David Bohm

(Pennsylvania, USA, 1917-Hendon, United Kingdom, 1992)

Quantum physicist, he studied physics at the California Institute of Technology and received his doctorate from Berkeley. He made important contributions to the fields of theoretical physics, epistemology, and neuropsychology. He was a professor at Princeton University (1947-51) and collaborated with Albert Einstein, but he was subject to persecution by Senator McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities, before which he refused to testify, which led to the loss of his job. employment and his departure to Brazil, where he held a professorship in physics at the University of São Paulo (1951-55). He worked on quantum mechanics and relativity theory. His work on the diffusion of plasma through magnetic fields served as the basis for what is known as Bohm's diffusion theory. In 1955 he moved to the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) and then to the British University of Bristol (1957-61). In the United Kingdom, he discovered, together with his doctoral student Yakir Aharonov, the Aharonov-Bohm effect (1959), according to which the interference between two beams of electrons can be modified by the presence of a magnetic field. In 1961, he obtained a professorship in theoretical physics at Birkbeck College, University of London. In his last scientific period, he worked in the field of neuropsychology. He reformulated the way of understanding the quantum nature of the world, with a view to addressing a greater phenomenological reality, the psyche. The whole of his work offers a coherent, rich and dynamic worldview, which integrates consciousness into a unity of energy, mind and matter.