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Essay Review Getting Even with Heisenberg N.P. Landsman0 Essay Review Getting even with Heisenberg N.P. Landsman0 P.L. Rose, HEISENBERG and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), xx+352 pp., ISBN 0-7923-3794-8, hardback, $35, $21.95. `Aber es ist ein wichtiger Unterschied zwischen allem, was vor 1933 geschah, und dem, was dann kam: Alles fr¨uherezog an uns vorbei und ¨uber uns hin, es besch¨aftigteuns und regte uns auf, und den einen oder andern t¨otetees oder ließ ihn verarmen; aber keinen stellte es vor letzte Gewissensentscheidungen. Ein innerster Lebensbezirk blieb unber¨uhrt. Man machte Erfahrungen, man bildete Uberzeugungen:¨ Aber man blieb, was man war. Keiner, der, willig oder widerstrebend, in die Maschine des Dritten Reichs geraten ist, kann das ehrlich von sich sagen.' (Sebastian Haffner)1 1 Introduction Werner Heisenberg (1901{1976) is probably best known for his discovery of the uncertainty relations in quantum mechanics and their physical interpretation (1927). En route to quantum mechanics itself, he had earlier had the decisive insight that quantum-mechanical variables do not commute (1925). This formed the basis for the creation of matrix mechanics immediately afterwards by Born and Jordan, appearing in mature form in the ‘Dreim¨annerarbeit' with Heisenberg.2 This was one of the two paths along which modern quantum mechanics was discovered. Some of his other achievements in theoretical physics deserve to be mentioned. Barely 20, and well before the introduction of electron spin, Heisenberg made the revolutionary proposal to allow half-integral quantum numbers in the context of the Zeeman effect (1921). He made various other significant contributions in the period 1920{1925 that led to the establishment of quantum mechanics, and once the new theory had arrived, he was the first to derive a number of important consequences. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize `for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has led, among other things, to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen' (official citation). Similarly, Heisenberg provided the quantum-mechanical explanation of the occurrence of para- and ortho-helium (1926). His explanation of ferromagnetism (1928) stands out, too, but his most important work of the period is the foundation of quantum field theory with Pauli (1929). A few years later he became one of the founders of theoretical nuclear physics with a detailed proposal on the interactions between protons and neutrons in a nucleus.3 Heisenberg had certain other ideas that were somewhat off focus when he proposed them, but which in later developments by others turned out to be influential. This applies to his suggestion to replace quantum field theory by an S-matrix (1942), an idea that came to dominate elementary particle physics in the sixties, to his proposal of a minimal length (1936), which much later found its correct incarnation in lattice field theory as well as in quantum gravity, to his description of superconductivity as a phase transition in the late forties, eventually leading to the modern idea of 0Supported by a fellowship from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences; Korteweg{de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam, Plantage Muidergracht 24, 1018 TV AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS 1Haffner (2000), p. 12. 2The so-called `Heisenberg commutation relations' QP − PQ = i¯h were found by Born and Jordan, and inde- pendently by Dirac, though. 3At the time, neither Heisenberg's correct identification of the composition of the atomic nucleus, nor his idea that nuclear forces can be described by quantum mechanics was obvious at all. spontaneous symmetry breaking, to his idea of a unified field theory of elementary particle physics (1958), derided at the time, but now, in an entirely different version, seen as the basic link between high- and low-energy physics, and finally to his ideas on conformal symmetry in quantum field theory, a structure that caused an unprecedented boom in the high-energy physics of the eighties.4 Apart from his own scientific record, Heisenberg trained a number of physicists that later became of world class, such as Bloch, Peierls, and Weisskopf. In summary, Heisenberg was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, comparable with Einstein and Bohr. See Mott and Peierls (1977), Mehra and Rechenberg (1982), Hendry (1984), Pais (1986), and Cassidy (1992) for details about his scientific career. There is similarly uniform evidence about the exemplary sides of Heisenberg's character and behaviour. For example, such different observers as the English army officers who dealt with him during his internment at Farm Hall immediately after the war (see below) and his wife agree that he was very friendly, and the latter stresses that many people appreciated his great personal warmth.5 As a student he gave evening lectures on astronomy as well as on Mozart's operas to generally uneducated people who were personally unknown to