Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenbergwas a German theoretical physicist and one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, this matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. In 1927 he published his uncertainty principle, upon which he built his philosophy and for which he is best known. Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth5 December 1901
CityWurzburg, Germany
CountryGermany
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. To give an example: we know that the radium atom emits alpha-radiation. Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle.
Whenever we proceed from the known to the unkown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'
Science clears the fields on which technology can build.
Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.
In the strict formulation of the law of causality—if we know the present, we can calculate the future—it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise. On an implication of the uncertainty principle.
Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.
There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality.
The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however.
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.