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Chemical & Engineering News

LETTERS

Published Jan 8, 2001• 0 citations
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Abstract

David Bohm A recent issue contained a review of the novel "Properties of Light," by Rebecca Goldstein (C&EN, Nov. 6, 2000, page 46). It is described as being "loosely" based on the life of physicist David Bohm. The novel contains an afterword in which it is said that Bohm (then at Princeton) published in 1952 a formulation of quantum mechanics that was outside the mainstream of modern physics at the time and was dismissed by the scientific community. As a consequence, the review states, "That rejection, in essence, ended Bohm's career. He spent most of the rest of his life in embittered obscurity." This description of David Bohm's career is a farrago of nonsense. Bohm, working from Princeton, published a standard, very useful text called "Quantum Theory" in 1951. He accepted an invitation to visit a South American university shortly afterward, but found himself barred from returning to the U.S. ...

DOI
10.1021/cen-v079n002.p002

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David Bohm A recent issue contained a review of the novel "Properties of Light," by Rebecca Goldstein (C&EN, Nov. 6, 2000, page 46). It is described as being "loosely" based on the life of physicist David Bohm. The novel contains an afterword in which it is said that Bohm (then at Princeton) published in 1952 a formulation of quantum mechanics that was outside the mainstream of modern physics at the time and was dismissed by the scientific community. As a consequence, the review states, "That rejection, in essence, ended Bohm's career. He spent most of the rest of his life in embittered obscurity." This description of David Bohm's career is a farrago of nonsense. Bohm, working from Princeton, published a standard, very useful text called "Quantum Theory" in 1951. He accepted an invitation to visit a South American university shortly afterward, but found himself barred from returning to the U.S. ...
In the early 1950s the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) lived through a critical moment, when he produced a new interpretation for quantum mechanics and had to flee from the United States as McCarthyism's victim.At that time he faced vicissitudes related to the Cold War and his move from Princeton to São Paulo.This article focuses on the reception among physicists of his papers on the causal interpretation, which were poorly received at the time.I describe his Brazilian exile and analyze the culture of physics surrounding the foundations of quantum mechanics.This article takes into account the strength of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics among physicists, the way in which issues concerning the foundations of quantum mechanics were present in the training of physicists, the low status of these issues on research agendas, and the kind of results Bohm and collaborators were able to achieve.It also compares the reception of Bohm's ideas with that of Hugh Everett's interpretation.This article argues that the obstacles growing from the cultural context of physics at that time had a more significant influence in the reception of Bohm's ideas than did the vicissitudes related to the McCarthyist climate.WHEN DAVID BOHM and Richard Feynman concluded their physics dissertations, during the first half of the 1940s, they were among the most promising students of their generation in American physics.After the war, however, their fates were very different.Feynman reached the zenith of his scientific career in the United States.In 1951, Bohm was forced to leave the United States forever.Before that, he got a position in Princeton, carried out his research on plasma theory, and published a praised graduate
David Joseph Bohm was born on December 20, 1917, and obtained the doctorate in physics in 1943 from the University of California, Berkeley, under the guidance of R. Oppenheimer[1]. From 1946 he began teaching at Princeton University. He has published a series of articles on various physics topics, especially on plasma oscillations. He then wrote the book Quantum Theory considered to date a classic in the subject. In 1950 he was indicted and imprisoned for political reasons, and although acquitted in May 1951, Princeton University refused to renew his contract and he was exiled to Brazil. In 1954, David Bohm elaborated the work entitled A proposal for interpretation of quantum theory in terms of quothidden variablesquot(3), which sought a causal and objective description of quantum phenomena. In 1960 he enthusiastically discovered the thinking of the Indian Jiddu Krishnamurti, and from dialogues between them emerged interesting ideas in the area of the confluence of Physics with the mystical tradition.
ABSTRACT In the early 1950s the American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) produced a new interpretation of quantum mechanics and had to flee from McCarthyism. Rejected at Princeton, he moved to São Paulo. This article focuses on the reception of his early papers on the causal interpretation, his Brazilian exile, and the culture of physics surrounding the foundations of quantum mechanics. It weighs the strength of the Copenhagen interpretation, discusses the presentation of the foundations of quantum mechanics in the training of physicists, describes the results Bohm and his collaborators achieved. It also compares the reception of Bohm's ideas with that of Hugh Everett's interpretation. The cultural context of physics had a more significant influence on the reception of Bohm's ideas than the McCarthyist climate.
David Bohm's career as a postwar American physicist demonstrates the effects of the cold war on the theoretical physics of that period. Bohm was fired from Princeton University because of his connections to the Communist Party while a graduate student at Berkeley during World War II; he left the country and took positions in Brazil and Israel and finally found a permanent post in England at Birkbeck College, University of London. Because of his political beliefs, Bohm was cut off from the scientific community that had nourished his early career; his isolation led him to explore creative alternatives to orthodox quantum mechanics but also limited his influence and audience within the mainstream physics community. In the 1970s, physicists and philosophers of science returned to Bohm's work as part of a reexamination of quantum physics.
David Bohm: life and times In what is perhaps Virginia Woolf's most famous novel, much of the narrative describes intentions, hopes, plans for the visit To the Lighthouse , a visit forestalled by bad weather. There follows a section ‘Time passes’ in which all is war, death, decay, desperation; only the poets thrive. Then life returns slowly and timorously; the visit is at last made, in sombre reflective mood. Between perhaps 1930 and 1952, the study of the meaning of quantum theory went through its own period of emptiness. Von Neumann had done most to cause it. Einstein could not disturb it … When interest did creep back, it was a result of the work of David Bohm. Bohm had already experienced a chequered career. He was born in the USA in 1917, and rapidly built up an exceedingly high reputation as a theoretical physicist. After initial collaboration with Robert Oppenheimer, he specialised in the physics of plasmas – gases in which, because of high temperature or low pressure, atoms are ionised , or broken up into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions . Plasmas [118] are important in astrophysics and also in the effort to achieve controlled nuclear fusion . In nuclear fusion, small nuclei fuse together to form one large one, with the emission of energy; high temperatures are required, and so one is forced to deal with plasmas. This is also exactly the process that causes stars to radiate energy.