Reinhold Anton Bertlmann (born 7 March 1945 in

Reutte Reutte (; Swabian: ) is a market town in the Austrian state of Tyrol. It is the administrative center of the Reutte district (''Districts of Austria''). Reutte is located on the Lech, and has a population of 6704 (as of 2018). Neighbouring munic ...

) is an Austrian-born physicist and professor of physics at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

. He is known for his research in

particle physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...

, where he wrote the standard textbook ''Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory'', and in the field of Bell inequalities, in particular from the quantum comparison ''Bertlmann’s Socks'' of John Bell.

Education and career

Bertlmann studied technical physics at the

Vienna University of Technology TU Wien (TUW; german: Technische Universität Wien; still known in English as the Vienna University of Technology from 1975–2014) is one of the major universities in Vienna, Austria. The university finds high international and domestic recogn ...

and Theoretical Physics at the

, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1974. He worked as a scientist in Vienna, at the

JINR The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, russian: Объединённый институт ядерных исследований, ОИЯИ), in Dubna, Moscow Oblast (110 km north of Moscow), Russia, is an international research cen ...

in Dubna and at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

. After his Habilitation in Theoretical Physics in Vienna 1981 about ''Duality between resonances and asymptotia'', he held visiting professorships in

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

, at the University Paris-Sud and at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

. From 1987 until his retirement in 2010 he was university professor at the

, where he is still lecturing. Reinhold Bertlmann has been married to the artist Renate Bertlmann since 1969.

Physics

Bertlmann works in 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 John Stewart Bell FRS (28 July 1928 – 1 October 1990) was a physicist from Northern Ireland and the originator of Bell's theorem, an important theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden-variable theories. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Phy ...

and worked together with

Walter Thirring Walter Thirring (29 April 1927 – 19 August 2014) was an Austrian physicist after whom the Thirring model in quantum field theory is named. He was the son of the physicist Hans Thirring.Thirring, H. Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen ...

. Presently, he collaborates with

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Qua ...

, with whom he organized the celebrated quantum conferences
Quantum [Un]Speakables I
' in 2000 and
Quantum [Un]Speakables II
' in 2014. The resulting collections of the 2000 essays, under the same title ''Quantum [Un]Speakables'', has become seminal for the field. In 2000 he published the textbook
Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory
', which became a popular introductory text to quantum field theory and differential geometry. In 2023 he published the textbook
Modern Quantum Theory
', written together with his former student Nicolai Friis, covering quantum mechanics and quantum information theory.

Bertlmann’s socks

In 1978 Bertlmann went to

, where he worked together with

J. S. Bell John Stewart Bell Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (28 July 1928 – 1 October 1990) was a physicist from Northern Ireland and the originator of Bell's theorem, an important theorem in quantum mechanics, quantum physics regarding hidden-variab ...

. 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 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-ocea ...

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. In 2015, Bertlmann wrote a lengthy piece "Bell's Universe: A Personal Recollection",Bell's Universe: A Personal Recollection
(My collaboration and friendship with John Bell is recollected.), Reinhold Bertlmann, 25 May 2016, accessed 27 May 2016 explaining in some detail his amazement at finding out about Bell's paper on the socks.

Literature

*J.S. Bell:
Bertlmann's socks and the nature of reality
. J. Phys. Colloq. 42 (C2), March 1981. Also available onlin
PDF-File
*J.S. Bell: ''Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987 *R.A. Bertlmann: ''Magic Moments: A collaboration with John Bell'', se
Reinhold Bertlmann homepage
*R.A. Bertlmann: ''Anomalies in Quantum Field Theory'', Clarendon Press, Oxford 2000 (paperback), *R.A. Bertlmann, A. Zeilinger: ''Quantum npeakables. From Bell to Quantum Information'', Springer-Verlag 2002, *R.A. Bertlmann:
John Bell and the Nature of the Quantum World
', Journal of Physics A: Math. Theor. 47, 424007 (2014) *R.A. Bertlmann, N. Friis: ''Modern Quantum Theory. From Quantum Mechanics to Entanglement and Quantum Information'', Oxford University Press, Oxford 2023,

References

External links

Reinhold Bertlmann homepageScientific publications of Reinhold Bertlmann
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bertlmann, Reinhold 1945 births Austrian physicists People associated with CERN Living people TU Wien alumni University of Vienna alumni Academic staff of the University of Vienna People from Reutte District Theoretical physicists Quantum physicists Weak interaction physicists 20th-century Austrian physicists 21st-century Austrian physicists