维尔纳·海森堡Werner Heisenberg

维尔纳·海森堡的父亲是August Heisenberg，母亲是Anna Wecklein。在海森堡出生时，他的父亲即将从古典语言学校教师晋升为维尔茨堡大学的Privatdozent。Anna的父亲Nikolaus Wecklein是慕尼黑Maximilians 文理中学（Gymnasium）的校长，正是在August Heisenberg在该校担任实习教师时，他遇到了Anna。August和Anna于1899年5月结婚。海森堡有一个哥哥Erwin，生于1900年3月，因此比本传记的主人公大将近两岁。

海森堡是[3]：-

... 一个相当僵硬、严格控制、专横的人物。

他是一名福音派路德宗信徒，而他的妻子安娜原本是天主教徒，为了确保他们的婚姻不出现宗教问题而改宗。不过，奥古斯特和安娜只是出于习俗才信奉宗教。像他们这种身份的人被期望有基督教信仰，所以对他们来说这是一种社会需要。然而在私下里，他们表达了自己缺乏宗教信仰，尤其是他们教育子女遵循基督教伦理，却对基督教的历史层面表现出完全的不相信。

1906年9月，在他五岁生日前不久，海森堡进入了维尔茨堡的一所小学。他在那所学校度过了三年，但到了1909年，他的父亲被任命为慕尼黑大学的中古与近代希腊语教授。1910年6月，也就是他父亲就任教授几个月后，海森堡和家里其他人搬到了慕尼黑。他从9月起在伊丽莎白学校上学，只在这所学校待了一年，就进入了慕尼黑的马克西米利安文理中学。这当然就是他祖父担任校长的学校。

1914年第一次世界大战爆发，文理中学被军队占用。课程安排在不同的建筑里进行，由于这种中断，海森堡进行了大量独立学习，这大概对他的教育产生了有益的影响。他最好的科目是数学、物理和宗教，但他在整个学校生涯中的成绩全面优秀。事实上，他的数学能力如此之强，以至于1917年他给一位在大学读书的家庭朋友辅导微积分。在此期间，他属于一个在文理中学活动的准军事组织，其目的是让年轻人为日后的兵役做准备。

海森堡还在农场干活，作为对另一个志愿组织的贡献，该组织在春季和夏季派男孩们去田里帮忙。1918年，这项工作第一次让他离开家，他被派到上巴伐利亚的一个奶牛场干活。那是一段极其艰苦的时期，劳动时间长，而且食物不足，使情况更加糟糕。他把业余时间用来下棋，棋艺水平很高，还阅读随身携带的数学课本。事实上，到这时他已经对⟦E数字⟧产生了兴趣，他读了利奥波德·克罗内克的著作，并试图找到费马大定理的一个证明。

1918年战争结束后，德国局势变得不稳定，不同派系试图以武力夺取权力。海森堡参加了对巴伐利亚苏维埃军队的军事镇压，不过，尽管这是一件非常严肃的事情，这些年轻人很可能几乎把它当作一场游戏。他后来写道[4]：——

我当时是个17岁的男孩，我觉得这是一种冒险。就像玩警察抓强盗……

在文理中学里，海森堡领导了一场青年运动，后来又在青年巴伐利亚联盟内领导了一场运动。1920年，他参加了中学毕业考试，并且是马克西米利安文理中学选送参加巴伐利亚范围马克西米利安基金会奖学金竞赛的两名学生之一。当时有十一个奖学金名额，海森堡以第十一名的成绩刚好获得。他的数学和物理考试成绩被评为非凡，但他那篇关于“悲剧作为诗艺”的文章则远没有那么令人印象深刻。他拒绝了基金会提供的免费住宿，宁愿与父母住在一起。

在参加高中毕业考试（Abitur）考试和进入慕尼黑大学之间的那段时间，海森堡和他的青年团体一起外出徒步旅行。他差点死于伤寒，那是在一座曾被用作军医院的城堡里过夜后感染的。尽管获取合适食物有困难，他还是及时康复，开始了大学学习。1920年夏天，海森堡像此前一段时间一样，打算在大学学习纯数学。他读过赫尔曼·外尔，也读过保罗·巴赫曼的课本，那本书对⟦E数字⟧作了完整综述，而这将是他博士学位的预定研究课题。他去找费迪南德·冯·林德曼，看他是否愿意做自己的研究导师。

