Calgary, April 2024
I presume most of us at one time met somebody whom we deeply admire, and we will always remember that meeting. For me, that person was Werner Heisenberg, one of the principal scientists in the branch of physics called Quantum Mechanics. I saw him in 1961 when I began studying physics at Prague University, and, by coincidence, the dean of the faculty invited Professor Heisenberg to give us a lecture. The lecture was in English, and I didn’t understand anything, but I wanted to see in person the leading scientist of the first half of the twentieth century. I expected an old man, but he was only 59. The lecture hall was full, there was a question-answer period, and I was amazed to hear some students asking him questions in English.
Science in general, and physics in particular, is a domain of young people. All the physics Nobel Prize winners came up with their ideas before the age of 30, and Werner Heisenberg wasn’t an exception. He published his main discovery, the “Uncertainty Principle” in 1927, at the age of 26, and got the Nobel Prize when he was 31. He collaborated with the leading scientists of that time and was teaching at the Göttingen University, the center the nuclear research. One of the students there was Robert Oppenheimer, who later became the director of the American program to build the nuclear bomb. Then, in 1933, came Hitler, and a lot of scientists left Germany for the US. Heisenberg, a German national, stayed in his homeland, but had a lot of problems with the political establishment. They called him “White Jew”, and only his scientific achievements saved him from prosecution. “We cannot afford to lose him,” wrote one of the party officials.
During the war, Heinsberg was put in charge of German nuclear research, but he soon realized that Germany had neither the resources nor the will to build the bomb. "We neither could nor wanted to build it", he said after the war. German effort was concentrated on building a nuclear reactor to power ships and vehicles, but they didn’t get very far.
After the war, Heisenberg was interned for half a year in England and then he returned to Germany. When asked why he stayed in Germany during Hitler's years, he said he knew Germany would need people to rebuild their science, and that’s what was his main activity after the war. He was also giving lectures, became the director of various scientific institutions and was involved in establishing CERN, the European Center of Nuclear Research. He retired in 1970 and died in 1976, at the age of 74.
I read a lot of criticism of Werner Heisenberg, mostly by people who never achieved anything. They criticized him for his activities during the war, similar to how he was criticized for being a "White Jew" in the old days. It is interesting to see how governments treat their leading scientists. Heisenberg narrowly avoided prosecution in Nazi Germany. After the war, Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the US A-bomb project, was denied the security clearance and was prevented from participating in further nuclear research. English scientist Allan Turing, who built the machine to read the German secret code, was facing jail for being homosexual and was forced to submit to medical treatment which permanently damaged his health and led to his suicide. Russian Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, who headed the Soviet H bomb project, was exiled to Siberia. Obviously, governments punish people they consider to be too smart.