06/12/2016
One of the most revered scientists of the last century .. application of the principle of quantum mechanics will make him immortal within common man ... salute you sir ..
Today is the birthday of Werner Heisenberg, who was born in Würzburg, Germany, in 1901. He entered the University of Munich in 1920 under the tutelage of Arnold Sommerfeld and earned his doctorate three years later. Heisenberg quickly made an impact on the blossoming theory of quantum mechanics. In 1926 he wrote a paper along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan ("On Quantum Mechanics II") that is considered the foundational document of modern quantum theory. The following year he introduced his most famous physics contribution, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He showed that it was impossible to exactly measure both the position and momentum (as well as certain other pairs of variables) of a particle simultaneously. That work led to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which physical systems have definite properties only after they are measured (and their wavefunction "collapses"). Heisenberg also wrote the first paper that applied quantum mechanics to nuclear physics. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the creation of quantum mechanics." During World War II Heisenberg helped lead N**i Germany's nuclear energy efforts. Some historians have argued that Heisenberg deliberately stalled the progress of that research; others say he and his team were simply outclassed by the scientists of the Manhattan Project. After the war Heisenberg became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin and president of the German Research Council.
