Werner Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty is Announced in the Newspaper, May 2, 1929

The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California, Thursday, May 2, 1929, Page 2.

PRINCIPLE OF
UNCERTAINTY
LURES WORLD
OF THINKERS
------
Theory of Dr. Heisenberg
Ranks With Einstein's
Relativity
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VELOCITY, POSITION
MAJOR ELEMENTS
------
Young German Savant to
Receive Research Medal
for Achievement
------
By MORRIS WATSON
(Associated Press Leased Wire)
Chicago, May 2.--From the brain of a courtly German Professor, still under 30, there has come the "principle of uncertainty," ranking in scientific importance with Einstein's theory of relativity, and changing the general ideas of physical laws.

Dr. Werner Heisenberg on May 10 in New York will receive the medal of the Research Corporation of New York for outstanding scientific achievement during the year; it is his "principle of uncertainty" that has won for him this prize and the accompanying award of $2500.

Dr. Heisenberg shows by his theory that in measuring the electron a final boundary to human knowledge is met--and he asserts, paradoxical as it may seem, that without this boundary, i. e., the uncertain factor of either velocity or position, science would be faced with an unfathomable mystery in the atom.

The mystery, he explains, would be the contradiction in nature of light showing itself as projectiles of matter in one case and as waves in another; and the further contradiction of the same sort with electrons.

Dr. Heisenberg's study of atomic physics was begun in 1921 when he became interested in the quantum theory, which established light as matter.

P. W. Bridgeman, Hollis professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, Harvard university, said in a recent article: "The new theory of quantum mechanics has received implicit formulation in the principle of uncertainty of Heisenberg--a principle which, I believe, is fraught with the possibility of greater change in mental outlets than was ever packed into an equal number of words."