Special Seminar Please note time and location
In the summer of 1925, Heisenberg wrote the paper Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen, which laid the foundations of quantum mechanics. For a long time, this paper was considered to be inscrutable. This talk will show how one can make sense both of Heisenberg's formal manipulations and of his philosophical rhetoric, in particular by studying the letters he wrote in months leading up to his breakthrough. A particular emphasis will be placed on how different the theory that Heisenberg originally aimed to construct was from modern quantum mechanics