In August 2004, Resonance featured Werner Heisenberg. The issue contained under Personal Reflections an article by his son, Jochen Heisenberg. After the issue of Resonance reached Professor Heisenberg in Durham, New Hampshire, he responded with a mail expressing his appreciation of the particular number. As a gesture of goodwill, he also attached a letter Werner Heisenberg had written to his parents from Darjeeling, India in October 1929.

Werner Heisenberg was immensely fond of the mountains. In October 1929, when he arrived in India from China, on the last lap of a trip around the world, he wanted to visit the Himalayas. After spending a couple of days in Calcutta he headed for the hills. The Himalayas surely made an indelible impression on Heisenberg, for in December 1929, he wrote in a letter to Dirac: “the best part was the trip to the biggest and best mountains, I had very good luck with the weather just the morning on Tiger Hill. In India itself it was very hot and rather rainy. Once our train went off the rails in the middle of the Jungle and people were afraid of tigers; the tigers probably were pretty afraid too.”

We reproduce below both the letters. Werner Heisenberg’s letter was in German. We are grateful to Irene Heisenberg for providing us with a free translation in English of this wonderful letter and to Jochen Heisenberg for kindly granting us permission to print it in Resonance. Werner Heisenberg’s original letter in German is included in the book ‘Liebe Eltern’, a collection of letters he wrote to his parents, edited by Anna-Maria Hirsch (né Heisenberg) and published in 2003.

D C V Mallik

 

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