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A review by socraticgadfly
Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and The Bomb by David C. Cassidy
5.0
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.