Asher Peres ( he, אשר פרס; January 30, 1934 – January 1, 2005) was an Israeli

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

. He is well known for his work relating quantum mechanics and information theory. He helped to develop the

Peres–Horodecki criterion The Peres–Horodecki criterion is a necessary condition, for the joint density matrix \rho of two quantum mechanical systems A and B, to be separable. It is also called the PPT criterion, for ''positive partial transpose''. In the 2×2 and 2× ...

for

quantum entanglement Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of ...

, as well as the concept of quantum teleportation, and collaborated with others on quantum information and special relativity. He also introduced the

Peres metric In mathematical physics, the Peres metric is defined by the proper time : ^ = dt^2 - 2f(t+z, x, y) (dt+dz)^2-dx^2-dy^2-dz^2 for any arbitrary function ''f''. If ''f'' is a harmonic function with respect to ''x'' and ''y'', then the corresponding ...

and researched the Hamilton–Jacobi–Einstein equation in general relativity. With Mario Feingold, he published work in

quantum chaos Quantum chaos is a branch of physics which studies how chaotic classical dynamical systems can be described in terms of quantum theory. The primary question that quantum chaos seeks to answer is: "What is the relationship between quantum mech ...

that is known to mathematicians as the Feingold–Peres conjecture and to physicists as the Feingold–Peres theory.

Life

According to his autobiography, he was born ''Aristide Pressman'' in

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne (, literally ''Beaulieu on Dordogne''; oc, Belluec) is a commune in the Corrèze department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, central France. Beaulieu is a medieval city, originally dominated by its great abbey of St Pier ...

in France, where his father, a Polish electrical engineer, had found work laying down power lines. He was given the name ''Aristide'' at birth, because the name his parents wanted, ''Asher'', the name of his maternal grandfather, was not on the list of permissible French given names. When he went to live in Israel, he changed his first name to ''Asher'' and, as was common among immigrants, changed his family name to the Hebrew ''Peres'', which he used for the rest of his life. Peres obtained his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in 1959 at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under

Nathan Rosen Nathan Rosen (Hebrew: נתן רוזן; March 22, 1909 – December 18, 1995) was an American-Israeli physicist noted for his study on the structure of the hydrogen atom and his work with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on entangled wave functio ...

. Peres spent most of his academic career at Technion, where in 1988 he was appointed distinguished professor of physics. He died in Haifa, Israel.

''Quantum Theory'' textbook

He authored a textbook, '' Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods,'' of which he wrote, :The purpose of this book is to clarify the ''conceptual meaning'' of quantum theory, and to explain some of the mathematical methods that it utilizes. This text is not concerned with specialized topics such as atomic structure, or strong or weak interactions, but with the very foundations of the theory. This is not, however, a book on the philosophy of science. The approach is pragmatic and strictly instrumentalist. This attitude will undoubtedly antagonize some readers, but it has its own logic: quantum phenomena do not occur in a Hilbert space, they occur in a laboratory. N. David Mermin called the book "a treasure trove of novel perspectives on quantum mechanics" and said that Peres' choice of topics is "a catalogue of common omissions" from other approaches. Among its substantial discussion of the failure of

hidden variable theories In physics, hidden-variable theories are proposals to provide explanations of quantum mechanical phenomena through the introduction of (possibly unobservable) hypothetical entities. The existence of fundamental indeterminacy for some measurem ...

, the book includes a FORTRAN program for testing whether a list of vectors forms a Kochen–Specker configuration. Michael Nielsen wrote of the textbook, "Revelation! Suddenly, all the key results of 30 years of work (several of those results due to Asher) were distilled into beautiful and simple explanations." Peres downplayed the importance of the uncertainty principle, giving it only a single mention in his index, which points to that same page of the index.

Views on the EPR paradox

Peres claimed that the resolution to the

Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox is a thought experiment proposed by physicists Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, with which they argued that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics was incom ...

, often called "spooky action at a distance", lies in the fact that quantum states are information. Peres wrote, "Information is not just an abstract notion. It requires a physical carrier, and the latter is (approximately) ''localized.'' After all, it was the business of the

Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Engla ...

to transport information from one telephone to another telephone, in a different location. ..When Alice measures her spin, the information she gets is localized at her position, and will remain so until she decides to broadcast it. Absolutely ''nothing'' happens at Bob's location. ..It is only when Alice informs Bob of the result she got (by mail, telephone, radio, or by means other than material carrier, which is naturally restricted to the speed of light) that Bob realizes that his particle has a definite pure state."

References

External links

''List of publications'' Foundations of Physics, 36 157-173 (2006)

(obituary by his students).
L. Peres Hari: ''Asher Peres, 1943-2005''
(obituary by his daughter). * {{DEFAULTSORT:Peres, Asher 1934 births 2005 deaths Israeli physicists Jewish scientists Technion – Israel Institute of Technology faculty Israeli Jews Jewish physicists Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent