The son of a humanities professor at the University of Munich, Heisenberg was born in Duisberg, Germany on December 5, 1901. Following his early education at the Maximillian Gymnasium, in 1920 Heisenberg entered the University of Munich, where he studied under the great physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. Heisenberg demonstrated an unusual talent for theoretical physics and earned his doctorate in only three years. After graduation, he was invited to work as an assistant to Max Born at the University of Göttingen. Nine years later Heisenberg worked under Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1927 he returned to Germany as professor of physics at the University of Leipzig.

Heisenberg's primary research interests reflected those of his mentors--Sommerfeld, Born, and Bohr. In 1913, Bohr had proposed a new model for the atom based on quantum theory. Although in most instances the model worked reasonably well for the hydrogen atom, it failed...