Boris Yakovlevich Podolsky (; 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 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

and Nathan Rosen on entangled wave functions and the EPR paradox.

Education

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

Don Host Oblast Don Host Oblast was a province (''oblast'') of the Russian Empire which consisted of the territory of the Don Cossacks, coinciding approximately with present-day Rostov Oblast in Russia. Its administrative center was Cherkassk, and later Nov ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

and attended the 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 The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

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) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, followed by a year at

Leipzig University Leipzig University (), 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 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

. In 1930, he returned to

, working with Richard C. Tolman for one year. He then went to the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (

Kharkiv Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

, USSR), collaborating with Vladimir Fock,

Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac ( ; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English mathematician and Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Dirac laid the foundations for bot ...

(who was there on a visit), and

Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He was considered as one of the last scientists who were universally well-versed and ma ...

. 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) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

, 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 aulDirac''." 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, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

. 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, Ohio, United States. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier had an enrollment of approximately 5,600 undergraduate an ...

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

Work

Working with Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, Podolsky conceived the EPR paradox. This famous paper stimulated debate as to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, culminating with

Bell's theorem Bell's theorem is a term encompassing a number of closely related results in physics, all of which determine that quantum mechanics is incompatible with local hidden-variable theories, given some basic assumptions about the nature of measuremen ...

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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

to work on processing Uranium 235. A 1943 VENONA cable shows QUANTUM provided relatively simple equations known as Graham's law 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 Jewish Russian scientists Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States American 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 Academic staff of Leipzig University 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 Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology people