Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Laureate 1932

I met Werner Heisenberg when he presented a short course on quantum field theory at the Varenna Summer School, 1958, in Villa Monastero, Lake Como. He won the Nobel prize in 1932. I have never understood how Heisenberg managed to reach his insight into quantum mechanics; this is in contrast to wave-mechanics, the logic of which, starting with de Broglie and ending with Schrodinger, is easy to understand and to teach. But Heisenberg came before Schrodinger!

Although his lectures at Varenna did not solve any of the problems of the divergences of quantum field theory, he came over very well as a sincere physicist, attempting a realistic model of the dynamics of elementary particles including the isotopic spin symmetry.