Werner Karl Heisenberg, known for his uncertainty principle, was a German theoretical physicist, and one of the most important figures of quantum mechanics. He was born in Würzburg, Germany, in 1901, and his father was a secondary school teacher of classical languages. Both his father and grandfather had received high academic achievement, and so his elders were determined that Werner too would foster good academic success to eventually maintain a good social status, which he did. But to make sure that Werner does succeed, his father created an atmosphere of competitiveness between Werner and his older brother, Erwin. Both considered each other to be their rivals, and this explains why Werner had a very competitive nature in Physics, and he …show more content…
Hence, the smaller the uncertainty in position, Δx, the greater is the uncertainty in momentum, Δp, and vice versa. So if one knows the positions of a particle precisely, one cannot know much about its momentum, and conversely, if the momentum is known to precision, its position could have a wide range of answers, hence the uncertainty. Considering the particle to be an electron, and looking at it in terms of the wave theory, in order to have a small error in the measurement of the position of the electron, a small wavelength is used. And this implies a large momentum, as momentum is equal to Plank’s constant divided by wavelength. This can also help to devise the uncertainty principle, in …show more content…
It was considered quite a successful accomplishment. By the time this paper was in draft, Heisenberg had already been in a good relationship with his mentor, Bohr. But Heisenberg never sought Bohr’s advice before advancing the paper. And hence, later when Bohr read the paper, he found an error in Heisenberg’s argument, and the spirit of competition and rivalry in Heisenberg blinded him to what Bohr was suggesting. A conflict started between the two, and Heisenberg stubbornly defended his position, claiming that such a small error in his thought experiment that used the gamma ray microscope would have made no difference. Heisenberg’s experiment considered both the particle nature and the wave nature, and Bohr argued that either one of those pictures must be used to analyze the experiment. Bohr asked him to withdraw the paper and make the amends but Heisenberg disagreed and refused his suggestion. This battle with Bohr only grew intense with time, and Heisenberg later thanked Bohr for everything that he had done for him since he started doing research with him in 1923, and in a postscript of his paper, he corrected his mistake and highlighted Bohr’s