Boris Yakovlevich Podolsky (russian: link=no, Бори́с Я́ковлевич Подо́льский; June 29, 1896 – November 28, 1966) was a Russian-American

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 cau ...

of Jewish descent, noted for his work with

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

and

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 ...

on entangled wave functions and the

EPR paradox EPR may refer to: Science and technology * EPR (nuclear reactor), European Pressurised-Water Reactor * EPR paradox (Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox), in physics * Earth potential rise, in electrical engineering * East Pacific Rise, a mid-oce ...

Education

In 1896, Boris Podolsky was born into a poor Jewish family in

Taganrog Taganrog ( rus, Таганрог, p=təɡɐnˈrok) is a port city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, on the north shore of the Taganrog Bay in the Sea of Azov, several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. Population: History of Taganrog Th ...

, in the

Don Host Oblast The Province (Oblast) of the Don Cossack Host (, ''Oblast’ Voyska Donskogo'') of Imperial Russia was the official name of the territory of Don Cossacks, coinciding approximately with the present-day Rostov Oblast of Russia. Its site of admini ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

. Attended Taganrog Gymnasium. He moved to the United States in 1913. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

in 1918, he served in the US Army and then worked at the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light. In 1926, he obtained an MS in Mathematics from the

. In 1928, he received a PhD in Theoretical Physics (under Paul Sophus Epstein) from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Career

Under a National Research Council Fellowship, Podolsky spent a year at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, followed by a year at

Leipzig University Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...

. In 1930, he returned to

, working with

Richard C. Tolman Richard Chace Tolman (March 4, 1881 – September 5, 1948) was an American mathematical physicist and physical chemist who made many contributions to statistical mechanics. He also made important contributions to theoretical cosmology in t ...

for one year. He then went to the

Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology The National Science Center Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology (KIPT) ( uk, Національний науковий центр «Харківський фізико-технічний інститут»), formerly the Ukrainian Physics ...

(

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest city and municipality in Ukraine.

, USSR), collaborating with Vladimir Fock,

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...

(who was there on a visit), and

Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (russian: Лев Дави́дович Ланда́у; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet-Azerbaijani physicist of Jewish descent who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. His ac ...

. In 1932 he published a seminal early paper on Quantum Electrodynamics with Dirac and Fock, In 1933, he returned to the US with a fellowship from the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

, Princeton. In a letter dated November 10, 1933, to Abraham Flexner, founding Director of the

at Princeton, Einstein described Podolsky as "''one of the most brilliant of the younger men who has worked and published with

aul An aul (; ce, oil; russian: аул) is a type of fortified village or town found throughout the Caucasus mountains and Central Asia. The word itself is of Turkic origin and simply means ''village'' in many Turkic languages. Auyl ( kk, Ауы� ...

Dirac''." In 1935 Einstein and others at the Institute wrote letters of recommendation for Podolsky, addressed to Louis T. More, Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati, in which Einstein wrote, "''I am happy to be able to tell you that I estimate Podolsky's abilities very highly.. he is an independent investigator of unquestionable talent''." In 1935, Podolsky took a post as professor of mathematical physics at the

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,0 ...

. At the

he was MS adviser to Chihiro Kikuchi, and PhD adviser to Herman Branson and Alex Green. In 1961, he moved to

Xavier University Xavier University ( ) is a private Jesuit university in Cincinnati and Evanston (Cincinnati), Ohio. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,860 stud ...

, Cincinnati, where he worked until his death in 1966.

Work

Working with Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, Podolsky conceived the

. This famous paper stimulated debate as to the

interpretation of quantum mechanics An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraor ...

, culminating with Bell's theorem and the advent of quantum information theory. In 1933, Podolsky and

had the idea to write a textbook on electromagnetism beginning with special relativity and emphasizing theoretical postulates rather than experimental laws. This project did not come to fruition due to Podolsky's return to the United States, where he had immigrated in 1913. However, in the hands of Lev Landau and E. Lifshitz, the outline they produced became ''The Classical Theory of Fields'' (1951). On the same basis, Podolsky and K. Kunz produced ''Fundamentals of Electrodynamics'', Marcel Dekker Press (1969), to which Podolsky's son, Robert, contributed most of the questions at the end of each chapter.

Possible contact with Soviet spies during World War II

A 2009 book by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America'', identifies Podolsky as a contact (QUANTUM) who met twice with Soviet secret services in 1942 and 1943. The evidence for these contacts is somewhat indirect. Early during World War II, several VENONA cables identify a contact named QUANTUM who sought out Soviet intelligence in 1942 and asked for a position in the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

to work on processing Uranium 235. A 1943 VENONA cable shows QUANTUM provided relatively simple equations known as

Graham's law Graham's law of effusion (also called Graham's law of diffusion) was formulated by Scottish physical chemist Thomas Graham in 1848.Keith J. Laidler and John M. Meiser, ''Physical Chemistry'' (Benjamin/Cummings 1982), pp. 18–19 Graham found ...

of gaseous diffusion (known since 1848) which can be used to separate fissile U-235 from unwanted U-238. QUANTUM was paid $300 for this information according to a VENONA cable. The Soviets never contacted him again because they felt QUANTUM was unreliable. A former KGB officer named Alexander Vassiliev took notes from the KGB archive after the fall of the USSR which suggested that QUANTUM was Podolsky.

In popular culture

Podolsky is played by the actor Gene Saks in the 1994 Hollywood film '' I.Q.''

References

Other sources

Primary source materials

Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, 1962
University Archives,

.
Niels Bohr Scientific Correspondence, Supplement, 1910–1962
Niels Bohr Archive.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Podolsky, Boris 1896 births 1966 deaths Russian Jews Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Quantum physicists 20th-century American physicists California Institute of Technology alumni University of Southern California alumni University of Cincinnati faculty California Institute of Technology faculty Leipzig University faculty Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Xavier University people USC Viterbi School of Engineering alumni American spies for the Soviet Union Fellows of the American Physical Society