More variations on Aharonov-Bohm

The article by Herman Batelaan and Akira Tonomura on the Aharonov-Bohm effect brought back memories of a conference I attended at the University of South Carolina in 1989 commemorating both the 30th anniversary of the Aharonov-Bohm paper and the 5th anniversary of the 1984 paper by Michael Berry that introduced the geometric, now known as the Berry phase.

David Bohm, Yakir Aharonov, and Berry were all present. I particularly recall a plenary talk given by Bohm. In it, he expressed astonishment that certain physicists refused to accept the AB effect and even went to great lengths to try to disprove it. As he said, “It would be much more revolutionary for this effect to be wrong than for it to be right,” since it was a clear consequence of fundamental quantum mechanics.

I considered his remark very Bohmian, in that (a) no one else would have said it that way, and (b) once uttered, it was obviously true. Bohm’s habit, in his soft-spoken way, of making such blindingly original statements is one of the things I most remember about this unorthodox and profound thinker.