EPR

EPR refers to a paper that three physicists––Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen––wrote in 1935 while at IAS, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?” The idea of the paper arose during an IAS teatime conversation between Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen and introduced an ongoing debate over quantum mechanics. The publication of the EPR paper was heralded in the New York Times under the headline "Einstein Attacks Quantum Theory," reporting Einstein's view that quantum mechanics is "correct" but not "complete."

Natural Sciences

Ahmed Almheiri: From the UAE to Firewalls

By Kelly Devine Thomas

The Institute Letter Fall 2017

In 2012, Ahmed Almheiri, current Member in the School of Natural Sciences, coauthored a paper that confounded theoretical physicists, sparked attention from the New York Times to Scientific American, and prompted the organization of workshops and...

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...