Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and The Bomb

481 Pages·2009·2.6 MB·English

by  David C. Cassidy

BEYOND UNCERTAINTY
HEISENBERG, QUANTUM PHYSICS, AND THE BOMB

BEYOND UNCERTAINTY
HEISENBERG, QUANTUM PHYSICS, AND THE BOMB
D C. C
AVID ASSIDY
BELLEVUE LITERARY PRESS
NEW YORK
First published in the United States in 2009 by
Bellevue Literary Press
New York
FORINFORMATIONADDRESS:
Bellevue Literary Press
NYU School of Medicine
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OBV 640
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Copyright ©2009 byDavid C. Cassidy
All Rights Reserved.No partof this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
formorbyanymeans,electronic or mechanical,including photocopy,recording,or any
information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission
in writing from the publisher,except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages
in connection with a reviewwritten for inclusion in a magazine,newspaper,or broadcast.
This book was published with the generous support of
Bellevue LiteraryPress’s founding donor the Arnold Simon Family Trust,
the Bernard&Irene Schwartz Foundation and
the Lucius N.Littauer Foundation.
Libraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cassidy,David C.,1945-
Beyond uncertainty :Heisenberg,quantum physics,and the bomb /
by David C. Cassidy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Heisenberg,Werner,1901-1976. 2. Physicists—Germany—Biography.
3. Atomic bomb—Germany—History—20th century. I. Title.
QC16.W518C37 2008 530.092—dc22 [B] 2008039885
Book design and type formatting by Bernard Schleifer
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-934137-13-0
13579108642
CONTENTS
FOREWORD 7
CHAPTER1 The Early Years 11
CHAPTER2 The World at War 24
CHAPTER3 The Gymnasium Years 38
CHAPTER4 The Battle of Munich 48
CHAPTER5 Finding His Path 59
CHAPTER6 Sommerfeld’s Institute 76
CHAPTER7 Confronting the Quantum 90
CHAPTER8 Modeling Atoms 102
CHAPTER9 Channeling Rivers,Questioning Causality 117
CHAPTER10 Entering the Quantum Matrix 134
CHAPTER11 Awash in Matrices,Rescued by Waves 145
CHAPTER12 Determining Uncertainty 159
CHAPTER13 Reaching the Top 173
CHAPTER14 NewFrontiers 187
CHAPTER15 Into the Abyss 205
CHAPTER16 Social Atoms 218
CHAPTER17 Of Particles and Politics 232
CHAPTER18 Heir Apparent 244
CHAPTER19 The Lonely Years 257
CHAPTER20 AFaustian Bargain 268
CHAPTER21 One Who Could Not Leave 282
CHAPTER22 Warfare and Its Uses 296
CHAPTER23 ACopenhagen Visit 310
CHAPTER24 Ordering Reality 324
CHAPTER25 Professor in Berlin 333
CHAPTER26 Return to the Matrix 347
CHAPTER27 One Last Attempt 356
CHAPTER28 Explaining the Project:Farm Hall 369
CHAPTER29 Explaining the Project:The World 379
CHAPTER30 The Later Years 390
NOTES 411
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 457
INDEX 458

