Q 01/05

Heisenberg's 1932 Nobel was announced with the 1933 prize of Dirac and whom?

A) Niels Bohr

B) Enrico Fermi

C) Erwin Schrödinger

D) Louis de Broglie

Answer · why

C) Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger and Dirac shared the 1933 prize. The committee had judged no 1932 nominee worthy, held that year's prize over, and then gave it to H...

Q 02/05

Heisenberg's Nobel citation was 'for the creation of' what?

A) General relativity

B) Nuclear fission

C) Quantum mechanics

D) Wave mechanics

Answer · why

C) Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics earned the citation partly through a bold prediction: applied to molecules made of two like atoms, it said hydrogen must come in two...

Q 03/05

In which city was Heisenberg born, six years after Röntgen discovered X-rays there?

A) Nuremberg

B) Wurzburg

C) Dresden

D) Cologne

Answer · why

B) Wurzburg

Wurzburg was his home only until he was eight: he started primary school there, then his father won a university chair elsewhere and the family moved ...

Q 04/05

Heisenberg's father, once a schoolteacher of classical languages, became a university professor of what?

A) Latin literature

B) Roman and canon law

C) Sacred church music

D) Medieval and modern Greek

Answer · why

D) Medieval and modern Greek

Medieval and modern Greek seems to have rubbed off on the son: he is said to have objected that the Greek 'mesos' has no 'tr' in it when a new particl...

Q 05/05

Heisenberg said physics had 'definitely decided in favor of' which ancient thinker, since matter's smallest units are forms?

A) Democritus

B) Aristotle

C) Plato

D) Epicurus

Answer · why

C) Plato

Plato built matter from geometric shapes in his Timaeus. Heisenberg sided with him against the eternal atoms of Democritus, because subatomic matter c...