more:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-david-cassidy8-2009mar08,0,828033.storyEXCERPT:
References to his subject's radiance and good nature even in the darker days of his later life occur throughout the book. It is also an excellent piece of science writing; in a chapter titled "Determining Uncertainty," Cassidy gives the clearest explanation I have ever come across of the mind-boggling arcana of quantum physics.
Cassidy, a science historian and professor of natural science at Hofstra University, is the author of the well-received "Uncertainty" (1992), which is the parent of this new biography and is now out of print. Since its publication, the controversy over Heisenberg's role as the scientific leader of Germany's attempt to build an atomic bomb during World War II has been refueled by the release of letters and other documents pertaining to those efforts. As Cassidy frames the debate: "Was Heisenberg really intent on building a bomb for Hitler? If so, why did the German project make such little progress? If not, why not? Was Heisenberg actually intent on building the bomb but inept as a nuclear scientist and scientific head of the project, or were the war circumstances against rapid progress, or did he secretly sabotage the effort out of moral scruples? What does an overall view of his life and times reveal about his wartime behavior?"
Cassidy's "overall view" of Heisenberg's life and times brings us probably as close as we will ever come to answering those questions. It's an even-handed treatment that illuminates Heisenberg's all-too-human ambivalence, his nationalism, his ambition and his self-protective aptitude for denial. Cassidy points out that Heisenberg's first love was theoretical physics and close behind was his love for his Heimat, his Germany -- particularly the south, where he was born. He was blind -- perhaps deliberately so -- to the horrors perpetrated by the Reich, but he was not a Nazi, and he was no fan of the Nazis. During the war, Cassidy makes clear, Heisenberg wanted Germany to win and German physics to regain its former glory -- and the Nazis to somehow disappear.
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