如果与费迪南德·冯·林德曼的面试成功，那么海森堡今天也许会作为一位杰出的⟦E数字⟧家而闻名。然而，面试进行得并不顺利，几乎可以肯定是因为费迪南德·冯·林德曼再过两年就要退休，而且只是看在他父亲这位朋友兼同事的份上才同意见海森堡。在这之后，海森堡与阿诺·索末菲进行了面试，后者欣然接受他为学生。

1920年10月，海森堡与同学沃尔夫冈·泡利一起开始在阿诺·索末菲指导下学习理论物理。起初他很谨慎，主要选修数学课程，以确保如果理论物理学得不顺利，还能回到数学。然而，他避开了费迪南德·冯·林德曼的课程，因此他的数学兴趣从数论转向了几何。很快，他对理论物理的信心大增，到第二学期时，他已经选修了阿诺·索末菲的全部课程。他还修读了必修的实验物理课程，并开始计划从事相对论研究。然而，当时正在撰写其相对论理论重要综述的沃尔夫冈·泡利建议他不要从事该课题的研究。不过，关于原子结构，沃尔夫冈·泡利解释说，由于理论与实验不一致，还有很多工作要做。

在[6]中，海森堡写到了他在大学早期的日子：——

我在慕尼黑大学的头两年是在两个截然不同的世界中度过的：在青年运动的朋友中间，以及在理论物理的抽象领域里。这两个世界都充满了紧张的活动，以至于我常常处于极度激动之中，尤其是因为我发现很难在两者之间来回穿梭。

1922年6月，他在哥廷根听了尼尔斯·玻尔的讲座。回到慕尼黑后，阿诺·索末菲给了他一个流体动力学问题，让他在阿诺·索末菲于1922-23学年在美国期间有事可做。海森堡在因斯布鲁克的一次会议上报告了关于湍流问题的初步结果，随后再次前往哥廷根，在导师外出期间跟随马克斯·玻恩、Franck和大卫·希尔伯特学习。在那里，他与马克斯·玻恩合作研究原子理论，与他合写了一篇关于氦的论文。他的学位论文于1923年在慕尼黑提交，内容是关于流体流中的湍流。

获得博士学位后，海森堡前往芬兰旅行，然后于1923年10月回到哥廷根担任马克斯·玻恩的助手。1924年3月，他在哥本哈根的理论物理研究所拜访了尼尔斯·玻尔，在那里他第一次见到了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦。再次回到哥廷根后，他于1924年7月28日作了教授资格论文（Habilitation）讲座，并取得了在德国大学任教的资格。

海森堡后来写道：

我从阿诺·索末菲那里学到了乐观主义，在哥廷根学到了数学，从尼尔斯·玻尔那里学到了物理学。

从1924年9月到1925年5月，他在洛克菲勒资助的支持下，在哥本哈根大学与尼尔斯·玻尔合作，1925年夏天回到哥廷根。海森堡于1925年发明了矩阵力学，即量子力学的第一个版本。然而，他并不是以矩阵代数的形式发明这些概念的，而是将注意力集中在一组量子化概率幅上。这些概率幅构成了一个非交换代数。正是哥廷根的马克斯·玻恩和帕斯库尔·约尔丹认识到这个非交换代数是矩阵代数。

矩阵力学在海森堡、马克斯·玻恩和帕斯库尔·约尔丹于1926年发表的一篇三人合著论文中得到了进一步发展。1926年5月，海森堡被任命为哥本哈根的理论物理讲师，在那里他与尼尔斯·玻尔合作。1927年，海森堡被任命为莱比锡大学的讲席，并于1928年2月1日发表了他的就职演讲。他一直担任此职，直到1941年被任命为柏林威廉皇帝物理研究所所长。

1932年，他因以下贡献被授予诺贝尔物理学奖：

量子力学的创立，其应用导致了氢的同素异形体的发现等。

在颁奖演讲中，H Pleijel 说：-

海森堡……从一开始就从如此宽广的角度看待他的问题，以至于它处理了电子、原子和分子的系统。根据海森堡，必须从允许直接观测的物理量出发，任务在于找出将这些量联系在一起的定律。首先需要考虑的量是原子和分子光谱中谱线的频率和强度。海森堡现在将这种光谱的所有振荡的组合视为一个系统，为了对其进行数学处理，他提出了某些符号计算规则。此前已经确定，原子内部的某些种类的运动必须在某种程度上被视为彼此独立，就像经典力学中对平行运动和旋转运动作出特定区分一样。在这方面应当提到，为了解释光谱的性质，必须假设正原子核和电子有自转。原子和分子的这些不同种类的运动在海森堡的量子力学中产生不同的系统。作为海森堡理论的基本因素，可以提出他关于电子的位置坐标与速度之间关系的规则，通过这条规则，马克斯·普朗克常数作为一个决定因素被引入量子力学计算中。……

