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
Werner Heisenberg quotes about
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.
The 'path' comes into existence only when we observe it.
...separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.
The very act of observing disturbs the system.
Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.
The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.
Modern physics has changed nothing in the great classical disciplines of, for instance, mechanics, optics, and heat. Only the conception of hitherto unexplored regions, formed prematurely from a knowledge of only certain parts of the world, has undergone a decisive transformation. This conception, however, is always decisive for the future course of research.
The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.
Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves