Reinhold Bertlmann

Reinhold A. Bertlmann (born 7 March 1945) is an Austrian born physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Vienna. He is known for his research in particle physics, where he wrote the standard text book „Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory“, and in the field of Bell inequalities, in particular from the quantum comparison Bertlmann’s Socks of John Bell.

Reinhold Bertlmann and his Quantum Group

Education and Career

Bertlmann studied Technical Physics at the Technical University Vienna and Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. degree. He worked as a scientist in Vienna, at the JINR in Dubna and at CERN. After his Habilitation in Theoretical Physics in Vienna he held visiting professorships in Marseille, at the University Paris-South and at the CNRS. Since 1987 he is University Professor at the University of Vienna.

Physics

Bertlmann works at Quantum Physics, in particular he is occupied with Bell inequalities, entanglement, decoherence and geometry of quantum systems. In addition he is concerned with anomalies in quantum field theory.

Bertlmann was a close friend and collaborator of the late John Stewart Bell and presently works together with Walter Thirring and Anton Zeilinger, among others.

Bertlmann’s Socks

Reinhold Bertlmann showing his socks, Vienna, 30 Aug 2007

In 1978 Bertlmann went to CERN where he worked together with J. S. Bell. Bertlmann always wore socks of different colours. In 1981 Bell wrote the article Bertlmann’s socks and the nature of reality, where he compared the EPR paradox with Bertlmann’s socks: if you observe one sock to be pink you can predict with certainty that the other sock is not pink. Thus you might assume that quantum entanglement is just the same. However, this is a non-admissible simplification and Bell in his article explains why.

Bell’s article is reprinted in his book Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics and is discussed in the books of Andrew Whitaker The New Quantum Age, Louisa Gilder's The Age of Entanglement and Nature loves to hide by Shimon Malin.

Literature

• J.S. Bell: "Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality". J.Phys.Colloq. 42 (C2), March 1981. Also available online PDF-Datei
• J.S. Bell: Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987 ISBN 0-521-52338-9
• R.A. Bertlmann: Magic Moments: A collaboration with John Bell, see Reinhold Bertlmann homepage
• R.A. Bertlmann: Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford 2000 (paperback), ISBN 0-19-850762-3
• R.A. Bertlmann, A. Zeilinger: Quantum [Un]speakables. From Bell to Quantum Information, Springer-Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-540-42756-2
• R.A. Bertlmann: John Bell and the Nature of the Quantum World, Journal of Physics A: Math. Theor. 47, 424007 (2014)

External links

• Reinhold Bertlmann homepage