海森堡的量子力学已被他本人和其他人应用于研究原子和分子的光谱性质，并得出了与实验研究一致的结果。可以说，海森堡的量子力学使原子光谱的系统化成为可能。还应当提到，海森堡在将他的理论应用于由两个相同原子组成的分子时，除其他事项外发现氢分子必定以两种不同的形式存在，这两种形式应当以某种给定的比例彼此出现。海森堡的这一预言后来也得到了实验证实。

海森堡也许最为人所知的是1927年发现的Uncertainty Principle，它指出确定一个粒子的位置和动量必然包含误差，这些误差的乘积不能小于量子常数ℏ。这些误差在一般情况下可以忽略不计，但在研究诸如原子这样的极微小对象时变得至关重要。正是在1927年，海森堡参加了在布鲁塞尔举行的索尔维会议。他在1969年写道：-

对我们这些参与原子理论发展的人来说，1927年布鲁塞尔索尔维会议之后的五年看起来如此美妙，以至于我们常常称它们为原子物理学的黄金时代。前些年占据我们全部努力的巨大障碍已经被清除，通往一个全新领域——原子壳层的量子力学——的大门敞开着，新的果实似乎已准备好采摘。

海森堡于1928年发表了The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory。1929年，他前往美国、日本和印度进行巡回讲学。在20世纪30年代，海森堡和沃尔夫冈·泡利在他们的晶格计算中使用了空间的量子化实现。海森堡希望这一数学性质会导向自然的一个基本性质，其中“基本长度”是自然常数之一。

1932年，海森堡写了一篇分为三部分的论文，描述了原子核的现代图景。他处理了各种核组分的结构，讨论了它们的结合能和稳定性。这些论文为其他人将量子理论应用于原子核开辟了道路。

1935年，纳粹出台了一项法律，规定65岁以上的教授必须退休。阿诺·索末菲当时66岁，他已经表示希望海森堡接替他。这是海森堡非常渴望的任命，1935年阿诺·索末菲再次表示希望海森堡填补他的讲席。然而，这正是纳粹希望用“德国数学”取代“犹太数学”、用“德国物理学”取代“犹太物理学”的时期。相对论和量子理论被归类为“犹太的”，因此海森堡在慕尼黑的任命被阻止。尽管海森堡绝不是犹太人，但他经常受到新闻界的攻击，称他为“犹太风格”。

1937年，海森堡与Elisabeth Schumacher结婚。他是通过他的音乐认识她的，音乐对他一生都很重要。海森堡是一位出色的钢琴家，在一次音乐会上遇到了Elisabeth Schumacher，当时他正在一位朋友家里演奏。他们相遇时Elizabeth只有22岁，海森堡35岁。他们于1937年4月29日结婚，距他们第一次见面不到三个月。海森堡曾被要求在3月接受慕尼黑的任命，但由于婚礼，他要求将日期推迟到8月。双方同意他应在8月1日就职。他和妻子于7月抵达慕尼黑，但他的任命被纳粹阻止。

第二次世界大战期间，海森堡领导了不成功的德国核武器项目Uranverein。他与核裂变的发现者之一Otto Hahn合作开发核反应堆，但未能制定出有效的核武器计划。这是因为缺乏资源还是缺乏将核武器交到纳粹手中的意愿，尚不清楚。

战后，他被Alsos逮捕，这是一个秘密任务，跟随推进的盟军在欧洲确定德国原子弹项目的进展。他与其他领先的德国科学家一起被拘留在英格兰亨廷登郡戈德曼彻斯特的Farm Hall。然而，他于1946年返回德国，被任命为哥廷根的马克斯马克斯·普朗克物理和天体物理研究所所长。1955-1956年冬天，他在圣安德鲁斯大学做了吉福德讲座“论物理学和哲学”。当马克斯马克斯·普朗克研究所于1958年迁往慕尼黑时，海森堡继续担任其所长。他一直担任这一职务，直到1970年辞职。

他还对物理哲学感兴趣，并撰写了Physics and Philosophy（1962年）和Physics and Beyond（1971年）。

除了诺贝尔物理学奖之外，海森堡还因其卓越贡献获得了许多荣誉。他当选为伦敦皇家学会会士，并且是Göttingen、巴伐利亚、萨克森、Prussia、Sweden、Romania、Norway、Spain、The Netherlands、Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina、Accademia dei Lincei和美国艺术与科学院等科学院的成员。在他获得的奖项中包括尼古拉·哥白尼奖。

Werner Heisenberg's father was August Heisenberg and his mother was Anna Wecklein. At the time that Werner was born his father was about to progress from being a school teacher of classical languages to being appointed as a Privatdozent at the University of Würzburg. Anna's father, Nikolaus Wecklein, was the headmaster of the Maximilians Gymnasium in Munich and it was while August Heisenberg was a trainee teacher at that school that he had met Anna. August and Anna were married in May 1899. Werner had an older brother Erwin, born in March 1900, who was therefore nearly two years older than the subject of this biography.

August Heisenberg was [3]:-

... a rather stiff, tightly controlled, authoritarian figure.

He was an Evangelical Lutheran and his wife Anna had converted from being a Roman Catholic to make sure there were no religious problems with their marriage. August and Anna, however, were only religious for the sake of convention. A Christian belief was expected of people of their status so for them it was a social necessity. In private, however, they expressed their lack of religious beliefs, and in particular they brought up their children to follow Christian ethics but showed total disbelief in the historical side of Christianity.

In September 1906, shortly before his fifth birthday, Werner enrolled in a primary school in Würzburg. He spent three years at that school but then in 1909 his father was appointed Professor of Middle and Modern Greek at the University of Munich. In June 1910, a few months after his father took up the professorship, Werner and the rest of the family moved to Munich. There he attended the Elisabethenschule from September, spending only one year at this school before entering the Maximilians Gymnasium in Munich. This of course was the school where his grandfather was the headmaster.

In 1914 World War I began and the Gymnasium was occupied by troops. Lessons were arranged in different buildings and as a result of the disruption Heisenberg undertook much independent study which probably had a beneficial effect on his education. His best subjects were mathematics, physics and religion but his record throughout his school career was excellent all round. In fact his mathematical abilities were such that in 1917 he tutored a family friend who was at university in calculus. During this period he belonged to a paramilitary organisation which operated in the Gymnasium with the intention of preparing the young men for later military service.

Heisenberg also worked on farms as his contribution to another voluntary organisation which sent the boys to help in the fields in spring and summer. This work took him away from home for the first time in 1918 when he was sent to work on a dairy farm in Upper Bavaria. It was a time of great hardship with long hours of labour made worse since there was insufficient food. He spent his spare time playing chess, which he did to a very high standard, and also read mathematics texts he had taken with him. In fact by this time he had become interested in number theory and he read Kronecker's work and tried to find a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

After the war ended in 1918 the situation in Germany became unstable with different factions trying to take power by force. Heisenberg took part in the military suppression of the Bavarian Soviet forces but, although it was a very serious business, the young men probably treated it almost as a game. He later wrote [4]:-

I was a boy of 17 and I considered it a kind of adventure. It was like playing cops and robbers ...

In the Gymnasium Heisenberg led a youth movement and he later led a movement within the Young Bavarian League. In 1920 he took his Abitur examination and was one of two pupils entered from the Maximilians Gymnasium for a Bavarian wide competition for a scholarship from the Maximilianeum Foundation. Eleven scholarships were available and Heisenberg just made it by coming in eleventh place. His examination results in mathematics and physics were classed as extraordinary, but his essay on "tragedy as poetic art" was much less impressive. He declined the offer of free accommodation from the Foundation, preferring to live with his parents.

In the period between taking his Abitur examination and entering the University of Munich, Heisenberg went off hiking with his youth group. He nearly died of typhoid which he contracted after spending the night in a castle which had been used as a military hospital. He recovered, despite the problems of obtaining suitable food, in time to begin his university studies. During the summer of 1920 Heisenberg was, as he had been for some time, intending to study pure mathematics at university. He had read Weyl and also Bachmann's text which gave a complete survey of number theory and this was to be his intended research topic for his doctorate. He approached Ferdinand von Lindemann to see if he would be his research supervisor.

