1915-1950

Werner Heisenburg Discovery: 1925** []
 * 1901-1976

Werner Heisenberg was born on December 5th, 1901, at Würzburg. He was the son of Dr. August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. Heisenburg went to Maximilian school at Munch until 1920 when he went to the University of Munich to study physics under Sommerfeld, Wien, Pringsheim, and Rosenthal. In 1923 he got his Ph. D. at the University of Munich and became the Assistant to Max Born at the University of Göttingen. Then, in 1924 he gained the //venia legendi// at that University. In 1924 through 1925, Heisenburg worked with Niels Bohr, at the University of Copenhagen. A year later he became the Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen under Niels Bohr. Then, in 1927, when he was only 26 years old, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leipzig. He was then asked, in 1929 to go on a lecture tour to the United States, Japan, and India. In 1925, Heisenburg discovered the theory of quantum mechanics and was published within this year. He was only 23 years old during this time. This theory and the applications that resulted of this discovery were allotropic forms of hydrogen. Then in 1932, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics! This theory was based mostly on what could be observed, which was the radiation emitted by the atom. “We cannot, he said, always assign to an electron a position in space at a given time, nor follow it in its orbit, so that we cannot assume that the planetary orbits postulated by Niels Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities, such as position, velocity, etc. should be represented, not by ordinary numbers, but by abstract mathematical structures called "matrices" and he formulated his new theory in terms of matrix equations.” Later Heisenberg published //Principle of Uncertainty,// which suggested that the “determination of the position and momentum of a mobile particle necessarily contains errors the product of which cannot be less than the quantum constant //h// and that, although these errors are negligible on the human scale, they cannot be ignored in studies of the atom.” Werner Heisenberg died on February 1, 1976.

Erwin Schrodinger 1887-1961 Discovery: 1926

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Erwin Schrödinger was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna. In 1898 he attended the Arkademisches school.And Between 1906 and 1910 Schrödinger studied in Vienna under Franz Exne and Hasenohrl. In 1911, Schrödinger became an assistant to Exner. In 1926 Shrodinger came up with the Shrodinger equation which is an equation that describes how the quantum state of a physical system changes in time. It is as important to quantum mechanics as Newton's Laws are to modern mechanics.

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James Chadwick 1891-1974 Discovery: 1932



[] James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England, on October 20th, 1891. In 1908 he attended Manchester University and graduated from the Honors School of Physics in 1911 and spent the next two years under Professor Rutherford in the Physical Laboratory in Manchester. This is where he worked on radioactivity problems to gain his M.Sc. degree in 1913. Within that year he was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and headed to Berlin to work in the Physikalisch Technische Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg under Professor H. Geiger. Once World War I ended, in 1919 Chadwick resume to work under Rutherford. In Cambridge, Chadwick joined Rutherford in accomplishing the transmutation of other light elements by bombardment with alpha particles, and in making studies of the properties and structure of atomic nuclei. In 1932, Chadwick made a fundamental discovery in the domain of nuclear science. He proved the existence of neutrons. He used a new tool to disintegrate any electric barrier and to penetrate and split any nuclei of every element. With this tool Chadwick was able to prepare the way towards the fission of uranium 235 and towards the creation of the atomic bomb. Due to this discovery he was awarded the Hughes Medal of Royal Society within the same year and the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935. In 1935, Chadwick remained at Cambridge when he was elected to the Lyon Jones Chair of Physics in the University of Liverpool. Then from 1943 50 1946 he worked in the United States as Head of the British Mission attached to the Manhattan Project for the development of the atomic bomb. But then in 1948, he headed home and retired from active physics and his position at Liverpool. But from 1957 to 1962 he was a part time member of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. James Chadwick died on July 24th, 1974

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