Quantum Mechanics
As a philosopher, Hermann had a particular interest in the foundations of physics. In 1934, she went to Leipzig "for the express purpose of reconciling a neo-Kantian conception of causality with the new quantum mechanics". In Leipzig, many exchanges of thoughts took place among Hermann, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, and Werner Heisenberg. The contents of her work in this time, including a focus on a distinction of predictability and causality, are known from three of her own publications, and from later description of their discussions by von Weizsäcker, and the discussion of Hermann's work in chapter ten of Heisenberg's The Part and The Whole. From Denmark, she published her work The foundations of quantum mechanics in the philosophy of nature (German original title: Die naturphilosophischen Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik). This work has been referred to as "one of the earliest and best philosophical treatments of the new quantum mechanics". In this work, she concludes:
The theory of quantum mechanics forces us to drop the assumption of the absolute character of knowledge about nature, and to deal with the principle of causality independently of this assumption. Quantum mechanics has therefore not contradicted the law of causality at all, but has clarified it and has removed from it other principles which are not necessarily connected to it. —Grete Hermann, The foundations of quantum mechanics in the philosophy of natureIn 1935 Hermann published an argument demonstrating an apparent flaw in John von Neumann's 1932 proof which was widely claimed to show that a hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics was impossible. Hermann's result went unnoticed by the physics community until it was independently discovered and published by John Stewart Bell in 1966, and her earlier discovery was pointed out by Max Jammer in 1974. Some have posited that had her critique not remained nearly unknown for decades, the historical development of quantum mechanics may have been greatly affected; in particular, it has been speculated that a wider awareness of her work would have put in question the unequivocal acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, by providing a credibile basis for the further development of nonlocal hidden variable theories. In 2010, Jeffrey Bub published an argument that Bell (and, thus, also Hermann) had misconstrued von Neumann's proof, claiming that it does not attempt to prove the absolute impossibility of hidden variables, and that it is actually not flawed, after all.
In June 1936 Hermann was awarded the Richard Avenarius prize together with Eduard May and Th. Vogel.
Read more about this topic: Grete Hermann
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