Author | Feng Lifei
The Biography of Werner Heisenberg: Beyond Uncertainty, by David Cassidy, translated by Fang Zaiqing, published by Hunan Science and Technology Publishing House in August 2018
Scientifically, he was one of the most dazzling theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Politically, however, people have a very different view of him.
As one of the most famous scientists of the time, why did Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) remain in Nazi Germany? Why nuclear fission, or even nuclear weapons research, for such a regime?
These questions filled Heisenberg with controversy after his death, and even made him regarded as an "accomplice" of the Nazis.
In the book "The Biography of Werner Heisenberg: Beyond Uncertainty", the American historian of science David Cassidy tries to combine new historical materials to open a door for people to understand the physicist fairly and objectively through a comprehensive review of Heisenberg's scientific career and life experiences.
"Unlike the previous dichotomy of praise or disparagement, the author attempts to delve into Heisenberg's inner world and show the reader a different Heisenberg." Fang Zaiqing, the Chinese moderator of the book and a researcher at the Institute of Natural Science History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with China Science Daily.
Be a strong genius
Heisenberg was born into a typical Family of German intellectuals.
On the eve of his birth, his father, who taught ancient Greek in secondary school, had just been hired as a professor at the University of Würzburg. This had a great impact on Heisenberg's growth.
In his view, German culture was in the hands of a small elite. He wanted to be such an elite and contribute to German culture.
This may have given Heisenberg a strong lifelong drive to get ahead in everything he did.
His secondary school teacher wrote in his grade report: "The student has great self-confidence and always wants to get ahead." "It was also evident in his youth.
Heisenberg had no talent for skiing, but he was excellent at training; he didn't run very well, but he would run laps in school and pick up speed with a stopwatch; the enterprising young man also challenged classical piano music and painting.
After 1920, Heisenberg began to conquer the mysteries of quantum physics. He studied under Professor Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich and entered the field of theoretical physics.
At the time, physicists were caught up in explaining the splitting of a single spectral line in a magnetic field in the anomalous Zehmann effect. Heisenberg, a year after joining Sommerfeld's project, surprised his teacher by proposing a model of atomic reality that seemed to solve all the spectral puzzles in one fell swoop.
The paper was published in the 1921 Journal of Physics. The model demonstrates Heisenberg's ability to make breakthroughs when others are powerless.
After receiving his Doctorate, Heisenberg was invited to Copenhagen, Denmark, to work as an assistant to physicist Nils Bohr, who once again conquered new heights of physics.
In March 1927, Heisenberg submitted another paper to the Journal of Physics outlining one of his most famous and influential contributions to physics: the establishment of the uncertainty or uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.
It, along with Bohr's principle of complementarity and Born's statistical interpretation of Schrödinger's wave function, formed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
A year later, at the age of 26, Heisenberg was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig, becoming the youngest full professor in Germany.
In November 1933, he received the news that he had been awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which, among other results, contributed to the discovery of isotopes of hydrogen.".
"White Jews"
During the Nazi regime, physicists Samuel Goodesmit and Enrico Fermi invited Heisenberg to emigrate to the United States, but he replied again and again: "I can't, because Germany needs me." This became one of the reasons why many physicists criticized him for serving the Nazi regime after the war.
In fact, like most intellectuals in Germany at the time, Heisenberg considered resigning from college when the Nazi regime's public office purges spread to colleagues and friends around him.
But the respected physicist Max Planck had convinced him that they had a responsibility to reserve a base for German culture and science.
In the autumn of 1935, Heisenberg wrote to his mother about the new task he had in mind: "I must be content to preserve in the small spheres of science the values that will become important in the future." In the midst of chaos, this is the only task I know. The world outside the realm is indeed ugly, but the work is wonderful. ”
Staying in Nazi Germany, his approach was to "not ask about politics".
For example, at the beginning of Hitler's rise to power, when Nobel laureates Stark and Renard responded to the alliance of German university teachers to pledge allegiance to Hitler, Heisenberg resisted participating in the matter.
When the theories of Jewish scientists such as Einstein were criticized and could not be taught in the classroom, Heisenberg did so, just so as not to cause trouble for himself, without mentioning Einstein's name.
Heisenberg's actions put him on the "blacklist" of Nazi supporters and was suppressed for being once defined as a "white Jew."
"In this context, an implicit premise of 'politics aside' in staying in Germany is unconditional love for the motherland." Fang Zaiqing said.
Leader of the "Uranium Club"
However, for the sake of his position and the future of German physics, Heisenberg had to comply with the demands of the Nazi authorities and make some compromises, which became an important reason why he was later widely criticized.
