Volume 39, Number 8 · April 23, 1992
The Uncertain Scientist
By Rudolf Peierls
Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg
by David C. Cassidy
W. H. Freeman, 669 pp., $29.95
Werner Heisenberg was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of this century. In 1925, at the age of twenty-three, he wrote the paper that laid the foundations of quantum mechanics on which all subsequent generations have built. This was not just an extension or elaboration of the work of others, but an unexpected, radical new departure, which abandoned the basic notions of the old 'classical' physics, such as that of electrons moving in orbits, replacing them by a much more abstract description.
Review, 3577 words
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