PENGUIN BOOKS
Physics and Philosophy
A winner of the Nobel Prize, Werner Heisenberg was born in
1901
in Wurzberg, Germany. He studiedphysics at the University of Munich and for his Ph.D. wrote a dissertation on turbulence in fluid streams.Interested in Niels Bohr
'
s account of the planetary atom, Heisenberg studied under Max Born at theUniversity of Gottingen and then, in
1924,
went to the Universitets Institut for Teoretisk Fysik in Copen-hagen, where he studied under Bohr. In
1925
he published a paper, `About the Quantum-theoreticalReinterpretation of Kinetic and Mechanical Relationships', in which he proposed a reinterpretation of thebasic concepts of mechanics, and this was followed by the publication of his indeterminacy principle in
1927.
In that year he became professor at the University of Leipzig and held the post until
1941,
when hewas appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. After the war he organized andbecame director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics at Gottingen, later moving withthe institute, in
1958,
to Munich. As a public figure, he actively promoted the peaceful use of atomic powerand, in
1957,
led other German scientists in opposing a move to equip the West German army with nuclearweapons. In
1970
he became Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute. Heisenberg was awarded theNobel Prize in
1932
and received numerous other honours. He died in
1976.
Paul Davies is an internationally acclaimed physicist, writer and broad-caster, now based in South Australia.He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London and has worked at the universities of London,Cambridge, Newcastle upon Tyne and Adelaide. He is currently Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, Macquarie University, Sydney, and he holds a Visiting Professorship atImperial College in London. His research interests are in the field of black holes, cosmology and quantumgravity. Professor Davies is the author of more than
twenty
books, including, in Penguin,
Superforce,
OtherWorlds, God and the New Physics, The Edge of Infinity, The Mind of God, The Cosmic Blueprint, Are We Alone?, The Fifth Miracle
and
About Time.
He is the recipient of a Glaxo Science Writers
'
Fellowship, an Advance Australia Award and a Eureka prizefor his contributions to Australian science, and in 1995
he won the prestigious Templeton Prize for his work on the deeper meaning of science.
The Mind of God
won the 1992
Eureka book prize and was alsoshortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize, as was
About Time
in 1996
.
Leave a Comment