Coda: Quantum Dissidents - A Collective Biographical Profile

Abstract

This chapter draws a collective biographical profile of a sample of physicists who were protagonists in the research on the foundations of quantum physics between the 1950s and the early 1990s. We have studied the cases of Bohm, Vigier, Everett, Zeh, Bell, Clauser, Shimony, Horne, Wigner, Rosenfeld, d’Espagnat, Selleri, DeWitt, Aspect, Bub, Tausk, Leggett, Wheeler, Zurek, Ghirardi, Haroche, Greenberger, Zeilinger, Gisin, and Shih. We analyze their training and early career, their achievements, their qualms with quantum mechanics, their motivations for such research, professional obstacles they faced, their attitude towards the Copenhagen interpretation, and their success and failures. Most of them were dissidents, fighting against the dominant attitude among physicists at the time when foundational issues were considered to be already solved by the founding fathers of the discipline. Theirs is a story of success as the foundations of quantum mechanics finally entered the physics mainstream, despite the fact that their hope to set limits of validity for quantum mechanics was not fulfilled.