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Rabi meets his match

Walter B. Gratzer

Published Sep 26, 2002• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract Isidore Rabi [21], when Chairman of the Physics Department at Columbia University and a mandarin of the American physics establishment, gave the following account of his first encounter with a youthful prodigy. It was 1935 and Rabi was pondering a controversial paper, just published by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, which sought to undermine, with a paradox, the foundations of quantum theory.

DOI
10.1093/oso/9780192804037.003.0013

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Abstract Isidore Rabi [21], when Chairman of the Physics Department at Columbia University and a mandarin of the American physics establishment, gave the following account of his first encounter with a youthful prodigy. It was 1935 and Rabi was pondering a controversial paper, just published by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, which sought to undermine, with a paradox, the foundations of quantum theory.
Abstract This paper presents correspondence between Albert Einstein and the mathematical analyst J. L. B. Cooper on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox of quantum theory published in 1935. Two letters written by Cooper, and the replies from Einstein, all written between October and December 1949, are retyped and added as facsimiles. The lack of agreement, arising from very different points of view, is analysed, taking into account the complex underlying mathematical and physical factors that arise naturally in connection with the EPR paradox.
I( can't believe that. That's much too concrete to be real. So Martin Klein of Yale University quotes Niels Quantum theory, of which Bohr was one of the main progenitors, is anything but too concrete. This attitude of Bohr's may reflect both what he saw in quantum theory and what he gave to it, and it could be a basis for the famous controversy between him and Albert Einstein that lasted more than three decades. In their lifetimes neither made the other budge. They died good friends but conceptually unreconciled. Their colleagues, pupils and followers have ramified and continued the argument. Many of them and others gathered recently at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., for Symposium Commemorating the Centennial of Niels Bohr. A series of experiments done near Paris has put a definite advantage in Bohr's court with respect to a very important part of the argument, the challenge historically known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. Einstein is famous for remarks about God not throwing dice. These epigrams led to a general belief that his disagreement with quantum mechanics was based on problems of determinism and causality, an unhappiness with the uncertain, statistical quality of quantum mechanical predictions. Not so, said Einstein himself (in his correspondence with Max Born, cited by N. David Mermin of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y, in the April 1985 PHYSICS TODAY). The most basic unhappiness, prior to Einstein's admitted dislike of the statistical aspects, was over reality, the reality of physical attributes and properties.
Following the success of The Quantum Universe, first published in 1987, a host of exciting new discoveries have been made in the field of quantum mechanics. The New Quantum Universe provides an up-to-date and accessible introduction to the essential ideas of quantum physics, and demonstrates how it affects our everyday life. Quantum mechanics gives an understanding of not only atoms and nuclei, but also all the elements and even the stars. The book explains quantum paradoxes and the eventful life of Schroedinger's Cat, along with the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox and Bell's Inequality. It then looks ahead to the nanotechnology revolution, describing quantum cryptography, quantum computing and quantum teleportation, and ends with an account of quantum mechanics and science fiction. Using simple non-mathematical language, this book is suitable for final-year school students, science undergraduates, and anyone wishing to appreciate how physics allows the new technologies that are changing our lives.