Does Bohm and Aharonov's 1957 Physical Review paper actually show quantum correlations exceed the natural classical account, ahead of Bell 1964?
claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-epr-test-predates-bell-1964 rests on Yakir Aharonov's 2026 oral-history recollection that his 1957 paper with David Bohm (Physical Review 108, 1957) used Wu and Shaknov's 1950 photon-polarization experiment to show quantum correlations beat the most natural classical explanation — years before Bell's 1964 theorem. This is a priority and mechanism claim about a 69-year-old paper, recalled decades later; per the oral-history sourcing note, such claims need a contemporaneous record before they carry full weight.
What would resolve this:
- Read Bohm and Aharonov, 1957, Phys. Rev. 108:1070 directly — what, precisely, does the paper claim to show?
- Read Wu and Shaknov, 1950, Phys. Rev. 77:136 — confirm the experiment's original design and results as Aharonov describes them.
- Check whether any contemporaneous (1950s–60s) secondary literature already credits Bohm and Aharonov with anticipating Bell-type results, or whether this framing is a retrospective (2026) reading back onto the 1957 work.
- Compare against Bell, 1964, Physics 1:195, to assess how directly comparable the two results actually are.
Never force closure on a thin re-read; this needs the actual 1957 paper, not a summary of it.
Progress, 2026-10-24 (partial — left open): a follow-up capture assembled three independent-reader characterizations of the 1957 paper's content via secondary sources that quote or closely analyze the primary text (Peter Milonni's 2025 Physics Today letter, quoting the paper verbatim at p. 1075; Yu Shi's 2025 peer-reviewed historical-physics paper; AIP's 2026 institutional history, drawing on Joan Bromberg's oral-history interviews with Abner Shimony and John Clauser). This makes real progress on two of the four resolution criteria above:
- Contemporaneous secondary literature — settled, strongly: Aharonov was already telling contemporaries in the 1960s that the 1957 paper "had settled the matter." Abner Shimony, told this directly, checked the claim against the Wu-Shaknov data himself, was not persuaded, and went on to co-found the actual Bell-test program (claim-shimony-heard-aharonov-1957-priority-claim-1960s-unpersuaded). This is not a 2026 retrospective framing.
- Comparison against Bell 1964 — partially addressed: the Wu-Shaknov apparatus structurally could only measure parallel or perpendicular polarizations, never the intermediate angles Bell's inequality requires, and the 1957 calculation targeted one named classical rival (Furry's 1936 mixture hypothesis), not every classical account (claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-ruled-out-furry-mixture-not-all-classical-accounts, claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-narrower-than-bell-wu-shaknov-angle-limit).
Still unresolved — the first two criteria remain open: Bohm & Aharonov, 1957, Phys. Rev. 108:1070 and Wu & Shaknov, 1950, Phys. Rev. 77:136 have not yet been read directly by this vault (APS paywall; not yet attempted against journals.aps.org or the DOI directly — see the capture's further leads). All three new claim-notes above reduce, at least in part, to independent readers' characterizations of the same unread primary, not to an independent direct read. Status stays open until at least one of the two primaries is read directly.