This book is not for the lighthearted. It is an excellent account of the life of Werner Heisenberg and of the strong nationalism that blinsided him to the situation in Nazi Germany. His brilliance as a first rate physicist notwithstanding, the book shows by example what happens to science when it becomes totally subservient to a totalitarian regime and shows the problems of regional politics overtaken by a ruthless dictator in the funding of science. The fine line that Heisenberg walked did not diminished his scientific accomplishment but did not excuse him from his participation in a scientific enterprise that could very well have changed the course of history had it been successful, a Nazi A-bomb. The book is also a lesson on the results of elitism in science and it shows how the Nazis cheated themselves from an even greater role in nuclear physics because of their policies.

This book is superb as a biography and as history of Quantum Mechanics. As you read the pages you grow together with Heisenberg in his daily life and his achievements in Physics. You start to understand how the Quantum Mechanics was founded, how trial and error methods eventually developed into such a fundemental theory. The book is very voluminious but if you have patient in reading it on each line you live the life of a great man. I found it very interesting that even though he is one of the great founders of the Quantum Physics, he had more vacations than me and enjojed the life better than me. It shows that to be a good scientist you just have to carry your brain and think while wandering in the country side. Isn't it great. Apparently he did not even know Matrix Theory until Bohr showed him. Every page is full with history, science and suprise. Story is so vivid that you can even visualise the streets of Munich or other German towns as you read the book. Grat book,a lot of pages in fine print but worth of it.

A must for everyone. I would like to express my gratitude to his wife Janet for her many years of encourangement. If it was not for her would this great book have been created? Thank you Janet for the awesome book ( and i almost forgot to the author David Cassidy)