Volume 16, Number 12 · July 1, 1971
Atomic Germans
By Rudolf Peierls
Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
by Werner Heisenberg, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans
Harper & Row, 266 pp., $7.95
Physics went through a major revolution in the first quarter of this century. It was started by Max Planck and Niels Bohr, whose use of the idea of the quantum of action brought order into a wide range of phenomena concerning the structure of matter and the nature of atoms, but was as yet incomplete, in some parts arbitrary, and even self-contradictory. The final stage of this development, which completed our understanding of atomic physics, owes as much to Werner Heisenberg as to any other single person, although another development, started independently by Schrödinger, turned out to be a different expression of the same basic laws. Many others, of course, made important progress along the path opened up by the pioneers.
Review, 2383 words
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