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Birth
Werner Heisenberg was born December 5,1901 in Wuzburg, Germany. -
First Paper on Matrix Mechanics
In 1925, Werner Heisenberg was attending school in Lower Saxony, Germany. This is where he discovered the first ideas of Quantum Mechanics, which he referred to as "Matrix Mechanics", along with his fellow physicists Max Born and Pascual Jordan. They were unable to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of atomic particles, which suggested that particles exist on a wavelength or a stream of "quanta", theorizing a "wave-particle duality". -
The Uncertainty Principle
By 1927, Heisenberg wrote a 14-page letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli, describing his discoveries as "The Uncertainty Principle". This principle says that the state of the system (atom) collapses to a common measurement if the position and momentum are measured simultaneously. He proved that it is impossible to precisely determine the position and energy of an electron inside an atom. Heisenberg said, "These uncertainties or imprecisions... are inherent in quantum mechanics." -
Nobel Prize for Quantum Mechanics
In 1932, Werner Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries in Quantum Mechanics. He was nominated by Albert Einstein in 1928 for his achievements. Physicists Erwin Schrodinger and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac directly applied Heisenberg's theory of quantum which led to the discovery of new forms of hydrogen and advancements in atomic theory. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933 due to their contributions to the field. -
Death
In 1976, Werner Heisenberg died at the age of 74 due to kidney cancer. His work contributed greatly to advancements in the field of physics, as well as philosophies of reality and how we understand matter, space, and time.