiki article) the occupation of his father and also of the one son mentioned in Wiki. Perhaps all this basic bio should be at the beginning; why don't you move the information to where you think it should go? -Dirac66-

Uh, but where are the last thirty years of his life? Surely he must have spent them somewhere doing something, right? (One thing he did is sign the Mainau Declaration, but I'm sure he must've done more. Where is it? KSchutte 02:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sleep

Heisenberg may have slept here.--Filll 16:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plutonium bomb

It seems to me that this article is not as clear as it should be on the possibility that Heisenberg could have believed (with consistency) that a uranium bomb was impractical but that a plutonium bomb, using fuel created by a reactor like the one he was working on, might indeed be possible in time to decide the war. I would make the edits myself, but I'd rather it was done with someone familiar with more of the source material.--SarahLawrence Scott 05:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I second your idea, the fact must be mentioned here as well. It is mentioned in the article of von Weizsäcker. To my recollection, it was the latter who proposed the idea in 1940, and then rediscovered by Hautermans a year later, who claims to have worryingly contacted Heisenberg and von Weizsäcker on the matter, to be be told somethink along the lines "congratulations, you are the third person in Germany who knows this is possible". I suggest to summarize in 1 sentence: Both von Weizsäcker an Hautermans, have realized in 1940, resp. 1941 the possiblity of producing nuclear weapons not directly from uranium, but by intermediately creating plutonium, however together with Heisenberg decided not to pursue this line of thought before the end of war. And give precise citation(s). What do you think?:Dc76 22:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why...?

I cant really see why the vast majority of this article resolves about his role in development of nuclear bombs. During these years one will hardly find any known physicist NOT involved in these programs. He just happened to work for the obvious wrong side. Anyway he was one of the most influental scientists ever and this article just does not fit. 82.83.248.60 22:44, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

About him working for the wrong side: you can't blame a person for being a patriot. I don't believe that he actually agreed with the Nazi agenda. However him being a German could have caused him to work for his country's side in the war, even if he didn't have any particular love for it's ruling milieu. I don't think he should be condemned for that. --Nushoin 12:53, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Post-war history

OK obviously his role in WWII is critical to his biography. I'm not sure if we're over-emphasizing the debate. You could just as easily cut the section down to a third its size and say "evidence remains vague and inconclusive about Heisenberg's support or hinderance of the nazi nuclear program".

However, what I'm wondering is why we don't have anything on his life for the 25 years following the war. What did he do? Where did he work? What contributions (if any) did he make to science? How did he die? The war stuff is important, but I think the article is getting swallowed up by it.

Wellspring 15:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)