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Heisenberg's Uncertainties by Daniel D Books Heisenberg's Uncertainties by Daniel d. Kevles During the Second W orld War, close scientific friends, like the physicist the nightmare that German physicists Samuel Goudsmit, had pleaded with would deliver an atomic bomb into him to emigrate, but he had returned Hitler's hands haunted the inner circles home, insisting that he was a German of American science. Like most night­ patriot with a duty to help maintain mares, this one melded foreboding with havens of decency in his country and facts. Hitler's government controlled protect German physics for the future. rich natural-uranium mines and the Wartime intelligence reports revealed world's only plant for manufacturing that his patriotism had deepened to heavy water, an essential ingredient in include the hope of a German victory, nuclear-reactor research. Germany had because it would counter the inroads of been a superpower in world physics, a Soviets and Slavs threatening from the Mecca for American students, its scien­ east. The reports also indicated that the Alfred A. Knopf, 1993 tists mighty contributors to the recent Germans had initiated an atomic proj­ $27.50 revolution of quantum mechanics. ect, and that Heisenberg-"the most 60B pages Despite the loss of many world-class dangerous possible German in the field scientists as refugees from Nazism, because of his brain power," as a distin­ Germany still appeared formidable. guished British physicist told American Otto Hahn, who, in 1938, had identified physicists-was involved in it. How­ the phenomenon of nuclear fission using ever, in December of 1944 an American tabletop apparatus in his Berlin labora­ scientific team, sent to Europe to ascer­ tory, remained in Germany; so did Wer­ tain the state of Getman nuclear affairs ner Heisenberg, a theorist of towering as part of a United States Army intelli­ talents, who had conceived the famed gence mission code-named Alsos, tenta­ uncertainty principle and, in 1932, at tively concluded that the German the age of 31, had won a Nobel Prize for atomic-bomb project was paltry and his co-invention of quantum mechanics. was several years behind the Manhattan In the mid-1930s, Heisenberg, unim­ Project. peachably German but no Nazi himself, In 1947, Heisenberg explained in the had defended Einstein's physics­ British scientific journal Nature that he "Jewish physics," Hitler's minions called and his colleagues had known how to it-and had found himself labeled a make a bomb but had been reluctant to Reprinted by permission; "white Jew," his career and his life at build one for Hitler, and he added that © 1993 Daniel]. Kevles risk. While he was on a visit to the in any case they had not had to face up Originally in The New Yorker United States in the summer of 1939, to the moral decision of whether to 32 Engineering & Science/Spring 1993 proceed toward an atomic weapon, be­ national security, Powers has exhumed cause even the military agreed that the a trove of material and deployed it bril­ task was too large for wartime Germany. liantly, though somewhat repetitiously, They had therefore directed their ener­ to illuminate the hidden history. His gies toward making a reactor-which book is provocative and often gripping, they called an "engine"-to exploit and it inventively compels a reconsidera­ nuclear energy as a source of power to tion not only of Heisenberg's war but of drive ships and electrical generators. the relationship to it of several key The question of Samuel Goudsmit, who headed the Alsos Manhattan Project scientists, Goudsmit why German scientific team, promptly responded, in among them. Life (and elsewhere), declaring that Powers notes that the German nu­ physicists did not German physicists had tried to build a clear effort, called the Uranium Club at produce an atomic bomb, that they had failed because of the the time, comprised "an unruly mailing meddling of Nazi administrators and list of competing scientists whose only bomb remains their own commission of serious techni­ shared hope was to survive the war." highly charged. cal errors, and that Heisenberg's account Some in Heisenberg's branch of the club, It bears upon how disingenuously covered their blunders including Heisenberg himself and his with a newly minted morality. To close younger friend Carl Friedrich von we judge any Goudsmit, who was Dutch by birth, Weiszacker, who was the son of the scientist who par­ and whose parents had died in the second-highest official in Hitler's Holocaust-and to many other Allied Foreign Office, also wanted to exploit ticipated in the physicists-the aim of trying to protect the government's interestin nuclear Nazi machine or, physics did not justify collaborating