An uncertain life

Abstract

David C. Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg . W.H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1991. $29.95, pp. xii + 669. ISBN 071672 2437 There is wit and double meaning in the title of this book. In the future, say 200 years hence, anyone who can name ten scientists of the 20th century will rather surely include the name of Heisenberg in the list, and couple it with the Uncertainty Principle, even if by then it is only taken to mark a stage in the history of the development of fundamental physics. And, for the present, any journalist writing about Heisenberg is likely to be dealing with uncertainty regarding the facts of German work on atomic energy during World War II (very probably under a headline referring to ‘Heisenberg’s bomb’), and regarding Heisenberg’s attitude to politics, and to the ethics of doing such work under the nazis. Cassidy’s book was written before the publication of the story of the secretlyrecorded conversations in 1945 of Heisenberg and other German scientists, in Operation Epsilon: the Farm Hall Transcripts (Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1993), now back-translated into German* with an informative interview with C.F. von Weizsäcker. * Dieter Hoffmann, Operation Epsilon: Die Farm Hall Protokolle oder Die Angst der Allierten vor der deutschen Atombombe . Rowohlt, Berlin, September 1993.