My Dear Li: Correspondence 1937-1946, by Werner Heisenberg and Elisabeth Heisenberg

What were Heisenberg's intentions for his work on a nuclear bomb for Hitler, asks Graham Farmelo

My Dear Li: Correspondence 1937-1946

By Werner Heisenberg and Elisabeth Heisenberg

Edited by Anna Maria Hirsch-Heisenberg

Translated by Irene Heisenberg

Yale University Press, 328pp, £25.00

ISBN 9780300196931

Published 22 November 2016

In 1925, when Werner Heisenberg was 23, he discovered the most revolutionary scientific theory of the 20th century, quantum mechanics. Yet his monumental contributions to science are now discussed less than what he may or may not have done to develop a nuclear weapon behind German lines during the Second World War. Was he trying to forestall any possibility of Hitler acquiring such a weapon, or would Heisenberg have helped to develop it if he had believed that its construction was feasible?

Heisenberg's story has come under especially intense scrutiny since the National Theatre first presented Michael Frayn's Copenhagen in 1998. The play dramatised the 1941 meeting in the Nazi-occupied...