"But that fall Heisenberg's worried father wrote to the famed Gottingen experimentalist James Franck, asking Franck to teach his boy some experimental physics. Franck did his best, but could not overcome Heisenberg's complete lack of interest and gave up the effort. If Heisenberg was going to survive at all in physics it would be purely as a theorist."

I had not heard this part; and might shed some additional light onto why the German atomic project was significantly behind. When the lead of your project is a famous physicist, but who isn't strongly grounded in experiment, but who nevertheless feels like he can't simply be a manager and must have input, you're likely going to have problems.

Maybe not though; be an interesting line of investigation though. Anyone know if this was a documented issue? I know that Heisenburg had seriously overestimated the amount of necessary fissile material needed for a bomb.

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/09/13/what-did-the-nazis...