Werner Heisenberg and his Terrible Ph.D. Defense

When the pioneer of quantum mechanics performed poorly in his doctorate oral exam

There’s no denying that Werner Heisenberg was one of the quintessential figures in Quantum Mechanics. It would not be wrong to say that he was one of the main pioneers of the theory of Quantum Mechanics. The perception of people on his life’s work isn’t all glory, though. He is an ambiguous figure.

Heisenberg was a regular visiting student at Munich. In 1923, he returned to Munich to finish his last semester and work on his doctoral thesis. He had Arnold Sommerfeld as his mentor. Sommerfeld was aware that Heisenberg had a reputation for solving any problems in Quantum Mechanics in a queer way. Sommerfeld thus assigned him a task that Heisenberg writes his dissertation in a traditional fashion encompassing hydrodynamics.

To accomplish his doctoral degree, the university had made it a compulsion to take laboratory courses in experimental physics offered by Prof. Willy Wien. Heisenberg’s primary interest was theoretical physics, so he struggled a lot during the experimental courses. Though Prof. Wien was dissatisfied with Heisenberg’s performance, he somehow finished his dissertation and submitted it to the Munich faculty on June 10th, 1923.

The topic of the dissertation Heisenberg received was an impossible mountain to climb. Sommerfeld had great expectations from Heisenberg, so he assigned him the topic ‘to determine…