ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Work of a Great Physicist? Heisenberg’s Erasure of Women’s Work in his History of Quantum Mechanics

• In Event: Recovering the Histories of Women in Quantum Physics 1

English Abstract

In 1969, Werner Heisenberg, the central figure of the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s published his memoire entitled The Parts and the Whole: Conversation in the Surrounding of Particle Physics. The book recounts Heisenberg’s role in the history of quantum physics up to the 1960s. Structured as conversations between the protagonist, Heisenberg and his colleagues and friends, the book suggests that only men were involved in this development. The analytical category of ‘scientific masculinity’ provides a unique perspective to investigate the simultaneous construction of Heisenberg as a ‘Romantic Genius’ and erasure of women’s work in the history of quantum mechanics.

Starting from a close examination of the memoir's premise that science is produced in conversations, I argue that Heisenberg’s misconstruction of women’s work reinforces the idea of physics as a place for and by men. To illustrate it, I discuss three examples of how the book [a] omits Lise Meitner’s achievements, [b] presents Grete Hermann’s contributions to the philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics, and [c] depicts Heisenberg’s wife, Elisabeth (née Schumacher), and of Niels Bohr’s wife, Margarethe (née Nørlund). I conclude the analysis with a discussion of Heisenberg’s recreation of the bürgerliche distinction between the public and the private, where the public workspace is reserved for men while the work women remains secondary and restricted to the (invisible) household. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates how Heisenberg’s erasure of women’s work accentuates the androcentric perspective of the history of quantum mechanics we are so accustomed to.

Author

• Elena Elena Schaa, University of Basel