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Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and The Bomb
“ Beyond Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb is an excellent work of scholarship and makes Heisenberg's work and life accessible to the general reader, while remaining important and interesting for the historian and scientist. Along with Wernher von Braun, Heisenberg's career under Hitler represents perhaps the best twentieth-century example of a faustian bargain with evil for the advancement of knowledge and science. Cassidy tells this story with nuance and passion.”—Mark Walker, author of Nazi Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb In 1992, David C. Cassidy’s groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty , was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the Playbill of the Broadway production of Copenhagen , referred to it as one of his main sources and “the standard work in English.” Richard Rhodes ( The Making of the Atom Bomb ) called it “the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist,” and the Los Angeles Times praised it as “an important book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg’s actions.” No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty , now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty , Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime. David C. Cassidy is the author of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century , Einstein and Our World , and Uncertainty . Professor of natural sciences at Hofstra University, he has served as associate editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein . He is the only author to have received both the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics and the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society for the same book ( Uncertainty ).
480 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2009
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About the author
David C. Cassidy
40 books8 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 3, 2016
David Cassidy, the author of the original definitive biography, updated it seven years ago when new Soviet and DDR materials became declassified. He believes Heisenberg never calculated the "diffusion equation" that would have revealed how much U-235 Germany would have needed to separate from U-238 in order to build a Uranium bomb (a la Hiroshima). But Heisenberg certainly knew reactors produced Plutonium; that Plutonium easily could be separated by chemical means; and he spent much of 1944 and early '45 -- when Germany plainly was beaten -- frantically trying to complete a reactor that would produce a chain reaction of neutrons and Plutonium (not knowing Fermi succeeded years before in the University of Chicago squash courts).
What was Heisenberg doing, bicycling all over a cratered Germany at night to gather remaining uranium scraps if not trying to make Plutonium? Was he doing it out of scientific curiosity (as he claimed) or to create a war-winning "super-weapon" (as his harshest critics charged)?
Post war, Heisenberg--conceiver of the uncertainty principle; winner of the Physics Nobel for "the invention of quantum mechanics"--himself was caught between two inconsistent states. He "was concerned that [his] research effort[s] should be seen not only as morally untainted but also highly competent, despite its poor showing." This post-hoc rationalization both is internally contradictory and a bridge too far: taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean that only German atomic physicists, working for the Nazi regime, bore no moral responsibility for creation of the bomb.
And what of Heisenberg's famous 1941 visit to Neils Bohr in Copenhagen? Heisenberg later portrayed it as an attempt to achieve mutually inverted non-destruction: if you Allies don't build one and drop it on Germany, we German scientists won't pursue it. Yet, though he lived until 1976, Heisenberg never explained why he would deliver such a message in Nazi-occupied Denmark to a man then not working for the Allies. Thus, it remains a mystery, despite the interest generated by Michael Frayn's brilliant 2000 play "Copenhagen," which caused the Bohr family to release a pile of nasty, but never sent, letters from Bohr to Heisenberg remonstrating about the latter's attempt to cajole a sympathetic gloss on the meeting at their next meeting, after the war, in 1947.
But what would you do? Assuming you love your country, are at the top of the scientific and cultural pecking order, and actual dissent will result in the lifespan of Munich's "White Rose" protesters--about four days. Heisenberg's great failure was he believed that compromising with Hitler would allow him to survive the war and keep the flame of German science alive in the next government. As a result, he put physics over people and principles. He should have left: Hitler's Germany was not his Germany.
We who know what Nazis do -- Commies too -- cannot rely on such nonsense. Whether Heisenberg lied or deceived himself, his example prevents anyone from using that same excuse today.
What was Heisenberg doing, bicycling all over a cratered Germany at night to gather remaining uranium scraps if not trying to make Plutonium? Was he doing it out of scientific curiosity (as he claimed) or to create a war-winning "super-weapon" (as his harshest critics charged)?
Post war, Heisenberg--conceiver of the uncertainty principle; winner of the Physics Nobel for "the invention of quantum mechanics"--himself was caught between two inconsistent states. He "was concerned that [his] research effort[s] should be seen not only as morally untainted but also highly competent, despite its poor showing." This post-hoc rationalization both is internally contradictory and a bridge too far: taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean that only German atomic physicists, working for the Nazi regime, bore no moral responsibility for creation of the bomb.
