43 Facts About David Bohm

David Joseph Bohm was an American-Brazilian-British scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.

David Bohm believed that the brain, at the cellular level, works according to the mathematics of some quantum effects, and postulated that thought is distributed and non-localised just as quantum entities are.

David Bohm warned of the dangers of rampant reason and technology, advocating instead the need for genuine supportive dialogue, which he claimed could broaden and unify conflicting and troublesome divisions in the social world.

David Bohm abandoned Marxism in the wake of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956.

David Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to a Hungarian Jewish immigrant father, Samuel David Bohm, and a Lithuanian Jewish mother.

David Bohm was raised mainly by his father, a furniture-store owner and assistant of the local rabbi.

David Bohm attended Pennsylvania State College, graduating in 1939, and then the California Institute of Technology, for one year.

David Bohm then transferred to the theoretical physics group directed by Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, where he obtained his doctorate.

David Bohm lived in the same neighborhood as some of Oppenheimer's other graduate students and with them became increasingly involved in radical politics.

David Bohm was active in communist and communist-backed organizations, including the Young Communist League, the Campus Committee to Fight Conscription, and the Committee for Peace Mobilization.

David Bohm completed his PhD in 1943 by an unusual circumstance.

David Bohm later performed theoretical calculations for the Calutrons at the Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

David Bohm worked closely with Albert Einstein at the nearby Institute for Advanced Study.

In May 1949, the House Un-American Activities Committee called upon David Bohm to testify because of his previous ties to unionism and suspected communists.

David Bohm invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify, and he refused to give evidence against his colleagues.

In 1950, David Bohm was arrested for refusing to answer the committee's questions.

David Bohm was acquitted in May 1951, but Princeton had already suspended him.

David Bohm then left for Brazil to assume a professorship of physics at the University of Sao Paulo, at Jayme Tiomno's invitation and on the recommendation of both Einstein and Oppenheimer.

David Bohm's aim was not to set out a deterministic, mechanical viewpoint but to show that it was possible to attribute properties to an underlying reality, in contrast to the conventional approach.

David Bohm began to develop his own interpretation, the predictions of which agreed perfectly with the non-deterministic quantum theory.

David Bohm initially called his approach a hidden variable theory, but he later called it ontological theory, reflecting his view that a stochastic process underlying the phenomena described by his theory might one day be found.

David Bohm applied for and received Brazilian citizenship, but by law, had to give up his US citizenship; he was able to reclaim it only decades later, in 1986, after pursuing a lawsuit.

At the University of Sao Paulo, David Bohm worked on the causal theory that became the subject of his publications in 1952.

David Bohm was in contact with Brazilian physicists Mario Schenberg, Jean Meyer, Leite Lopes, and had discussions on occasion with visitors to Brazil, including Richard Feynman, Isidor Rabi, Leon Rosenfeld, Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, Herbert L Anderson, Donald Kerst, Marcos Moshinsky, Alejandro Medina, and the former assistant to Heisenberg, Guido Beck, who encouraged him in his work and helped him to obtain funding.

From 1951 to 1953, Bohm and David Pines published the articles in which they introduced the random phase approximation and proposed the plasmon.

In 1955 David Bohm relocated to Israel, where he spent two years working at the Technion, at Haifa.

In 1957, David Bohm relocated to the United Kingdom as a research fellow at the University of Bristol.

In 1961, David Bohm was made professor of theoretical physics at the University of London's Birkbeck College, becoming emeritus in 1987.

In collaboration with Stanford University neuroscientist Karl H Pribram, Bohm was involved in the early development of the holonomic model of the functioning of the brain, a model for human cognition that is drastically different from conventionally-accepted ideas.

David Bohm worked with Pribram on the theory that the brain operates in a manner that is similar to a hologram, in accordance with quantum mathematical principles and the characteristics of wave patterns.

David Bohm's views were brought into sharper focus through extensive interactions with the philosopher, speaker, and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti, beginning in 1961.

David Bohm recognizes and acknowledges the irony of the situation: it is as if one gets sick by going to the doctor.

David Bohm maintains that thought is a system, in the sense that it is an interconnected network of concepts, ideas and assumptions that pass seamlessly between individuals and throughout society.

David Bohm was keenly aware of various ideas outside the scientific mainstream.

Contrary to many other scientists, David Bohm did not exclude the paranormal out of hand.

Martin Gardner reported this in a Skeptical Inquirer article and critiqued the views of Jiddu Krishnamurti, with whom David Bohm had met in 1959 and had had many subsequent exchanges.

David Bohm suggested that if the "dialogue groups" were experienced on a sufficiently-wide scale, they could help overcome the isolation and fragmentation that David Bohm observed in society.

David Bohm continued his work in quantum physics after his retirement, in 1987.

David Bohm spoke to audiences across Europe and North America on the importance of dialogue as a form of sociotherapy, a concept he borrowed from London psychiatrist and practitioner of Group Analysis Patrick de Mare, and he had a series of meetings with the Dalai Lama.

David Bohm was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990.

David Bohm was admitted to the Maudsley Hospital in South London on 10 May 1991.

David Bohm's condition worsened and it was decided that the only treatment that might help him was electroconvulsive therapy.

David Bohm died after suffering a heart attack in Hendon, London, on 27 October 1992, aged 74.