Bell’s theorem is one of the most significant results in quantum mechanics. So why, wonders Iulia Georgescu, did John Bell publish it in a little-known, short-lived journal called Physics?
As I was strolling through Belfast’s Titanic Quarter last summer, I discovered with delight a road called Bell’s Theorem Crescent. It’s named in honour of the Belfast-born physicist John Bell, best known for his eponymous theorem. Despite not being as embedded in popular culture as Schrödinger’s cat, his theorem will certainly ring a bell (forgive the pun) with most physicists.
The story goes back to 1935 when Albert Einstein, Boris Podolski and Nathan Rosen (EPR) came up with their now-famous thought experiment, which was designed to show that quantum mechanics was, as a description of nature, incomplete. In the EPR scenario, non-local influences can affect the measurement outcomes performed on spatially separated particles.
Given how odd that seemed, some physicists invoked what are known as “hidden variables” to get rid of these non-local correlations and restore local realism. It was in 1964, while working at the CERN particle-physics lab, that Bell showed that no local hidden-variable theory can be compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics.
This result – Bell’s theorem – is something I was familiar with but I had paid little attention to where it had originally appeared. As I discovered, it was published in a paper called “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox” in the journal Physics (3 195) in 1964. Also known as Physics Physique Физика, this little-known publication existed only from 1964 to 1968. In fact, Bell’s theorem is the most important result published in it.
The journal was set up by two physicists at Bell Laboratories in the US – Bernd Matthias and future Nobel laureate Philip Anderson. According to A Mind Over Matter – Andrew Zangwill’s 2021 biography of Anderson – they were not too happy with conventional physics journals. “The referees,” Anderson said, “often did a bad job, the editors took too long to make decisions, and too much wrong physics got published.”
Those are complaints you’ll still hear in coffee breaks at most physics conferences today, and they prompted Matthias to contact the media magnate Robert Maxwell, who’d founded Oxford-based publishing house Pergamon Press. Maxwell had figured out that scientific publishing could be a very lucrative business so he helped the two physicists to set up the journal.
A publishing experiment
In their first editorial, Anderson and Matthias called Physics an “experimental journal”, which they hoped would solve the problem of there being “far more good physics written than any physicist can read”. Their solution was to pick only those papers worth the attention of all physicists, which the editors did by reviewing – then accepting or rejecting – every submission themselves. They even paid authors 10 cents a word if their paper appeared in print.
Anderson and Matthias admitted that many physicists had already written to them, criticizing their proposed selection model. They’d been told that their “judgements will be fallible”, that they might be “overimpressed by showiness”, and that they’d end up rejecting excellent work. In response, the pair promised to try their best, accepting they would make mistakes and that their “criteria will be, not better, but different”.
The journal’s criteria clearly succeeded, in that Anderson and Matthias identified the merits of Bell’s paper, which was far from mainstream
These criteria clearly succeeded, in that they identified the merits of Bell’s paper, which was far from mainstream. Keen to find out more about the events surrounding its publication, I contacted Zangwill, who had interviewed Anderson several times for his book. Zangwill shared the following quote, published here for the first time.
“One day,” Anderson recalled, “a paper came in from a guy neither of us had heard of – John Bell. It was about hidden variables in quantum mechanics. Bernd had no clue, but I accepted it with the hope that its publication would spell the death of Bohmian trajectory quantum mechanics. It’s a very famous paper today.”
Against ‘measurement’: John Bell on our continuing struggles with quantum mechanics
In 1967 the quantum physicist John Clauser found Bell’s paper after stumbling upon Physics Physique Физика, attracted by its unusual title. Clauser, who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, carried out the first Bell test in 1972 with Stuart Friedmann. Their work triggered a long series of experiments that would deepen our understanding of quantum mechanics and catalyse the development of quantum technologies.
Over its short life, Physics did publish work from other notable physicists including Murray Gell-Mann, Leonard Susskind and Leo Kadanoff. In fact, the journal was ahead of its time, with the model of in-house editorial selection for broad interest returning in the 2000s with the Nature series of journals. The inclusive, multi-language title was also well ahead of its day.
Sadly, Physics Physique Физика was discontinued in 1968 after just three volumes
Sadly, Physics Physique Физика was discontinued in 1968 after just three volumes. According to what Anderson told Zangwill, it stopped “not because it lacked submissions, but because they had promised contributors rapid publication and Maxwell kept increasing the time between the appearances of successive issues”. Maxwell’s aggressive pursuit of profit might also have played a role.
The journal has since been archived by the American Physical Society and is freely accessible online. One can only wonder what might have happened if Anderson and Matthias had picked a different name for their journal.