And what of Heisenberg's famous 1941 visit to Neils Bohr in Copenhagen? Heisenberg later portrayed it as an attempt to achieve mutually inverted non-destruction: if you Allies don't build one and drop it on Germany, we German scientists won't pursue it. Yet, though he lived until 1976, Heisenberg never explained why he would deliver such a message in Nazi-occupied Denmark to a man then not working for the Allies. Thus, it remains a mystery, despite the interest generated by Michael Frayn's brilliant 2000 play "Copenhagen," which caused the Bohr family to release a pile of nasty, but never sent, letters from Bohr to Heisenberg remonstrating about the latter's attempt to cajole a sympathetic gloss on the meeting at their next meeting, after the war, in 1947.
But what would you do? Assuming you love your country, are at the top of the scientific and cultural pecking order, and actual dissent will result in the lifespan of Munich's "White Rose" protesters--about four days. Heisenberg's great failure was he believed that compromising with Hitler would allow him to survive the war and keep the flame of German science alive in the next government. As a result, he put physics over people and principles. He should have left: Hitler's Germany was not his Germany.
We who know what Nazis do -- Commies too -- cannot rely on such nonsense. Whether Heisenberg lied or deceived himself, his example prevents anyone from using that same excuse today.
July 26, 2023
This is a comprehensive biography of Werner Heisenberg.
This book follows the life of Werner Heisenberg from start to finish, describing his achievements, how was he influenced by the experiences of his early years, and how the political situations led him to make several compromises.
Heisenberg was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and the quantum mechanics and nuclear model chapters of this book does a good job explaining Heisenberg's achievements, putting it in context with other people's work during that period.
Heisenberg saw the rise of Nazism in Germany and the compromises he had to make is described in this book. Heisenberg never left Germany even during the World War II years.
Heisenberg was the scientific head of the Germany's nuclear research program during the World War II. It is still an open question why they weren't able to make an atomic weapon during the war. The conflicting opinions on this subject are well described in this book.
The one problem I see with the writing is it was very verbose. The author described too many details which had no relevance to the narrative. This was especially the problem in the first 1/4th of the book. I am glad I endured through it because it became less of a problem later in the book.
This book follows the life of Werner Heisenberg from start to finish, describing his achievements, how was he influenced by the experiences of his early years, and how the political situations led him to make several compromises.
Heisenberg was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and the quantum mechanics and nuclear model chapters of this book does a good job explaining Heisenberg's achievements, putting it in context with other people's work during that period.
Heisenberg saw the rise of Nazism in Germany and the compromises he had to make is described in this book. Heisenberg never left Germany even during the World War II years.
Heisenberg was the scientific head of the Germany's nuclear research program during the World War II. It is still an open question why they weren't able to make an atomic weapon during the war. The conflicting opinions on this subject are well described in this book.
The one problem I see with the writing is it was very verbose. The author described too many details which had no relevance to the narrative. This was especially the problem in the first 1/4th of the book. I am glad I endured through it because it became less of a problem later in the book.
October 21, 2019
Life and Times of Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg was one of the half-dozen or so men (and one woman) to whom the development of quantum mechanics can be attributed. This volume treats both his life and work as a theoretical physicist and a manager and developer of science policy. His relations with the Nazi regime are well covered here, with particular emphasis on his role in the development of Nazi nuclear research.
As always with a non-technical treatment, verbal descriptions of many scientific phenomena lack the precision of a mathematical approach, but still well done.
Werner Heisenberg was one of the half-dozen or so men (and one woman) to whom the development of quantum mechanics can be attributed. This volume treats both his life and work as a theoretical physicist and a manager and developer of science policy. His relations with the Nazi regime are well covered here, with particular emphasis on his role in the development of Nazi nuclear research.
As always with a non-technical treatment, verbal descriptions of many scientific phenomena lack the precision of a mathematical approach, but still well done.
October 28, 2024
Very good overview of the man, warts and all. I had always admired his genius and his fearless pursuit of scientific truth, wherever it would take him. I learned however of the cringier side of Heisenberg during the 12 years that he willingly went along with the Nazis, despite the horrors that he would witness in his daily life. Not matter what the justification that he would propose for his decision to remain not just in Germany during the Nazi era, it rings hollow, like the words of a self-centred hypocrite who viewed himself and his work more important than standing up to the injustice that infected the nation.
