Germany
Werner Heisenberg
said
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
— Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971), p. 70
Werner Heisenberg
German theoretical physicist and nobel prize winner (1901–1976)
- Fame74.6
- Momentum0.0
- Germany rank#84
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Updated 2026-06-21
He proved you can't measure both where something is and where it's going with perfect precision at once — a limit built into reality itself, not the instruments. The uncertainty principle made Werner Heisenberg the physicist who put ambiguity at the foundation of matter, then spent the war years leading Germany's atomic program.
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Born 5 December 1901, Heisenberg published his Umdeutung paper in 1925, a full reinterpretation of old quantum theory that he and Max Born and Pascual Jordan elaborated into matrix mechanics the same year. Two years later came the uncertainty principle; five years after that, the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics. He worked on turbulent flows, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, subatomic particles, introduced the idea of wave function collapse — and served as a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II. After the war he directed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, soon re…
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Sourced, dated quotes from Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
said
The problem of values is nothing but the problem of our acts, goals and morals.
— Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971), p. 214
Werner Heisenberg
said
Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language.
— "Introductory" in The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) as translated by Carl Eckhart and Frank C. Hoyt, p. 10
Werner Heisenberg
said
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
— "Critique of the Physical Concepts of the Corpuscular Theory" in The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory (1930) as translated by Carl
Werner Heisenberg
saidundated
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
— Initial statement of the Uncertainty principle in "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik" in
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