Sixty years ago, Werner Heisenberg presented his theory of elementary particles, which a journalist hastily declared to be the "final theory." "Compared to modern string theory, which has been followed by many physicists worldwide for several decades, Heisenberg's early attempts appear rather ridiculous," says Alexander Blum of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Together with colleagues, since February 2018 he has been exploring the question of why important physicists like Einstein and Heisenberg were even working on theories "whose connection with empirical data was so poor that they could hardly provide any indication of the structure of the theory."

Article in Neues Deutschland by Martin Koch