December 9, 2010
Image: Werner Heisenberg (left) and Niels Bohr (A BROMANCE FOR THE AGES, BTW). Thank Heisenberg and his love of Beethoven for the Germans not developing the atom bomb first. “The failure of the Germans to develop nuclear weapons – a failure that surprised the Allies, who had invested in the Manhattan project out of the quite sensible fear that the Nazis would otherwise get there first – also reflected the hobbled state of communications among the scientists and engineers involved. Historians differ sharply over whether Heisenberg, whom Hitler appointed to head up the German A-bomb project, deliberately let the project languish, but whatever the motives, his approach was a far cry from the egalitarian ethos of the Manhattan project. Disinclined toward laboratory work, Heisenberg played Bach fugues on the chapel organ at Hechingen while his subordinates there conducted nuclear experiments with uranium, graphite and heavy water. (‘Had I never lived,’ he mused dreamily, ‘someone would probably have formulated the principle of indeterminacy; if Beethoven had never lived, no one would have written Opus 111.’” -from The Myth of American Exceptionism by Godfrey Hodgson

Image: Werner Heisenberg (left) and Niels Bohr (A BROMANCE FOR THE AGES, BTW). Thank Heisenberg and his love of Beethoven for the Germans not developing the atom bomb first.

“The failure of the Germans to develop nuclear weapons – a failure that surprised the Allies, who had invested in the Manhattan project out of the quite sensible fear that the Nazis would otherwise get there first – also reflected the hobbled state of communications among the scientists and engineers involved. Historians differ sharply over whether Heisenberg, whom Hitler appointed to head up the German A-bomb project, deliberately let the project languish, but whatever the motives, his approach was a far cry from the egalitarian ethos of the Manhattan project. Disinclined toward laboratory work, Heisenberg played Bach fugues on the chapel organ at Hechingen while his subordinates there conducted nuclear experiments with uranium, graphite and heavy water. (‘Had I never lived,’ he mused dreamily, ‘someone would probably have formulated the principle of indeterminacy; if Beethoven had never lived, no one would have written Opus 111.’”

-from The Myth of American Exceptionism by Godfrey Hodgson

8:26am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZzDhKy20Qvgj
(Notes: 29)
  
Filed under: Heisenberg Nazi Germany atom bomb Bohr 
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