Had the interview with Lindemann been a success then Heisenberg might today be known as an outstanding number theorist. However, the interview did not go well, almost certainly since Lindemann was only two years off retiring and had only agreed to see Heisenberg as a favour to his father who was a friend and colleague. Following this Heisenberg had an interview with Sommerfeld who happily accepted him as a student.

With his fellow student Pauli, Heisenberg began to study theoretical physics under Sommerfeld in October 1920. At first he was cautious, taking mostly mathematics classes and making sure that he could revert to mathematics if the theoretical physics went badly. He avoided courses by Lindemann, however, so his mathematical interests moved from number theory to geometry. Soon his confidence in theoretical physics was such that by the second semester he was taking all of Sommerfeld's courses. He also took courses in experimental physics, which were compulsory, and he began to plan to undertake research in relativity. However Pauli, who was at that time working on his major survey of the theory of relativity, advised him against doing research in that topic. On atomic structure, however, Pauli explained, much needed to be done since theory and experiment did not agree.

In [6] Heisenberg wrote of his early days at university:-

My first two years at Munich University were spent in two quite different worlds: among my friends of the youth movement and in the abstract realm of theoretical physics. Both worlds were so filled with intense activity that I was often in a state of great agitation, the more so as I found it rather difficult to shuttle between the two.

In June 1922 he attended lectures by Niels Bohr in Göttingen. Returning to Munich, Sommerfeld gave him a problem in hydrodynamics to keep him busy while he (Sommerfeld) spent session 1922-23 in the United States. Heisenberg presented preliminary results on the problem on turbulence at a conference in Innsbruck before going again to Göttingen to study with Born, Franck, and Hilbert while his supervisor was away. There he worked with Born on atomic theory, writing a joint paper with him on helium. His doctoral dissertation, presented to Munich in 1923, was on turbulence in fluid streams.

After taking his doctorate Heisenberg went on a trip to Finland then, in October 1923, he returned to Göttingen as Born's assistant. In March 1924 he visited Niels Bohr at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen where he met Einstein for the first time. Returning again to Göttingen he delivered his habilitation lecture on 28 July 1924 and qualified to teach in German universities.

Heisenberg later wrote:-

I learned optimism from Sommerfeld, mathematics at Göttingen, and physics from Bohr.

From September 1924 until May 1925 he worked, with the support of a Rockefeller grant, with Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen, returning for the summer of 1925 to Göttingen. Heisenberg invented matrix mechanics, the first version of quantum mechanics, in 1925. He did not invent these concepts as a matrix algebra, however, rather he focused attention on a set of quantised probability amplitudes. These amplitudes formed a non-commutative algebra. It was Max Born and Pascual Jordan in Göttingen who recognised this non-commutative algebra to be a matrix algebra.

Matrix mechanics was further developed in a three author paper by Heisenberg, Born and Jordan published in 1926. In May 1926 Heisenberg was appointed Lecturer in Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen where he worked with Niels Bohr. In 1927 Heisenberg was appointed to a chair at the University of Leipzig and he delivered his inaugural lecture on 1 February 1928. He was to hold this post until, in 1941, he was made director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin.

In 1932 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for:-

The creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has led, among other things, to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.

In the presentation speech H Pleijel said:-

Heisenberg ... viewed his problem, from the very beginning, from so broad an angle that it took care of systems of electrons, atoms, and molecules. According to Heisenberg one must start from such physical quantities as permit of direct observation, and the task consists of finding the laws which link these quantities together. The quantities first of all to be considered are the frequencies and intensities of the lines in the spectra of atoms and molecules. Heisenberg now considered the combination of all the oscillations of such a spectrum as one system, for the mathematical handling of which, he set out certain symbolical rules of calculation. It had formerly been determined already that certain kinds of motions within the atom must be viewed as independent from one another to a certain degree, in the same way that a specific difference is made in classical mechanics between parallel motion and rotational motion. It should be mentioned in this connection that in order to explain the properties of a spectrum it had been necessary to assume self-rotation of the positive nuclei and the electrons. These different kinds of motion for atoms and molecules produce different systems in Heisenberg's quantum mechanics. As the fundamental factor of Heisenberg's theory can be put forward the rule set out by him with reference to the relationship between the position coordinate and the velocity of an electron, by which rule Planck's constant is introduced into the quantum-mechanics calculations as a determining factor. ...

