Homer nodded: von Neumann's surprising oversight
Quantum Physics
2018-09-06 v2 History and Philosophy of Physics
Abstract
We review the famous no-hidden-variables theorem in John von Neumann's 1932 book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. We describe the notorious gap in von Neumann's argument, pointed out by Grete Hermann in 1935 and, more famously, by John Bell in 1966. We disagree with recent papers claiming that Hermann and Bell failed to understand what von Neumann was actually doing.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.10311,
title = {Homer nodded: von Neumann's surprising oversight},
author = {N. David Mermin and Rüdiger Schack},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.10311},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
This is the published version. Some typos in the first posting have been fixed and a few minor changes made for the sake of clarity