Talk:Werner Heisenberg

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Werner Heisenberg was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

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Date	Process	Result
August 23, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
March 6, 2009	Good article nominee	Not listed

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on February 23, 2013, February 23, 2014, and February 23, 2016.

Current status: Former good article nominee

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All who worked with Heisenberg mention he was a great mentor.

Heisenberg as Philosopher

Heisenberg published a number of works on philosophy and civilization in general and these need to be mentioned on the page

Physics and Philosophy, 1958

Spring-Summer 1925 cocaine use

In Rechenberg's biography,^[1] he quotes a 1925 letter Heisenberg wrote to his mother stating that, in lieu of an operation for his hay fever, he had been barely managing his symptoms in Gottingen for weeks leading up to his retreat to Heligoland (and his breakthrough in matrix mechanics) with the "Mittelchen" of "Aspirin, Kokain und ähnlichem Zeug". Do any editors out there know of other sources on Heisenberg's history of hay fever -- later episodes, or explanations for their absence -- or more broadly on the prevalence of hay fever (and/or its treatment with cocaine) in 1920s German universities? I may be biased by the (presumably more modern?) trope of the addict explaining his symptoms as "allergies", but there was a raging moral panic about "Kokainismus" in Germany at the time, and the "frenetic pace" of progress in that era is legendary. There has to be more to this, right? 2600:1702:6D1:28B0:A04E:4FCC:2F64:2926 (talk) 04:07, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few interesting connections here. Apologies for sloppy reference protocol, but the book Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohlen covers this material well if broadly. Heisenberg's cocaine use here was Weimar era; attitudes toward drugs were comparatively permissive. Amphetamines were more widely used, mass-marketed as Pervitin by the Temmler pharmaceutical concern. Military use of stimulants in the Second World War was much more widespread in Germany than in the United States, especially early in the war - perhaps to critical advantage in the invasion of France as an element of the Blitzkrieg. 24.17.224.128 (talk) 14:25, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mean to imply the United States fought Germany in France in 1940; what I wrote gives the opposite impression sry. 24.17.224.128 (talk) 14:27, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Different time frame, but Rechenberg reports (p. 661) that while he was visiting his Anthroposophist brother and sister-in-law in Wolfen in 1928, Heisenberg had moved onto taking injections (Einspritzungen und Einnahme) of ephedrine to control the hay fever, which was evidently so successful that he could spend hours in the woods almost daily during the month of June.

There are some mentions of hay fever in the intervening years, but nothing that seemed to slow him down, and certainly nothing necessitating an unplanned convalescence on a pollen-free island. But, still, if this affliction was a fiction, he kept it going in his private correspondence for at least several years.

Regarding broader use in Weimar-era academia, there is a letter in the CPAE (vol 12, doc 252) from Heinrich Zangger where he bemoans the ubiquity of cocaine as a performance-enhancing drug in academia and the performing arts in 1921, but it rather reads like a D.A.R.E. fable: lots of sensationalistic claims, nothing specific or verifiable -- and in any case only very indirectly related to Heisenberg.

Still hoping there's an expert out there with prurient interest in the topic, since the search engine results for the topic of Heisenberg + stimulants are clogged beyond repair. 2600:1702:6D1:28B0:F91D:87FD:7005:779D (talk) 05:24, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Rechenberg, Helmut (2010). Werner Heisenberg – Die Sprache der Atome. Leben und Wirken. Springer. p. 322. ISBN 978-3-540-69221-8.

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings - Werner Heisenberg mini biography

For your consideration to add to the article external links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SeddiqLGzk

A suggested correction on a claim in "Philosophy and worldview" section

The first sentence in the Philosophy and worldview section is "Heisenberg admired Eastern philosophy and saw parallels between it and quantum mechanics, describing himself as in "complete agreement" with the book The Tao of Physics."

The source for the claim that Heisenberg described himself as in "complete agreement" with the book The Tao of Physics is from the author of the book. He claims Heisenberg said that to him in a private conversation. As far as i can tell, that does not count as a reliable source. Vetohan (talk) 18:13, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Cold War Science

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Solusfield (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Solusfield (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Rechenberg, Helmut (2010). Werner Heisenberg – Die Sprache der Atome. Leben und Wirken. Springer. p. 322. ISBN 978-3-540-69221-8.

[1]