Burkhard Heim

Burkard Heim (February 9 1925–January 14 2001) was a German theoretical physicist. He devoted a large portion of his life to the pursuit of his unified field theory. The inspiration for Heim theory is from general relativity and quantum mechanics, both of which were considered fundamental to a physical understanding of the universe. One of his childhood ambitions was to develop a method of space travel, which contributed to his motivation to find such a theory.

Legacy

The full of his work covers about 2000 pages, and was written almost entirely in isolation from university life. The primary works which describe Heim's theory and its extensions span 4 volumes totalling around 1000 pages.

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The lengthy nature of the work led many publishing houses to refuse printing, often citing economic concerns regarding profitability. His notation made representation of his work in technical journals substantially difficult to reproduce, and exacerbated the difficulty in getting his work published. All of this has made his work difficult to assess by the scientific community objectively even today.

Related Topics:
Economic - Profitability - Notation - Scientific community

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His theory also left an impression on the new age community, particularly those groups interested in UFOs, "anomalous atmospheric phenomena", antigravity, "mind over matter", and material consciousness. Although a subset of these topics are studied from an academic perspective, the tendency of these groups to popularize and exaggerate Heim's claims have served as a double-edged sword for Heim today—it has spread the awareness of Heim, but at the expense of his academic credibility in the eyes of modern theoretical physicists.

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Heim was indeed interested in such "mystic" things, but was mindful to separate his objective work from his subjective work. Nevertheless, his publications reflect a cross influence between these two topics and a tendency to unify the two. Regardless, the mathematical work is substantial and operates under standard scientific logic. Hence, it is necessary to interpret Heim's work carefully, and in the context in which it was written. What remains fundamental, however, is that the serious work of Heim will require a substantial amount of rigorous critique and scrutiny before it will be accepted by the scientific community as a mainstream theory. His mass formula, once perhaps the most celebrated result of his theory among his supporters, has largely been replaced by the propulsion implications as the best known of the theory's physics predictions.

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