Asher Peres

Asher Peres (Hebrew: אשר פרס‎; January 30, 1934 – January 1, 2005) was an Israeli physicist, considered a pioneer in quantum information theory, as well as the connections between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

According to his autobiography, he was born Aristide Pressman in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in France, where his father, a Polish electrical engineer, had found work laying down power lines. He was given the name Aristide at birth, because the name his parents wanted, Asher, the name of his maternal grandfather, was not on the list of permissible French given names. When he went to live in Israel, he changed his first name to Asher and, as was common among immigrants, changed his family name to the Hebrew Peres, which he used for the rest of his life.

Peres obtained his Ph.D. in 1959 at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology under Nathan Rosen. Peres spent most of his academic career at Technion, where in 1988 he was appointed distinguished professor of physics.

Peres is well known for his work relating quantum mechanics and information theory, an approach which is extensively used in his textbook referenced below. Among other things, he helped to develop the Peres-Horodecki criterion for quantum entanglement, as well as the concept of quantum teleportation, and collaborated with others on quantum information and special relativity. He also introduced the Peres metric and researched the Hamilton–Jacobi–Einstein equation in general relativity. With M. Feingold, he published what is known to mathematicians as the Feingold-Peres conjecture and to physicists as the Feingold-Peres theory.

He died in Haifa, Israel.

References

In 2003 Asher Peres proposed one answer to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen puzzle of quantum entanglement otherwise deemed "Spooky action at a distance" (Glick 365). Asher Peres thought that information is physical and Einsteins puzzle came too early. He thought that Claude E. Shannon's information theory could answer the problem (Glick 366). He stated "Information is not just an abstract notion. It requires a physical carrier, and the latter is (approximately) localized. After all, it was the business of the Bell Telephone Company to transport information from one telephone to another telephone, in a different location...When Alice measures her spin, the information she gets is localized at her position, and will remain so until she decides to broadcast it. Absolutely nothing happens at Bob's location...It is only when Alice informs Bob of the result she got (by mail, telephone, radio, or by means other than material carrier, which is naturally restricted to the speed of light) that Bob realizes that his particle has definite pure state (Glick 367). Peres thought that much of the quantum theory was too abstract and distanced itself from real life, and that in essence was the problem which Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen addressed. This attempted to embody the transactions made from quantum entanglement.

<James Gleick. "The Information: A History, A Theory, and A Flood". Published from Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, New York 2011.>

Further reading

• Asher Peres, I am the cat who walks by himself

External links

• A. Peres, I am the cat who walks by himself, Foundations of Physics, 36 1 (2006) (Autobiography, published 2004).
• List of publications Foundations of Physics, 36 157-173 (2006).
• N. Lindner, P. Scudo and D. R. Terno: Asher Peres, 1934-2005 (obituary by his students).
• L. Peres Hari: Asher Peres, 1943-2005 (obituary by his daughter).
• "Asher Peres", a 5 January 2005 weblog entry by Michael Nielsen