Werner – just one of the boys?

Abstract

In the 1920s it was sometimes called Knabenphysik – which roughly translates to “boys' physics”. The term referred to the brilliant accomplishments of a group of very young theoretical physicists in pursuit of a new quantum theory of atoms and radiation. Among the Knaben were Paul Dirac (1902–84), Werner Heisenberg (1901–76), Pascual Jordan (1902–80) and Wolfgang Pauli (1902–58). Other important contributors, such as Niels Bohr (1892–1987), Max Born (1882–1970), Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) and Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), were elder statesmen by comparison.