Abstract
The years Bohm spent in California shaped his scientific style enabling him to exhibit his potential skills as a physicist and his political and social mind. In the almost five years he stayed at Princeton he matured as a creative scientist but also experienced the most traumatic and damaging events. He pursued a research program dedicated to the understanding of plasma, worked out the collective variables approach, and extended these ideas to the study of metals. He attracted talented graduate students such as Eugene Gross and David Pines and built up an entirely original interpretation of quantum theory, the so-called hidden variables interpretation or, still, causal interpretation. He came of age as a skilled science writer producing a textbook on quantum physics still in use today. And yet, he was a victim of anti-communist campaigns which took hold in American society at the apex of the Cold War. He felt coerced into leaving the United States in order to further pursue his scientific and professional life. In this chapter we will successively see his pedagogical work and research on plasma and metals, and troubles on the American political scene. Then we spend time analyzing his suggestion for a new interpretation of quantum mechanics and the outcome of the political situation.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Bohm (1951, 158–161). “This probability concept is closely related to the concept of possibility, the ‘potentia’ of the natural philosophy of the ancients such as Aristotle; it is, to a certain extent, a transformation of the old ‘potentia’ concept from a qualitative to a quantitative idea” (Heisenberg 1955, 13).
- 3.
Bohm (1951, 132 and 159).
- 4.
- 5.
Bohm (1951, 616–621).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Bohm (1951, 622 and 161–170), respectively.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Kojevnikov (2002, 170) cites Bohm from an interview by Lillian Hoddeson, held in 1981 and nowadays available at the American Institute of Physics.
- 12.
Gross (1987, 46).
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Pines (1987, 78).
- 14.
Bohm’s papers with Pines or Gross with more than 300 citations are Bohm and Gross (1949a, b), Pines and Bohm (1952), Bohm and Pines (1951, 1953), Pines (1953), Bardeen and Pines (1955), Bohr et al. (1958), Nozières and Pines (1990), Ben Mottelson, The Nobel Lecture, available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1975/mottelson-lecture.html.
- 15.
“A-Bomb Scientist Evades Red Query”: “David Bohm, a Princeton university Professor who helped develop the atom bomb, yesterday refused to say whether he is a Communist on grounds it might incriminate him,” The Washington Post , 26 May 1949. “Congressional spy hunters questioned an alleged Communist espionage agent and two atomic scientists today without producing evidence of any deals between them,” The New York Times , 27 April 1949. For the “Scientist X”, “NAMED ‘SCIENTIST X,’ HE DENIES CHARGE”: “Dr. J. W. Weinberg of University of Minnesota Is Accused by House Committee Named ‘Scientist X’ by House Unit,” The New York Times , 01 October 1949.
- 16.
Constitution of the United States, Amendment V, 1789, rev 1992: “No person shall be […]; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law […].”
- 17.
We have a direct evidence of Bohm’s reaction to the citation: “Even though I anticipated this trouble, it came as a shock. I am trying to hold up my courage, but I cannot help feeling that the future looks black, because of the madness which is spreading over the country,” Bohm to Hanna Loewy [1950], in Talbot (2017, 113).
- 18.
See The New York Times on 26 May 1949, 12 August 1950, 5 December 1950, and 1 June 1951. The historical records of Bohm’s case are now well settled. Persecution of Bohm and his colleagues at Berkeley (Bernard Peters, Joseph Weinberg, and Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz) are studied in Shawn Mullet (2008); Princeton’s attitudes are analyzed in Russell Olwell (1999); the anti-communist anxieties in American academia in Ellen Schrecker (1986), Jessica Wang (1999), and David Kaiser (2005). Bohm’s imprisonment and bail is also recorded in Kojevnikov (2002, 181).
- 19.
- 20.
Only in recent years has American culture begun to heal from the scars of McCarthyism, with movies such as “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “Trumbo.” Even the interest, among historians and philosophers of science, in Bohm’s life and works are not fully independent of this new mood.
- 21.
Schweber (2000, 115–116). On the Soviet-sponsored espionage of the US atomic project, see Rhodes (1995) and Schrecker (2002, 38–42). The updated version of this espionage activity, according the US view, is at the U.S. Department of Energy website dedicated to the history of the Manhattan Project: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1945/espionage.htm, accessed on 22 August 2018.
- 22.
- 23.
According to Kaiser (2005, 28), “the early years of the Cold War were not a pleasant time to be an intellectual in the United States, especially if they happened to have a past or present interest in the political left. […] theoretical physicists emerged as the most consistently named whipping-boys of McCarthyism.”
- 24.
- 25.
William Bradford Huie, “Who Gave Russia the A-BOMB?”, The Mercury , 412–421, [1951], copy at Bohm Papers, Folder A.120. “A-Bomb Scientist Evades Red Query,” The Washington Post , 26 May 1949. The picture of David Bohm reading a newspaper; after refusing to testify whether or not he was a member of the Communist Party before the House Un-American Activities Committee is at Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection, copy also at AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives. For the over exposure, see the digital archives of The New York Times .
- 26.
Schrecker (2002).
- 27.
- 28.
