Jochen Heisenberg (born 16 May 1939) is a

German physicist This is a list of Germans, German physicists. A * Ernst Abbe * Max Abraham * Gerhard Abstreiter * Michael Adelbulner * Martin Aeschlimann * Georg von Arco * Manfred von Ardenne * Peter Armbruster * Leo Arons * Markus Aspelmeyer * Felix Auerbac ...

specializing in

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

, and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

. He is the son of

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

-winning physicist

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...

, who was a co-founder of the

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

, and who, in particular, introduced the

uncertainty principle In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...

. He is the brother of

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

neurobiologist and

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processe ...

Martin Heisenberg Martin Heisenberg (born 7 August 1940) is a German neurobiologist and geneticist. Before his retirement in 2008, he held the professorial chair for genetics and neurobiology at the Bio Centre of the University of Würzburg. Since then, he contin ...

and the uncle of film director

Benjamin Heisenberg Benjamin Heisenberg (born 9 June 1974) is a German film director and screenwriter. He has directed sixteen films since 1995. His film '' Schläfer'' was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. His 2010 film, ...

Professional career

Heisenberg studied physics with

Willibald Jentschke Willibald Jentschke (Vienna, Austria-Hungary, 6 December 1911 – Göttingen, Germany, 11 March 2002) was an Austrian-German experimental nuclear physicist. During World War II, he made contributions to the German nuclear energy project. Afte ...

at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

and received his PhD in 1968. He then spent a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. From 1970 to 1978 he was a member of the faculty at the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. During his early career at Stanford and MIT, Heisenberg participated in numerous experimental studies of nuclear reactions. Using the Bates Linear Accelerator, he published numerous papers on electroexcitations. After his move to UNH, he began to study methods for theoretical prediction of such reactions. During the past ten years, he has been active in the development of computational models of large nuclei and has published several papers on these topics.

Historical perspectives

Heisenberg has spoken several times to provide an historical perspective on the activities of his father during and after World War II. He has been invited to comment on Michael Frayn's well-known play ''

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

'' and has published his perspectives on his father's activities. He maintained a
informational website
containing biographical information and reference material on

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heisenberg, Jochen 1939 births German nuclear physicists Jochen Living people University of New Hampshire faculty University of Hamburg alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni 20th-century German physicists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty