# A Romantic Genius? The Experience of Knowledge that Shaped Werner Heisenberg's Scientific Persona

## TL;DR

This paper explores how the idea of genius in physics, as seen in Werner Heisenberg's work, is shaped by German Romanticism and cultural traditions.

## Contribution

The paper reveals how Heisenberg's portrayal as a genius is tied to the topos of the 'experience of knowledge' in his memoirs and German cultural ideals.

## Key findings

- Heisenberg's scientific persona is linked to the topos of the 'experience of knowledge' in his memoirs.
- The ideal of genius in Heisenberg's biographies is rooted in German Romanticism and natural philosophy.
- The aesthetic of knowledge production in Heisenberg's texts reflects cultural norms of the German Bildungsbürgertum.

## Abstract

In 1976, the year that Werner Heisenberg passed away, Armin Hermann published a short biography, titled Werner Heisenberg in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Since then, historians and biographers have offered their accounts on Heisenberg's life and his contributions to modern physics. Many of these biographies present Heisenberg as a genius. Upon closer inspection, the ideal of the genius relies on the topos of the experience of knowledge presented in Heisenberg's memoir from Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik. This article discusses the influence of this topos on his biographies. The article first contextualizes Heisenberg's popular science texts among his academic career and the cultural contexts of the German Bildungsbürgertum. Second, it focuses on the aesthetic repertoire of knowledge production as the experience of knowledge. By going beyond the semantic level, it is shown that the topos of the experience of nature in Heisenberg's memoir is central to his scientific persona. Ultimately, the idea of the genius stands in a longue durée of German Romanticism and natural philosophy is shown to shape the masculinities and scientific personae of the modern physicist.