him, and at the other end of the spectrum he usually went out of his way to help his own students and collaborators, both in peacetime and during the war, sometimes at risk to himself. Thus a number of them avoided almost certain death at the front by being enlisted by Heisenberg for his nuclear research program. In between, he did his best during the war to prevent the German occupying forces to rob certain physics laboratories, and in the case of the University of Leiden and of Bohr's institute in Copenhagen he was mostly successful in doing so. During the Nazi era he never joined the NSDAP or any of its affiliated organizations.6 He was among few not to sign a manifesto of university professors in support of Hitler. Shorty after the announcement of his Nobel Prize in 1932, which made him a famous figure in Germany, at peril to himself he refused to take part in a national rally in his home town of Leipzig in honour of Hitler.7 He was a member and occasional host of the Wednesday Society, a club for the German elite, many of whose members took part in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944, to be executed themselves in the aftermath. Although Heisenberg himself did not take part in the above plot, his personal courage was nonetheless extraordinary. He risked his life a number of times in an avoidable way. For example, just before the war he could easily have emigrated to the US with his family, but in deciding to stay in Germany he knowingly risked being sent to the front as a soldier, war looking unavoidable. During the end of the war he could have awaited arrest by Allied forces with little danger, but instead he endeavoured on a reckless and almost deadly bicycle tour through Germany to see his family. The lack of safety measures during his nuclear reactor experiments is notable, and he was almost killed when his reactor did, indeed, explode. Finally, throughout his life Heisenberg exhibited a remarkable sense of responsibility.8 Starting with his leadership of the `Gruppe Heisenberg,' a pathfinders youth squad, in his late teens, through his pivotal role in opposition to the `deutsche Physik" movement of Lenard and Stark in the late thirties,9 his acceptance of the directorship of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Physics in Berlin- Dahlem in 1943 at the request of others, and culminating in his central role in the rebuilding of German science after the war,10 Heisenberg led the German (theoretical) physics community from 4Cf. Nahm (2000). 5Heisenberg's wife did not encounter her husband uncritically, see x2.5 below. It would perhaps have been foolish for Heisenberg not to be friendly to the English officers, but his pose seemed natural to them, and they trusted him. This was by no means the case with all internees. See Frank (1993) and Bernstein (1996). 6Of the German nuclear physicists 56% were party members and 72% were affiliated to some Nazi organization. For example, Weizs¨acker was a member of the National Socialist Dozentenbund (University Teachers League). See Walker (1989) and Hentschel (1996). Note that throughout this paper the reference `Weizs¨acker' is to Carl Friedrich von Weizs¨acker (1912{). 7Heidegger, of course, was prominently present. 8The book under review actually takes the opposite view (e.g., p. 19), for the reason that Heisenberg left the decision to build nuclear weapons to politicians, but this seems to ignore all other evidence, and even in this example it is not clear which other choices Heisenberg had. In fact, Weizs¨acker empasizes that Heisenberg (and he) tried to gain control of the nuclear project as much as possible; see Weizs¨acker and van der Waerden (1977). 9Cf. Hentschel and Hentschel (1996) or Walker (1995). 10See Heisenberg (1969), Heisenberg (1980), Cassidy (1992), and especially Hermann (1977). 2 the front, although, like any genuine scientist, he would undoubtedly have preferred to sit at his desk contemplating the laws of physics. With Weizs¨acker, Heisenberg was the driving force behind the G¨ottingenManifesto of 1957, which called for the Federal German Government to abandon its plans for developing its own nuclear weapons, predating the later anti-nuclear peace movement.11 His efforts after the war towards international scientific cooperation stand out, including his important role in the estab- lishment of the CERN particle accelerator centre in Geneva in the fifties. During his presidency of the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung from 1953{1975 he successfully implemented his ideal that scientists should form an international family with lifelong ties. The enigma of Heisenberg is that there was another side to his life. His decision to stay in Germany during the Nazi era led him to enter a Faustian pact with a government of whose criminal nature he was well aware from the start,12 and which, as was also known to Heisenberg at least to some extent, gradually stepped up its demonic behaviour, initiating unspeakable war crimes and crimes against humanity that culminated in the Holocaust.
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