Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker: A Fifty-Year Friendship*
Abstract
This paper follows Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker during their fifty-year friendship from 1926, when they first met in Copenhagen, to Heisenberg's death in Munich in 1976. The relationship underwent profound changes during that period, as did physics, philosophy, and German society and politics, all of which exerted important influences on their lives, work, and interactions with each other. The nature of these developments and their impact are explored in this paper.
- Publication:
-
Physics in Perspective
- Pub Date:
- March 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s00016-014-0152-6
- Bibcode:
- 2015PhP....17...33C
- Keywords:
-
- Werner Heisenberg;
- Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker;
- the Weizsäcker family;
- cosmic rays;
- nuclear physics;
- philosophy of physics;
- physics in the Third Reich;
- the German uranium project during World War II;
- West German science policy