Uncertainty

Werner Heisenberg 1901 — 1976

A colleague of Nils Bohr, Heisenberg had believed that the world of quantum mechanics was deterministic, but came to recognise that reality is rather less precise.

Heisenberg concluded that it is impossible to know, for example, both the exact position of an electron and its exact velocity at the same time. The act of the observer measuring the position would have an unquantifiable effect on the velocity, and vice versa. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was born.

The Principle also points out that the observer is part of the system being observed, and that it is the observer as much as the observed who reveals reality.

This was a blow to ‘traditional’ science but laid the foundations for the developments of sub-atomic physics which followed on. Without these advances the fields of IT and telecoms - which keep us busy - would not be as we know them today.