The Importance of Entanglement in the History of Physics

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No one ever said that before quantum mechanics, right? I guess Moc might have said that. Einstein and also Schrodinger, they didn't give up post-Solvet conference. And so, and they're not giving up was a huge boon to humankind in the sense that they basically invented entanglement. It forced the rest of the physics community to understand that entanglement was maybe the defining trait of quantum mechanics.

There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven’t yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.

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Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

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