Boris Podolsky

Boris Podolsky, a Member (1934–35) in the School of Mathematics, coauthored the paper "Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?" with Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, commonly referred to as EPR. The EPR paper pointed out that quantum mechanics had a very funny property later called “quantum entanglement,” a kind of correlation between two distant physical systems, the implications of which are currently being explored in the work of Professor Juan Maldacena, among others.

Natural Sciences

Entanglement and the Geometry of Spacetime

Juan Maldacena

The Institute Letter Fall 2013

In 1935, Albert Einstein and collaborators wrote two papers at the Institute for Advanced Study. One was on quantum mechanics [1] and the other was on black holes [2]. The paper on quantum mechanics is very famous and influential. It pointed out a...

Natural Sciences

The Advent and Fallout of EPR

Kelly Devine Thomas

The Institute Letter Fall 2013

"Einstein Attacks Quantum Theory” read the New York Times headline of May 4, 1935. The article continued:

Professor Albert Einstein will attack science’s important theory of quantum mechanics, a theory of which he was a sort of grandfather. He...

Natural Sciences

A Quantum Story

Jeremy Bernstein

The Institute Letter Fall 2011

In the two years I spent at the Institute, 1957–59, I had the opportunity of meeting two of the founders of the quantum theory—Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac. In the case of Bohr, perhaps “meeting” overstates the case. He was a Member in the spring of...