Particle physics and cultural politics: Werner Heisenberg and the shaping of a role for the physicist in postwar West Germany

What could it mean to be a physicist in postwar West Germany? The events of 1945--the revelation at Hiroshima of the global significance of physics, conjoined with the devastation of the German nation and the demolition of its cultural pretensions--opened up a thoroughgoing contest over the place of the West German physicist. The present study examines the response to this challenge embodied in the post-World-War-II career of Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). One of the creators of quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s and a key figure in the wartime German nuclear project, Heisenberg came after the war to function as a leading figure in the West German scientific community. The role he helped to shape, manifested in an extensive public presence, was built in part on the prewar model of the scientist as bearer of culture, now adapted to the changed circumstances of postwar West Germany. The role did not simply mirror his own desires, however. Facing the interpretive and appropriative activity of his publics, Heisenberg often ended up taking on a symbolic function with which he was not always comfortable. Because of the interactive nature of its construction, his role thus tells us not only about Heisenberg's wishes, but also about the audiences before which he acted.; This study examines four aspects of Heisenberg's role. The first topic is Heisenberg's function as a cultural figure in postwar West Germany, focusing on his popular-philosophical addresses on the significance of modern physics. His activities as a political actor are then treated, including both his undertakings within the governmental structure and his public political stances. Growing out of the political discussion is a consideration of his status as a moral authority in West Germany, with particular attention to his postwar representations of the German nuclear project during the Second World War. The final chapter covers his work in physics and his attempts to define a philosophical role for the physicist in a changed postwar physics community.