Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and philosopher who discovered a way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices in 1925. He also published his uncertainty principle in 1927, which states that there is a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical quantities, such as the position and momentum of an electron, can be simultaneously measured.
Heisenberg’s atomic model was based on the idea that the electrons in an atom do not have definite orbits, but rather exist in regions of space called orbitals, where the probability of finding them is high. Heisenberg argued that the exact position and velocity of an electron cannot be known at the same time, because any attempt to measure them would disturb the system and change the outcome. Therefore, he used mathematical matrices to represent the observable properties of the electrons, such as their energy and angular momentum, without specifying their trajectories.
Heisenberg’s atomic model was a major breakthrough in the development of quantum mechanics, as it provided a new way of describing the behavior of subatomic particles that was consistent with the experimental results of atomic spectroscopy. Heisenberg’s matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was later reformulated by Erwin Schrödinger in terms of wave functions, which are solutions of a differential equation that describe the probability distribution of the electrons in an atom. Both formulations are mathematically equivalent and can be used to calculate the same physical quantities.
Heisenberg’s atomic model also had important implications for the philosophy of science, as it challenged the classical notion of causality and determinism. Heisenberg proposed that the physical reality of an atomic system is not independent of the observer, but rather depends on the choice of measurement and the interaction between the system and the measuring