How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, David Kaiser W. W. Norton, New York, 2011. $26.95 (372 pp.). ISBN 978-0-393-07636-3
In How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, David Kaiser contends that a small group of graduate students “planted the seeds that would eventually flower into today’s field of quantum information science.” He would like to have us believe that this self-titled Fundamental Fysiks Group, with parallel efforts from “a few other isolated physicists, contributed to a sea change in how we think about information, communication, computation, and the subtle workings of the microworld.”
Starting in May 1975, the Fundamental Fysiks Group met weekly at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Their primary concern was the exploration of the foundations of quantum mechanics in search of explanations for parapsychological, or ‘psi,’ phenomena. From the “spooky actions at a distance” phenomena in the...
