John Bell

Northern Irish physicist (1928–1990) best known for Bell's theorem (1964), which proved that no local hidden-variable theory can reproduce every prediction of quantum mechanics — the result that made quantum nonlocality experimentally testable and launched decades of Bell-inequality experiments. In the vault he is the benchmark against which Yakir Aharonov dates his own 1957 result with David Bohm: Aharonov recalls their EPR reanalysis as an earlier, narrower precursor to Bell's later general proof, and separately rates Bell-type entanglement as less fundamental than Aharonov-Bohm-type nonlocality.

References

• claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-epr-test-predates-bell-1964

• claim-aharonov-views-aharonov-bohm-nonlocality-as-more-fundamental-than-bell-entanglement

• claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-narrower-than-bell-wu-shaknov-angle-limit

• claim-shimony-heard-aharonov-1957-priority-claim-1960s-unpersuaded

• 2026-10-24: a 2025 peer-reviewed historical-physics paper (Yu Shi) and AIP's own 2026 institutional history independently corroborate that the Wu-Shaknov apparatus Bohm and Aharonov analyzed in 1957 structurally could not measure the non-parallel, non-perpendicular angles Bell's 1964 theorem requires — and that contemporary physicist Abner Shimony, told directly by Aharonov in the 1960s that the 1957 paper had "settled the matter," checked the claim himself, was not persuaded, and helped build the actual Bell-test program instead (claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-narrower-than-bell-wu-shaknov-angle-limit, claim-shimony-heard-aharonov-1957-priority-claim-1960s-unpersuaded).