“PRINCETON PRAISES BOHM UNDER INQUIRY,” The New York Times , 27 May 1949. On Princeton’s decision to not renew, see Olwell (1999). On the meeting with Dodds, Bohm, interviewed by Martin Sherwin, recalled “Dodds called me in. Said I should testify. [First time Bohm had met him]. We talked it over and he sort of kept on intimating that it would be best to testify. ‘Well, I said, I couldn’t. You know. I couldn’t mention names.’” D. Bohm interviewed by M. Sherwin, 15 June 1979, Bohm Papers. On Dodds’ early mind, see letter from Bohm to Hanna Loewy [March/April 1950], in Talbot (2017, 99). On Bernard Peters’ case, see Schweber (2000, 115–130), Wheeler and Ford (1998, 216).
- 29.
David Bohm’s FBI File, FOIA request by Adam Becker. I am grateful to Becker for sharing this document with me.
- 30.
“Nobel-winning British scientist accused of spying by MI5, papers reveal,” The Guardian, 26 August 2010.
- 31.
- 32.
Daniels (2019, 35–36).
- 33.
Albert Einstein to Patrick Blackett, 17 April 1951, Albert Einstein Archives. Jayme Tiomno, interviewed by the author, 4 August 2003. Record number 816/51 [microfilm], Archives of the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras, Universidade de São Paulo. Abrahão de Moraes did not need to use the letter to President Vargas, it is published in Estudos avançados, [São Paulo] 21 (1994).
- 34.
Bohm (1952a).
- 35.
The following two subsections are slightly modified versions of Chapter 2 of my book The Quantum Dissidents (Freire Junior 2015).
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
- 39.
Bohm and Vigier (1954).
- 40.
Bohm (1952a, 166).
- 41.
Jammer (1988, 693). In Bell’s words (Bell 2004, p. 201), “absurdly, such theories are known as ‘hidden variable’ theories. Absurdly, for there is not in the wavefunction that one finds an image of the visible world, and the results of experiments, but in the complementary ‘hidden’(!) variables.” I am thankful to Michael Kiessling for pointing out these remarks to me.
- 42.
- 43.
Yevick (2012, 141). Miriam Yevick was a mathematician, the fifth woman to obtain a PhD in Mathematics at MIT, who befriended Bohm for a long time, maintaining extensive correspondence while he stayed in Brazil. This has now been edited and published in Talbot (2017). Yevick had been fascinated by Bohm since their first meeting in January 1948 (Yevick 2012, 140–141): “I held out my hand, looked up, and was struck by a Coup de Foudre. Our eyes met, our glances penetrated each others’ and would not let go. This happened whenever we met from then on. […] Truly, I became his disciple for the rest of my life.” Miriam was married to the physicist George Yevick. The couple remained close to Bohm.
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
Jammer (1974, 279).
- 47.
- 48.
- 49.
The David Bohm Papers are deposited at Birkbeck College, University of London. From the period a little before and after leaving the U.S., there is a meaningful correspondence with Einstein; Melba Philips, an American physicist and friend of Bohm; Hanna Loewy and Miriam Yevick, his friends. The letters to Philips, Loewy, and Yevick are transcribed and published in a volume with critical apparatus by Talbot (2017). Most of the correspondence with Wolfgang Pauli, relevant for the period prior to his departure from the U.S. and during the elaboration of his paper on the causal interpretation, was recovered and published by Karl von Meyenn in the collection dedicated to Pauli’s correspondence (Pauli and Meyenn 1996, 1999). At Rosenfeld Papers, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen, there are plenty of letters concerning the battle Rosenfeld fought in defense of complementarity and against the hidden-variables; most of them are cited in my The Quantum Dissidents (Freire Junior 2015). More recently, a batch of letters between Bohm and the French astrophysicist Evry Schatzman was unearthed by Virgile Besson at Schatzman’s papers, Observatoire de Paris. These letters are appended to his doctoral dissertation (Besson 2018) where Besson analyses the early connection between Bohm and the French team around Louis de Broglie and Jean-Pierre Vigier.
- 50.
Bohm to Hanna Loewy, mid-June 1950, is in Talbot (2017, 110).
- 51.
Forstner (2008).
- 52.
Einstein’s remark is in Paty (1993). Bohm to Pauli, [July 1951], in Pauli and Meyenn (1996, pp. 343–345). Most of Pauli’s letters to Bohm did not survive; we infer their contents from Bohm’s replies. Bohm to Karl von Meyenn, 2 December 1983, ibid., on 345. Broglie’s pilot wave and Pauli’s criticisms are in Institut International de Physique Solvay (1928, pp. 105–141 and 280–282). See also Bacciagaluppi and Valentini (2009), which is a critical edition (with a careful analysis as introduction) of the proceedings of the Solvay conference, with an English translation of the Conference proceedings, the originals of which were published in French.
- 53.
Bohm to Pauli, July 1951, Summer 1951, October 1951, 20 November 1951 (Pauli and Meyenn 1996, pp. 343–346, 389–394, and 429–462).
- 54.
Pauli to Bohm, 3 December 1951, plus an appendix (Pauli and Meyenn 1996, pp. 436–441).
- 55.
For the evolution of de Broglie’s ideas, see Broglie (1956, pp. 115–143). Bohm to Pauli, October 1951, op. cit.
- 56.
- 57.
Bohm to Pauli, 20 November 1951, op. cit. (Bohm 1952a, pp. 191–193).
- 58.
For Bohm’s letters to Hanna Loewy, see Talbot (2017, 102 and 110).
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Freire Junior, O. (2019). Teaching and Doing Research at Princeton, Caught up in the Cold War Storms (1947–1951). In: David Bohm. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22715-9_3
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