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Beyond Bohr and Einstein

Jim Al-Khalili reviews Quantum Drama, a new book by physicist and science writer Jim Baggott and the late historian of science John L Heilbron.

I went on to do a PhD in nuclear reaction theory, which meant I spent most of my time working through mathema­tical derivations, becoming familiar with S-matrices, Green’s functions and scattering amplitudes, scribbling pages of angular-momentum algebra and coding in Fortran 77. Stop trying to say more about it.” And there certainly seemed to be very little in the textbooks I was reading about unresolved issues arising from such topics as the EPR (Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen) paradox and the measurement problem, let alone any analysis of the work of Hugh Everett and David Bohm, who were regarded as mavericks. Other accounts, both popular and scholarly, tend to push the narrative that Bohr won the argument, leaving generations of physicists with the idea that the interpretational issues had been resolved – apart that is, from the odd dissenting voices from the likes of Everett or Bohm who tried, unsuccessfully it was argued, to put a spanner in the Copenhagen works.

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