matters to rescue German physics from with the architects of Auschwitz. Nazi know-nothings. This was a for that matter, The question of why German physi­ hazardous game, as Heisenberg knew. scientists any­ cists did not produce an atomic bomb Some of Heisenberg's intimates where who for the remains highly charged. It bears upon revealed in a trail of leaks intended for how we judge any scientist who partici­ the Allies how he was playing the game. sake ofscience or pated in the Nazi machine or, for that Consistent in content, the leaks were ideology enter into matter, scientists anywhere who for the exemplifed in a remarkable, unequivocal sake of science or ideology enter into a message that one of Heisenberg's confi­ a potentially potentially Faustian bargain with the dants-thetheorist Fritz Houtermans, Faustian bargain state. Scrutiny of the official German a socialist who had spent time in both records by several historians has revealed Nazi and Soviet prisons and was under with the state. that Heisenberg and his colleagues did suspicion by the Gestapo-had asked a in fact understand a good deal about the Jewish-refugee physicist named Fritz fundamentals of bomb physics, and that Reiche to carry by memory to the Unit­ early in the war they raised the prospect ed States. A contemporary handwritten not only of a power source but also of summary of Reiche's report, which he "an explosive of unimaginable conse­ delivered to a group of physicists in quence," as Heisenberg put it in a Princeton in March of 1941, reads: lecture to a gathering of high German Reliable colleague who is working officials in February of 1942. at a technical research laboratory asked In Heisenberg's War: The Secret History him to let us know that a large num­ of the German Bomb (Knopf, $27.50), ber of German physicists are working Thomas Powers argues that we can intensively on the problem of the judge Heisenberg only if we can know uranium bomb under the direction of his intentions, and those the official Heisenberg, that Heisenberg himself historical record does not reveal. To tries to delay the work as much as ferret them out, Powers has meticulously possible, fearing the catastrophic searched through what he calls "the results of a success. But he cannot shadow history of the war," seeking in help fulfilling the orders given to him. letters, diaries, recollections, and intelli­ In September of 1941, Heisenberg gence files what Heisenberg and his paid a visit to his mentor and conscience, friends "said to each other in the small Niels Bohr, in occl).pied Denmark, hours of the night." An accomplished attempting, it seems, to convey that he investigative journalist and historian of was at work on anuclear-reactor project Engineering & Science/Spring 1993 33 Theodore von Ka nnan (soon to arrive at Caltech) took this snapshot of Heisenberg (light suit) in 1927 at the Intemational Physics Conference at Lake Como, Italy. Wolf· gang Pauli is the other hatless gentle­ man at right. and wanted to keep his research confined But did he, as his disbelievers insist, critical mass would be only a few tens of to thar, bur he so fumbled rhe rry that emphas ize the difficulties because he had kilograms, wbich was in tbe right ball­ he left Bohr furious, and convinced that committed the key techn ical blunder of park and was small enough ro be consid­ he was designing a bomb. overestimating them? The issue turns ered obrai nable ~ indeed, at a meeting in The options for delay were inherent on how large the critical mass of pure U- Bedin in 1942, responding to a question in the details of bomb physics. By late 235 would have to be. In several war­ from Field Marshal Erhard Milch, of the 1941, the Germans, like the Allies, time comments, Heisenberg implied Air Force Ministry, H eisenberg had said recognized that tWO types of atomic that as much as a thousand kilograms that London could be leveled with a weapons could be fashioned -{me of would be required-a quantity that bomb abour as large as a pineapple. The pure uranium 235 (U-235), the readily would indeed have Ix",n impossible to Farm Hall transcripts. which the British fissionable isotOpe of the element, and obtain soon enough ro affect the out­ kept secret until February of 1992, and the other of plutonium , a newly discov­ come of the war. He was heard ro make whi ch Powers has exami ned , reveal that ered element that would be prod uced in a comparable estim ate on August 6, on Aug ust 6 H ahn recalled Heisenberg's the controlled chai n [eanion of a nuclear 1945, rhe day the uran ium bomb was tell ing him more than once during the reactOr from a sister isotope, uranium dropped on Hirosh ima. At the time, war that a uranium bomb could be made 238 (U-238).
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