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List Price: $29.00 | | Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
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Editorial Review:
“Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb is an excellent work of scholarship and makes Heisenberg's work and life accessible to the general reader, while remaining important and interesting for the historian and scientist. Along with Wernher von Braun, Heisenberg's career under Hitler represents perhaps the best twentieth-century example of a faustian bargain with evil for the advancement of knowledge and science. Cassidy tells this story with nuance and passion.”—Mark Walker, author of Nazi Science: Myth, Truth, and the German Atomic Bomb
In 1992, David C. Cassidy’s groundbreaking biography of Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty, was published to resounding acclaim from scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the Playbill of the Broadway production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources and “the standard work in English.” Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atom Bomb) called it “the definitive biography of a great and tragic physicist,” and the Los Angeles Times praised it as “an important book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed Heisenberg’s actions.” No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, now out of print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of this brilliant and controversial figure of twentieth-century physics.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.
David C. Cassidy is the author of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century, Einstein and Our World, and Uncertainty. Professor of natural sciences at Hofstra University, he has served as associate editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein. He is the only author to have received both the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics and the Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society for the same book (Uncertainty).
Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and The Bomb Reviews:
Did Heisenberg "suppress information that might have led to a bomb?" 
2009-04-09 - Born into a family that prized academic achievement, Werner Heisenberg's was raised with clearly defined expectations. Indeed, when he was seventeen he was the teacher and leader of "Group Heisenberg" and by the age of twenty he was already an advanced student of physics, at twenty-six, Germany's youngest professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leipzig. Around the time his leadership abilities came to the fore, an unexpected revelation came to him. "All at once and with utter certainty, I found my link with the center."
A life of physics can be a lonely one, but at the age of thirty-two he began a new life and family with Elisabeth Schumacher, who later wrote that she resented him and his "Swabian idyll." During the war, with a growing family with six children, Werner had other pressing concerns. The "uranium club" had been looking at the prospect of a nuclear weapon along with more the more practical use of energy production. Many years later there was a sharp division of opinion as to his motives. Did Heisenberg want Germany to win the war or was he "able to suppress information that might have led to a bomb" and did he "further [sabotage] the project by slowing it down and keeping other less scrupulous scientists from constructing a weapon that would indeed have enabled Hitler to win the war." Just how close did they come?
This is a comprehensive and well-done biography, one in which the reader need not have any knowledge of quantum theory (you will not have to struggle with Schröedinger's cat as you did if you read the Quantum Enigma.) This is a definite page turner for all who are interested in not only Heisenberg, but also Bohr, Einstein, Planck, Diebner, Bagge, Debye and a host of others. My only problem with this book, albeit petty, was that the print was quite small. If you are really hooked, you will be able to find short sound bites of Heisenberg discussing the Uncertainty Principle on the internet. Wunderbare erfahrung!
Beyond Uncertainty
2009-03-09 - Allow me to mention this is an excellent book on an excellent subject by an excellent author. I have no qualms about using "excellent" so much in this case, for I read the author's prior work on the subject of Heisenberg, and a couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to make contact with the author, who is a true gentleman and was quite helpful. This is a follow-up to his book Uncertainty, an excellent biography David C. Cassidy wrote in 1991/1992(?), on the late Werner Heisenberg. I have not read the current book, but knowing his excellent work ethic from the previous book and knowing he is considered the leading expert on the life of Werner Heisenberg, this book should be excellent, as well. I plan to buy it. If you are interested in science or history, you should buy this book. I will try to return once I have read Beyond Uncertainty. For now, I want you to know in my opinion, based on the dedication I have seen in Cassidy for Heisenberg as a subject and as a human being, if you are hesitating to buy this book, DON'T. Buy the book. David C. Cassidy writes with the heart, historical knowledge, and scientific understanding we wish every writer like him would do. I hope I have helped someone out there decide to buy this book and I am sure you will enjoy it. Thank you for trusting my opinion.