Heisenberg's quantum mechanics has been applied by himself and others to the study of the properties of the spectra of atoms and molecules, and has yielded results which agree with experimental research. It can be said that Heisenberg's quantum mechanics has made possible a systemization of spectra of atoms. It should also be mentioned that Heisenberg, when he applied his theory to molecules consisting of two similar atoms, found among other things that the hydrogen molecule must exist in two different forms which should appear in some given ratio to each other. This prediction of Heisenberg's was later also experimentally confirmed.

Heisenberg is perhaps best known for the Uncertainty Principle, discovered in 1927, which states that determining the position and momentum of a particle necessarily contains errors the product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant ℏ. These errors are negligible in general but become critical when studying the very small such as the atom. It was in 1927 that Heisenberg attended the Solvay Conference in Brussels. He wrote in 1969:-

To those of us who participated in the development of atomic theory, the five years following the Solvay Conference in Brussels in 1927 looked so wonderful that we often spoke of them as the golden age of atomic physics. The great obstacles that had occupied all our efforts in the preceding years had been cleared out of the way, the gate to an entirely new field, the quantum mechanics of the atomic shells stood wide open, and fresh fruits seemed ready for the picking.

Heisenberg published The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory in 1928. In 1929 he went on a lecture tour to the United States, Japan, and India. In the 1930s Heisenberg and Pauli used a quantised realisation of space in their lattice calculations. Heisenberg hoped this mathematical property would lead to a fundamental property of nature with a 'fundamental length' as one of the constants of nature.

In 1932 Heisenberg wrote a three part paper which describes the modern picture of the nucleus of an atom. He treated the structure of the various nuclear components discussing their binding energies and their stability. These papers opened the way for others to apply quantum theory to the atomic nucleus.

In 1935 the Nazis brought in a law whereby professors over 65 had to retire. Sommerfeld was 66 and he had already indicated that he wanted Heisenberg to succeed him. It was an appointment which Heisenberg badly wanted and in 1935 Sommerfeld again indicated that he wanted Heisenberg to fill his chair. However this was the period when the Nazis wanted "German mathematics" to replace "Jewish mathematics" and "German physics" to replace "Jewish physics". Relativity and quantum theory were classed as "Jewish" and as a consequence Heisenberg's appointment to Munich was blocked. Although he was in no way Jewish, Heisenberg was subjected to frequent attacks in the press describing him to be of "Jewish style".

In 1937 Heisenberg married Elisabeth Schumacher. He met her through his music which was important to him throughout his life. An excellent pianist, Heisenberg met Elisabeth Schumacher at a concert in which he was performing at the house of a friend. Elizabeth was only 22 when they met, Heisenberg was 35. They were married on 29 April 1937, less than three months after they first met. Heisenberg had been asked to take up the appointment at Munich in March but had asked for the date to be delayed until August because of his wedding. It was agreed that he should take up the appointment on 1 August. He and his wife arrived in Munich in July but his appointment was blocked by the Nazis.

During the Second World War Heisenberg headed the unsuccessful German nuclear weapons project Uranverein. He worked with Otto Hahn, one of the discoverers of nuclear fission, on the development of a nuclear reactor but failed to develop an effective program for nuclear weapons. Whether this was because of lack of resources or a lack of a desire to put nuclear weapons in the hands of the Nazis, it is unclear.

After the war he was arrested by Alsos, a secret mission that followed the advancing Allied forces in Europe to determine the progress of Germany's atomic bomb project. He was interned at Farm Hall in Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire, England, with other leading German scientists. However he returned to Germany in 1946 when he was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics at Göttingen. In the winter of 1955-1956 he gave the Gifford Lectures "On physics and philosophy" at the University of St Andrews. When the Max Planck Institute moved to Munich in 1958 Heisenberg continued as its director. He held this post until he resigned in 1970.

He was also interested in the philosophy of physics and wrote Physics and Philosophy (1962) and Physics and Beyond (1971).

Heisenberg received many honours for his remarkable contributions in addition to the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was a member of the academies of Göttingen, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Sweden, Romania, Norway, Spain, The Netherlands, the Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the Accademia dei Lincei, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the prizes he received was the Copernicus prize.