---
title: "Wendell Furry"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Wendell Furry"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["EPR paradox","classical-mixture hypothesis","David Bohm","Yakir Aharonov","quantum foundations"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


American theoretical physicist who in 1936 proposed that once two entangled particles separate, their joint quantum state effectively reduces to a classical probabilistic mixture of individually determinate product states — the "most natural" classical account of how particles that were once entangled could still show correlations after separating. In the vault he is the specific, named rival hypothesis that [[entity-david-bohm|David Bohm]] and [[entity-yakir-aharonov|Yakir Aharonov]]'s 1957 calculation tested against the Wu-Shaknov data and found wanting: the entangled-state prediction matched the measured coincidence rate, Furry's classical-mixture prediction did not.

## References
- [[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-ruled-out-furry-mixture-not-all-classical-accounts]]