Infinite Potential: the life and ideas of David Bohm

World premiere. Saturday 20th June at 8pm BST

This Saturday sees the world premiere – now taking place online – of a new feature-length documentary which sheds light on the life, ideas and work of the influential Birkbeck scientist David Bohm whose archive is held here at the Library.

The film, titled Infinite Potential, draws together contributions from a host of eminent guests from different fields, demonstrating the depth and breadth of Bohm’s mind. Those featured include not only long-time collaborators quantum physicist Professor Basil Hiley and theoretical physicist Yakir Aharanov, but also H.H. the Dalai Lama and sculptor Sir Antony Gormley.

Hiley describes Bohm as a “radical independent thinker”. Bohm had a unique way of looking at physics and his philosophical views were inseparably intertwined with the science. This holistic approach meant that he actively worked also with people from outside the subject area. Bohm’s ground-breaking work remains relevant today and informs current research which has the potential to radically change our world view in the future.

The online world premiere screening of Infinite Potential is free: you only need to sign up via the film’s website in order to attend.

Image of the poster for the film. It shows David Bohm against a mixed background of blue, orange and red swirls overlaid with equations.

The screening will be followed by a live panel discussion and Q&A session with director Paul Howard and other special guests, including Professor Basil Hiley.

Who is David Bohm? 

David Bohm (1917–1992) had an interesting and varied life, a significant part of which was spent as Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck, from 1961 until his retirement in 1983.  

Black and white photo showing a smiling David Bohm in suit jacket, shirt, tie and jumper.

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Bohm went on to study at Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1939. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology for post-graduate work, going on to complete his PhD in 1943 at the University of California at Berkeley under J. R. Oppenheimer. He subsequently worked on the Manhattan Project at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. You can listen to David Bohm talk about J. R. Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project in an interview from 1979 as part of the Voices of the Manhattan Project oral history. 
 
In 1947 he was appointed Assistant Professor at Princeton University. He worked there until 1950, when Princeton refused to renew his contract after he had fallen foul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). While working at the Radiation Laboratory during the war, Bohm had been active in the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FAECT) trade union.  

In 1949, as Cold War tensions increased, the Committee on Un-American Activities had begun investigating staff who had worked at the Radiation Laboratory. As a member of FAECT and as a former member of the Communist Party, Bohm came under suspicion. He was called upon to testify before the Committee but pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to give evidence against colleagues, including J. R. Oppenheimer. After the USSR tested its first atomic device in September 1949 it was thought that atomic bomb secrets must have been passed to the USSR. It was alleged that members of the FAECT had been in a Communist cell working at Berkeley during the war.  

In 1950 Bohm was charged with Contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the Committee and arrested. He was acquitted in May 1951, but Princeton had already suspended Bohm and after his acquittal refused to renew his contract. Bohm left for Brazil in 1951 to take up a Chair in Physics at the University of São Paulo. In 1955 he moved to Israel where he spent two years at the Technion at Haifa. Here he met his wife Saral, who was an important figure in the development of his ideas. In 1957 Bohm moved to the UK. He held a research fellowship at the University of Bristol until 1961, when he was made Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck in London. He retired in 1983 but continued to play an active role. 

Black and white photo of David Bohm, again in suit jacket, jumper, shirt and tie, this time looking serious and wearing glasses.

Bohm made several significant contributions to physics, particularly in the area of quantum mechanics. As a post-graduate at Berkeley he discovered the electron phenomenon now known as ‘Bohm-diffusion‘. His first book, Quantum Theory, published in 1951, was well received by Einstein among others. However, Bohm wasn’t satisfied with the orthodox approach to quantum theory and began to develop his own, expressed in his second book, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, published in 1957.  

In 1959, with his student Yakir Aharonov, he discovered the ‘Aharonov-Bohm effect‘, showing how a vacuum could produce striking physical effects. His third book, The Special Theory of Relativity, was published in 1965.  

During his 20 plus years at Birkbeck, Bohm and Professor Basil Hiley were colleagues, discussing a wide range of topics and writing many papers together. In his biographical memoir of Bohm, Hiley recounts: “our original investigations had as their focus the need to develop a new conceptual order in which to accommodate both quantum mechanics and relativity in a more coherent way, hopefully without their present conceptual problems and their mathematical infinities. This involved excursions into other disciplines like philosophy, biology, language and even art.” At the time Bohm died, he and Hiley were putting together the final details of the book that they had been working on, The Undivided Universe. 

Bohm’s scientific and philosophical views were inseparable. After reading a book by the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti in 1959, he was struck with how his own ideas on quantum mechanics meshed with the philosophy of Krishnamurti. The two first met in 1961 and over the following years had many conversations or dialogues. Bohm’s approach to philosophy and physics is expressed in his 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and in the book Science, Order and Creativity, written with F. D. Peat and published in 1987. F. D. Peat also appears in the new documentary.

In his later years, partly through his connection with Krishnamurti, Bohm developed the technique of Dialogue, in which a group of individuals engaged in constructive verbal interaction with each other. He believed that if carried out on a sufficiently wide scale these Dialogues could help overcome fragmentation in society. Bohm led a number of Dialogues in the 1980s and early 1990s, the most well-known being those held at the Ojai Grove School in California.  

Bohm was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990. He died in 1992.  

Black and white photo showing David and his wife. He wears his suit jacket, jumper, shirt and tie. They both smile at the camera.
David and Saral

Read more about Bohm’s life and work in the following: 
B. J. Hiley, ‘David Joseph Bohm’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 43, 105–131 (1997). 

The David Bohm Archive at Birkbeck Library

Following Bohm’s death, Birkbeck took the first deposit of his papers and correspondence in 1997: this was the start of the David Bohm Archive at Birkbeck. You can find out more about what is held in the David Bohm Archive at Birkbeck on the Archives Hub, along with links out to other organisations holding related material.  

If you have any questions about the Bohm Archive at Birkbeck please contact Emma Illingworth, Subject Librarian (School of Science), Birkbeck Library.

2 Replies to “Infinite Potential: the life and ideas of David Bohm”

  1. Back in 1977 at Birkbeck I had a day with David Bohm and eight other graduate students.

    Points, lines, triangles, tetrahedrons, octahedrons… I had been a Synectics facilitator so I
    encouraged us to go inside those objects. We didn’t do a very good job of discovering
    the perfections and imperfections of simplicity. In 2011, with a high school geometry class,
    we finally went inside and climbed down the 112 steps to the Planck base units. Upon
    our return to the classroom, we went out the 90 doublings to the age and size of the universe.
    What an adventure:
    https://81018.com/home/ is an overview.
    https://81018.com/stem/ is our early introduction. And,
    https://81018.com/chart/ is all the numbers.

    I know that David would have been joyful to be among us those days. In spirit, I think he was.

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