Abner Shimony

Abner Shimony (born 1928, Columbus, Ohio) is an American physicist and philosopher of science specializing in quantum theory. He is currently Prof. Emeritus at Boston University, where he taught for several decades as a faculty member in both the physics and philosophy departments. Shimony obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1953 from Yale University, and in 1962 also obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner.

In 1996 he was awarded the Lakatos Award in the philosophy of science forthe two-volume collection of papers, "The Search for a Naturalistic World View", spanning his career up until 1992. He is best known for his work in developing the CHSH inequality, an empirically testable form of the Bell inequality, also known as Bell's theorem. In the period after 1992, he proposed a geometric measureof quantum entanglement and, along with Gregg Jaeger and Michael Horne, discovered two novel complementarity relations involving interferometric visibility in multiparticle quantum interferometry. He is also known for his inquiry into the question of the "peaceful coexistence" of quantum mechanics and special relativity. He has written numerous books and research articles on the foundations of quantum mechanics and related topics. Shimony is credited with the phrase "passion at a distance" to characterize the various phenomena described by quantum correlations.

Shimony served in the U. S. Army Signal Corps from 1953 to 1955. He served as president of the Philosophy of Science Association from 1995 to 1996.

Shimony's first wife was noted anthropologist Annemarie Anrod Shimony [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/shimony_annemarie.html] .

External links

* Shimony's article on Bell's theorem in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/]
* Detailed Biography [http://www.qpt.org.uk/articolo2.php?id_articolo=43]
* Major Publications [http://www.amazon.com/s/?search-alias=aps&field-keywords=abner%20shimony Books by Abner Shimony]
* Faculty Homepage [http://www.bu.edu/philo/faculty/shimony.html Abner Shimony]
* [http://www.bu.edu/alumni/cas/magazine/archives/2003/fall/shimony/photos/01.jpgPhoto of Abner Shimony early in his career.]
* A recent conference held at the Perimeter Institute in honour of Abner Shimony [http://perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/shimony/]
* Shimony conference talks at the Perimeter Institute [http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=113&Itemid=167&p=presentations]
*Former PhD Students
** [http://www2.bc.edu/~anderso/ Ronald Anderson] (Boston College)
** [http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30&Itemid=72&e=Long%20Term%20Visitors&cat_id=453&cat_table=3&e=Joy%20Christian%20&f=3&name=Joy%20Christian%20&resident_id=4625 Joy Christian] (Perimeter Institute)
** [http://faculty.stonehill.edu/mhorne/index.htm Michael Horne] (Stonehill College)
** [http://www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/ Don Howard] (University of Notre Dame)
** [http://people.bu.edu/jaeger Gregg Jaeger] (Boston University)
** [http://publish.uwo.ca/~wmyrvold/ Wayne Myrvold] (University of W. Ontario)