Farm Hall: Did Heisenberg Understand How Atomic Bombs Worked?

Werner Heisenberg, Nobel laureate and one of the founders of quantum mechanics, was also one of the most important scientists in the German research project into nuclear energy and nuclear weapons during World War II. A controversy has raged since the end of this war over Heisenberg’s understanding of how an atomic bomb would work, ranging from accusations of incompetence to claims of resistance against Hitler, with several other variants in between. This talk will explain what we do and do not know about this, including a suggestion as to what questions we should be asking.