February 18, 2018
At times I found this book very interesting and at other times it was achingly dull. I was interested in the author's descriptions of Heisenberg's theoretical work, his relationship with Neils Bohr, the work he did during WWII, and his investigations into a theoretical minimum length and the S matrix. I found all of the jostling for the prestige of German physics, before, during and after the war, to be very boring. The author successfully conveyed the stellar brilliance of Werner Heisenberg, while not hiding his faults, which included a poor relationship with his children.
April 3, 2024
Biography of Werner Heisenberg, the famous German physicist, and one of the Founding Fathers of quantum mechanics, in the 1920s.
The coming-of-age and science stories are fascinating, but also a lot of discussion of how Heisenberg dealt with the Nazi regime. He only narrowly escaped... problems for his somewhat "non-Aryan" science (helped by his mother being friends with Himmler's mother!) but never really took much distance, wanted to somewhat appease the regime, even representing it abroad.
The author is always nuanced, but doesn't whitewash things either.
Anyway, fascinating read.
The coming-of-age and science stories are fascinating, but also a lot of discussion of how Heisenberg dealt with the Nazi regime. He only narrowly escaped... problems for his somewhat "non-Aryan" science (helped by his mother being friends with Himmler's mother!) but never really took much distance, wanted to somewhat appease the regime, even representing it abroad.
The author is always nuanced, but doesn't whitewash things either.
Anyway, fascinating read.
April 9, 2020
Do not quit reading
This started as one of the most boring books I ever read. I slogged through the first ten percent on my Amazon Kindle, and decided to continue reading. After that point, the combination of personal, scientific and political accounts became ever more enthralling and entrancing. I chose the book initially to try to get more non-technical understanding of quantum physics, but got caught up in the recounting of some of the politics of Hitler's Germany.
This started as one of the most boring books I ever read. I slogged through the first ten percent on my Amazon Kindle, and decided to continue reading. After that point, the combination of personal, scientific and political accounts became ever more enthralling and entrancing. I chose the book initially to try to get more non-technical understanding of quantum physics, but got caught up in the recounting of some of the politics of Hitler's Germany.
April 19, 2024
Smart guy, HUGE ego, nationalistic to a fault. Had a strategy of self preservation during a horrific time in history and got through it when others were not so lucky. I was surprised that his obvious shortcomings as an experimentalist were not brought up as a reason for his not going forward with nuclear weapons research. He claimed it would have been impossible by his estimations of materials/time/manpower needed but maybe it was all just to much for HIM. 😆
December 17, 2019
You better like nuclear science to read this book. I worked at a nuclear power station so I found parts of the book interesting. But the author would be reading about events in the 1930's then switched back to the 20's. The German bomb program was very interesting. I had trouble reading this book.
August 22, 2023
Muy buena biografía, solo que al principio, el libro se vuelve muy lento y con muchísima información que no es relevante, como las calles y los números de los edificios relacionados con la vida de Heisenberg. Al llegar al tiempo en el que comienza la carrera por la bomba atómica, el libro avanza muy rápido y cuando menos espera uno, el libro ha terminado.
May 14, 2024
Dense and a bit of a slog at times, Beyond Uncertanty deals with the complexities of life and the unsavory political calculations undertaken by one of physics most celebrated minds.
July 5, 2025
Brilliant physicist with a complicated life. Could've done with more physics in my opinion
November 16, 2012
I appreciated the parts about Heisenberg's youth and student days, as they helped provide some of the psychological framing for later chapters. I also appreciated some discussion of German academic politics.
I knew all the basics about Heisenberg and matrix mechanics, the original formulation of the uncertainty principle, and the later energy x time rephrasing of it in response to Einstein.
But, the "Beyond" of the title was what I was really into this book for.
I'd read thumbnail sketches of Heisenberg's war work, his 1942 meeting with Bohr and more. But nothing in detail. Nor had I read anything about his debriefings in Britain's famous Farm Hall.
Well, Cassidy provides as much of the details as it seems we have today.
Heisenberg wasn't deliberately slow-footing the German program. He was, despite being a theoretician, incompetent in some ways, such as not recognizing graphite would work as a moderator, and apparently (though information is conflicting) overestimating how much U-235 was needed for a uranium bomb, though he did recognize the potential of transmuted Pu-239.
That said, the idea that he in particular, or as he claimed to the British at the end of time at Farm Hall, German physicists in general, weren't trying to make a bomb? Laughable; Cassidy shows this.
And, his visit to Bohr? Even if not a clumsy attempt at fishing for what Bohr knew about Allied research, it was part of a Nazi cultural mission to Denmark, and therefore grossly insulting at the least. Heisenberg's postwar memories of this, Cassidy shows, are also "iffy" at best.
Cassidy does a great job of showing a brilliant researcher with more than just feet of psychological clay, far more. This is a great read for Heisenberg's involvement with trying to create a German bomb, and with this being the culmination of a psychological campaign for "recognition" by Nazi authorities and more.
I knew all the basics about Heisenberg and matrix mechanics, the original formulation of the uncertainty principle, and the later energy x time rephrasing of it in response to Einstein.
But, the "Beyond" of the title was what I was really into this book for.
I'd read thumbnail sketches of Heisenberg's war work, his 1942 meeting with Bohr and more. But nothing in detail. Nor had I read anything about his debriefings in Britain's famous Farm Hall.
Well, Cassidy provides as much of the details as it seems we have today.
Heisenberg wasn't deliberately slow-footing the German program. He was, despite being a theoretician, incompetent in some ways, such as not recognizing graphite would work as a moderator, and apparently (though information is conflicting) overestimating how much U-235 was needed for a uranium bomb, though he did recognize the potential of transmuted Pu-239.
That said, the idea that he in particular, or as he claimed to the British at the end of time at Farm Hall, German physicists in general, weren't trying to make a bomb? Laughable; Cassidy shows this.
And, his visit to Bohr? Even if not a clumsy attempt at fishing for what Bohr knew about Allied research, it was part of a Nazi cultural mission to Denmark, and therefore grossly insulting at the least. Heisenberg's postwar memories of this, Cassidy shows, are also "iffy" at best.
Cassidy does a great job of showing a brilliant researcher with more than just feet of psychological clay, far more. This is a great read for Heisenberg's involvement with trying to create a German bomb, and with this being the culmination of a psychological campaign for "recognition" by Nazi authorities and more.
December 25, 2016
I have read a lot about Heisenberg over the years, but this is the first dedicated biography. Cassidy's emphasis is more on the man than on the science. His portrait of Heisenberg is thoughtful and sympathetic. Above all Heisenberg comes across as someone who loved his country and his chosen profession deeply. Although flawed, like any of us, he was never a Nazi or a supporter of Hitler, and one could argue that the decisions and choices he made during WWII were partly forced on him by circumstances. Despite some compromises, Heisenberg was usually prepared to stand up for what he believed in. Much of the book is a fascinating observation of what it was like to live and work in Germany under Hitler and the Nazis - the politics, the bureacracy, and the need to be careful about what you said, wrote, or did.
August 8, 2016
much, much better than Cassidy's earlier Heisenberg book. This had lots of new information, great perspectives and insights. Interesting physics but really good look at the entanglement of politics and science.
April 12, 2013
Worthy.
July 30, 2016
The only thing I don't like about the book is that it is not very well balanced; I would have liked it to go more into Heisenberg's personal life.
April 10, 2017
A very careful and balanced scientific biography. Impressive in its historical research and balance. A wonderful attempt to capture the nuances of a brilliant but controversial scientist...probably the most influential theoretical physicist of the 20th C...after Einstein of course. The book is incredibly interesting both for its science and its social history of Nazi era Germany and the intersection of the two. A great record of an almost miraculous life. My only quibble; not enough about his later life in the 50s and 60s , particularly his family life.
June 17, 2017
What a patriotic genius
This has been an amazing biography. It is a good idea that the author decided to publish this updated version of rhe original biography. The degree of details and the way the author introduces the background made the book more engaging and entertaining.
This has been an amazing biography. It is a good idea that the author decided to publish this updated version of rhe original biography. The degree of details and the way the author introduces the background made the book more engaging and entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews