“Professor Hess was the first (with Prof. Walter Philipp) who proposed to treat time as a kind of hidden variable and criticized the frequentist proofs of the Bell inequality. And this excellent book is about Hess’s position, about stormy debates in which he actively participated during the Växjö series of conferences on reconsideration of quantum foundations. This book is about intriguing and still unsolved problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics as well as about its great future, its future beyond the Copenhagenian prison.”
~Prof. Andrei Khrennikov, Linnaeus University, Sweden
“This book is indispensable to anyone who is interested in knowing how paradoxes in physics are created, cultivated and resolved. It paves the way for the demystification of the alleged mysteries of quantum physics.”
~Prof. Hans De Raedt, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
“This book describes in an empathic way the clash between two great minds in science. Did Bell definitely change the way we should look at nature, or was Einstein right after all? The author makes a convincing case.”
~Prof. Theo Nieuwenhuizen, University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
“We often hear that experiments have revealed unmistakable violations of the Bell inequalities and, therefore, that nature allows instantaneous influence over long distances. In Einstein Was Right! Karl Hess convincingly shows that both claims are overstated. This happy blend of solid science, accessible prose and personal recollections summarizes 15 years of research and debate with colleagues, collaborators and opponents.”
~Prof. Louis Marchildon, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
“The book is a personal account of Hess about his attempts with his coworker Walter Philipp, and after Philipp succumbed to heart failure during a mountaineering trip in 2006, with his collaborators Hans De Raedt and Kristel Michielsen. Hess graduated in Physics in Vienna, Austria, and is now retired professor from the University of Illinois, Urbana. Philipp also was Austrian, specialized in probability theory and a colleague of Hess at the University of Illinois. Together, they have published several papers refuting the application of the Bell inequality to prove the non-locality of QM. Their main point is that the inequality only holds if all the stochastic variables are independent. However, in their opinion they are not because the hidden local variables that are not taken into account is time, or spacetime in a more general setting. This would explain the violation of the inequality in the experiment without the need for the spooky action.
“Hess gives a chronological account of his collaborating conquest of the material. Their publications got opposition from the QM establishment, and not always in the most amicable or respectful way. The material of course is not very simple, but Hess avoids a mathematical treatment and explains again and again with different analogies and rephrasings that it all comes down to countering their opponents with the dependency on spacetime. To read the text, one is not required to know anything about relativity theory or quantum mechanics. Just adding plus and minus ones suffices. At some point Hess explains the basic notion of probability and stochastic variables, but that is about the most ‘difficult’ part.”
~European Mathematical Society
“Many books on this topic tend to either lose the reader in a mathematical maze or paint a picture with the broadest brushstrokes possible. Hess manages to strike an incredible balance, however. . . . He doesn’t fall into the trap of relying on maths wholeheartedly to express his views. He continuously engages the reader by tackling concepts many have seen popularised throughout pop culture such as teleportation and space-time. . . . I admire Hess’ bravery in tackling a subject renowned for its infinite complexity—it’s a trait he clearly shares with the human subject at the heart of his book.”
~Matt Gunther, Chemistry World