To this day, one of the reasons Heisenberg remains controversial is his role in Nazi Germany's nuclear program.
After the outbreak of World War II, only those studies that were beneficial to the operation of the Nazi war machine could be supported.
As a leader in a new generation of theoretical physics, Heisenberg worries about himself and his industry. He saw that nuclear fission research was an opportunity for German theoretical physics to gain support.
Heisenberg first used this tantalizing prospect to get the Quartermaster Department to support his research, while pointing out the great difficulties in between, thus lowering expectations for his findings.
In his later words: "The official slogan is 'We must use physics for the sake of war'. Our slogan is 'We must use war for the sake of physics'. ”
However, due to miscalculations and shortages of required materials, heisenberg's uranium program did not really go ahead.
After the war, in order to explain why Germany failed to build the atomic bomb and to maintain its academic and political image, his students and colleagues Weizsäcker proposed "procrastination" and "moral considerations", which led to a series of controversies.
Perhaps patriotism was not the only incentive for Heisenberg to engage in nuclear fission, and like the allies, scientific curiosity and a more practical motivation were evident.
As Cassidy writes, "patriotism, professional practicality, scientific curiosity, and support for The German war cause combined," led Heisenberg to devote his energies to nuclear fission research in the early months of the war.
A suffering friend
Another thing that drew Heisenberg into criticism and left him devastated after the war was his visit to Bohr in the autumn of 1941.
At that time, Heisenberg and some German scientists traveled to occupied Copenhagen, the official purpose of which was to attend a series of lectures at the German Institute for Cultural Propaganda there, while the informal intention was to meet with the former mentor Bohr.
By that time, the German Empire had expanded to its zenith.
Considering that the meeting took place in German-occupied Denmark, Heisenberg's purpose was to give a propaganda speech on whether nuclear fission was controllable. Heisenberg's visit unnerved his former mentor, which was not surprising at all.
After the war, Heisenberg recalled that he wanted to let the Allies know through Bohr that Germany was far from building a bomb, so as to avoid the Allies taking an emergency plan to develop a nuclear bomb and eventually launch a nuclear strike against Germany.
But Bohr said in an unsent draft letter that he was impressed by Heisenberg's tone that Germany was working hard under his leadership to develop nuclear weapons.
Heisenberg's visit to Bohr is still shrouded in controversy and doubt.
Bohr's wife, Margaret, never wavered in her view of the incident: "Whatever others say, it was a hostile visit. "Since then, although Bohr and Heisenberg still had a party, they have never been as close as they were before the war.
Physicist in a dilemma
Heisenberg also considered war and the concrete realities of the individual— himself — in war.
He argues: "Treating others humanely is more important than fulfilling any kind of professional, national or political obligation." "It shows that at least he seems to know what's right, though he doesn't always do it."
After 1941, Heisenberg also participated in several invitations from the Nazi regime to speak abroad, either with his prior consent or without.
He seems to feel powerless against the power of the individual in the face of national and international struggles.
When he played an important role in a research program in the hierarchy of german war operations, as a cultural representative to the occupied and oppressed regions, and even when meeting the demands of Nazi officials, he convinced himself that his actions would in fact not alter the existence of grand scale.
In order to transcend the closed world and devote himself to the vast real life, Faust, the Great German writer Goethe, did not hesitate to sell his soul to the devil, completed the spiritual exploration full of suffering, and understood the truth that "human happiness only exists in doing his best for others".
"Much like Faust, Heisenberg combines negative and positive traits, and he does not hesitate to deal with fanatical nationalism and brutal totalitarian rule, using all available forces, including making the necessary compromises, to achieve his goals." In the afterword to the book, Fang Zaiqing wrote, "How much of this is to be perfected, how much is played, only Heisenberg himself knows." ”
After World War II, Heisenberg and other German physicists were sent to England by American troops for captivity. After months of house arrest, he returned to Germany in 1946.
During the post-war reconstruction of German science, Heisenberg used his reputation and influence to spare no effort to promote international scientific cooperation during his presidency of the Humboldt Foundation until his death on 1 February 1976.
The exception in the Heisenberg affair is that many of his harshest American critics still have sympathy and an out-of-polite zeal toward him, even when issuing the harshest rebukes.
"Heisenberg was a great physicist, a profound thinker, a very cultured man, and at the same time a man of courage." In an obituary written for the man he so adored and so reproached, Gutsmead said, "He was one of the greatest physicists of our time, but he suffered immensely under the unfounded attacks of some fanatical colleagues." In my opinion, he should be seen in some ways as a victim of the Nazi regime. ”
China Science Daily (2019-02-22 6th Edition Reading)
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