FOREWORD
BEYONDUNCERTAINTY:HEISENBERG,QUANTUMPHYSICS,ANDTHEBOMBDRAWSUPON,YET
in many ways transcends,the detailed account provided in its now-out-of-print pred-
ecessor,Uncertainty:The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg.
The predecessor first appeared in a limited edition in 1991. It was the product of
a dissertation and six years of research in Germany and other nations while I was a
fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Stuttgart and an assistant pro-
fessor in Regensburg, Germany. Several more years of research and writing in the
United States followed.
My goal in Uncertainty was to attain the most comprehensive biography of
Heisenbergpossible at the time,and to write it primarily for a highly educated,even schol-
arly,audience in both science and history. My models were not works of science history
but eminent literary biographies,such as those of Henry James (Leon Edel),James Joyce
(Richard Ellmann),and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Joseph Frank). Not only were these exhaus-
tive of the person and his work and times,but the life and work were closely integrated,
while both were understood as expressions of the culture and the times,as well as the acci-
dents of upbringing and personality.In this way the subject was seen at once as both a
highly creative individual and a member of a community in a specific place and time.
My hope in Uncertaintywas to enable readers of the late twentiethcentury to com-
prehend in a very fundamental way two of the most significant events of that century. The
first was the truly remarkable achievement of one of the premier scientific breakthroughs
of the century,the invention of quantum mechanics,followed by its further development
in the contemporarysciences of atoms,nuclei,particles,and solids. Quantum mechanics
and the sciences it has spawned havebrought us profoundlynewand remarkable under-
standings of the workings of nature and of our universe,and have transformed our daily
lives through such technologies as lasers,medical imaging,and the transistors at the base
of the computer and digital revolutions of today. Heisenberg was one member of the small
band of young people and their mentors who helped bring about the quantum revolution
during the 1920s and who helped push it forward during the decades to follow. More than
many other scientific advances,it was a community effort,extending beyond any one indi-
vidual. It was also centered atfirst primarily in Germany,but gradually extended through-
out and beyond the European continent. What did Heisenberg and his colleagues actually
do in creating this revolution? How did they do it? What larger forces made it possible?
Whathas been its impact? And howdoes the quantum journeycontinue today?
The second significant event of the twentieth century entailed the world’s first
encounter with advanced industrial totalitarian and genocidal dictatorships,the Nazi
8 | D A V I D C . C AS S I D Y
dictatorship in particular. How did this happen,and in Germany of all places,the lead-
ing cultural and industrial nation at that time? As a member of the non-Nazi upper
academic stratum of German society, the product of the best culture and education
that Germany could offer,Heisenberg provides a valuable insight into these questions
as he, and many others like him, encountered and eventually found accommodation
with the new regime. This raises a host of further questions. What events of their past
informed their response to the new regime, and why did their efforts at opposition
fail? How could Heisenberg remain in Germany and lend his prestige to that society
as one of its most prominent remaining scientists? How could he become a represen-
tative to occupied nations? How could he work on nuclear fission,and potentially on
an atomic bomb,for such a regime at war? As we know from the experiences of oth-
ers in similar situations,the answers are not as straightforward as they might appear.
Since the fall of the Third Reich, other problems have arisen, many associated
with cold-war fear,new weapons of warfare,the threat of terrorism,and the disloca-
tions brought about by globalization. My hope was and is that the lessons of this
encounter with a totalitarian,genocidal regime,as it came to power within a democ-
racy and consolidated its hold on the minds of its subjects,will heighten our sensibil-
ities and our resolve whenever similar tendencies and even regimes emerge today.
Alot has happened since Uncertaintyfirst appeared. The cold war had just ended,
newperspectives on the Nazi era were developing,and many documents that had been
classified or sequestered until then weresuddenly brought to light. Among these were cap-
tured German war documents in formerly Soviet archives. Some have argued that these
documents suggest the detonation of some sort of rudimentary nuclear device in Germany
atthe end of the war. In addition,many new documents relating to Nazi science policy
and antiscientific propaganda were made available in the former East Germany, and in
other nations. Also,Heisenberg’s family decided to publish many of his private letters to
familymembersthrough 1945 in a volume thatappeared in 2003 and on the Web. Such
letters make a comprehensive biography possible. During my research in Germany for
Uncertainty,Ihad seen onlysome of these new materials and only briefly.
In addition, in response to the popular and widely debated play by Michael
Frayn,Copenhagen,in 2002 the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen released a series
of previously withheld drafts of unsent letters from Bohr to Heisenberg, starting in
1957. These draft letters contained Bohr’s unflattering recollection of Heisenberg’s
visit with Bohr in German-occupied Copenhagen in 1941. During that meeting they
had discussed in some waythe prospect of a German atomic bomb.
Finally,a thirty-year-long effort to gain the release of the Farm Hall transcripts cul-
minated in their declassification and release from British and American archives in
February 1992. These were transcripts of secretly recorded conversations among ten of the
captured German nuclear scientists,including Heisenberg,while held in Allied captivity
atthe British estate of FarmHall. These transcripts offer new and important insights into
the scientists’fission work,their reasons for doing such work,the formation of a postwar
rationale for their work,and their plans for reestablishing postwar German science.
Beyond Uncertainty | 9
As nearly every batch of new documents became available after the publication of
Uncertainty,it set off a new round of debate within scholarly circles over such questions
as: Was Heisenberg really intent on building a bomb for Hitler? If so, why did the
German project make such little progress? If not, why not? Was Heisenberg actually
intent on building the bomb but inept as a nuclear scientist and scientific head of the proj-
ect,or were the war circumstances against rapid progress,or did he secretly sabotage the
effort out of moral scruples? What does an overall view of his life and times reveal about
his wartime behavior? These are questions that have been hotly,even emotionally,debat-
ed,and books have appeared that argue practically every side of this debate.
Finally,during the years since 1991,like many others I have become increasingly
concerned about the state of science education in the United States and elsewhere.
Science is not just a body of abstract,mathematical concepts invented and manipulated
by a small scientific elite,but a living part of human culture and experience,a product
ofthe unending human quest to understand our world and ourselves in relation to it,an
adventure that real people with real faults but also enormous determination and creativ-
ity have pursued in bringing us to where we are now,and will continue to do into the
future. Having firsthand experience with the limited appreciation of this quest and its
results at the college level,the elementary level (through my spouse),across academe,
and among the general public,I have become increasingly intent on bringing this won-
derful story to students, nonscience academics, and the general public. This has been
one motivation of myteaching of physics for nonscience students. It has found expres-
sion in a textbook for such students that I co-authored recently with Gerald Holton and
James Rutherford. In both venues we have attempted to view the science as the product
of the historical human quest to understand our world, and as a carefully developed
body of knowledge about the workings of our physical world.
All of these developments have now motivated the effort to reach “beyond uncer-
tainty”: to draw upon much of what is still valid in Uncertainty but to transcend it
where appropriate by incorporating new material, new perspectives, the lessons of
recent debates,and the insights that a new century,with new problems,now affords us.
Most importantly, my purpose is not to write “primarily for a highly educated,
even scholarly,audience in both science and history.”Such an audience has recourse
to the original work and to many of the recently available technical secondary sources,
references to some of which appear in the notes. Instead,my purpose here is to reach
beyond technically trained readers to a more general audience,especially one that has
little or no experience with quantum physics. Although I will discuss some of the
technical details of the physics,the purpose is to provide readers with a general appre-
ciation of the scientific problems that Heisenberg and his colleagues were trying to
solve, how they were trying to solve them, and the intensive, often frustrating work
this required even of these brilliant scientists. The same struggle continues today.
By the same token,Iam attempting hereto reach beyond scholars of German his-
tory and the bomb project to a more general audience whose members may be less
familiar with the details of the history or of that nature of the Nazi dictatorship and