University of Texas
Arno Rudolf Bohm
April 26, 1936–December 29, 2024

 

 

Arno R. Bohm

Born April 26, 1936 in Stettin, Pomme, Germany.

Prof. Bohm joined UT-Austin in 1968. He was a member of the Center for Particles and Fields.  

Prof. Bohm earned his Diploma and Doctorate from the Philipps-Universität Marburg in 1966 with Professor Günther Ludwig. His dissertation was entitled, "Über die dynamischen Gruppen und ihre Anwendungen." ("About Dynamic Groups and Their Applications") His research interests included group theoretical methods in particle physics, the idea of the spectrum-generating group, relativistic spectrum-generating group, and relativistic collective models. He also carried out research on the quantum geometric phase and foundations and applications in molecule physics.

He married Sharita Fatima Hagjue in 1965, they were divorced in 1988. They had three children, daughter, Anita B. Bohm; sons Rudolf A. Bohm and Arun Y. Bohm. He married Darlene Cutler Wiley on May 2, 1990, in Austin, Texas, Darlene held the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Opera at the University of Texas at Austin.

Arno Rudolf Bohm Obituary

Arno Rudolf Bohm, an accomplished quantum physicist and longtime professor at The University of Texas at Austin, died December 29, 2024, in Austin at age 88.

He was most well-known for his book Quantum Mechanics, which was translated into Russian and Hindi, as well as for ideas of “rigged representations” of Hilbert Space. During his long career, Bohm authored five books (totaling 11 editions) and 118 journal articles on physics and math, and he spoke at more than 50 conferences. At UT, Bohm taught a wide range of physics courses including graduate courses on mathematical physics and quantum theory and supervised 19 Ph.D. students. 

Born April 26, 1936, .in Stettin, Germany (now Poland), Bohm studied mathematical physics in Neustreliz. He left his family in East Germany to attend the Frei Universität in West Berlin. The move caused a geopolitical separation wound that never healed, but it provided him political asylum, and he finished his Ph.D. in Berlin in theoretical physics. He was a scientific assistant in Karlsruhe and a research fellow in Marburg, Germany. His research then took him to the beautiful Adriatic seaport of Trieste, Italy, where he worked at the UNESCO International Center for Theoretical Physics with a team of budding international physicists and fell in love with an international community dedicated to knowledge. After joining the physics team at Syracuse University in New York, he followed George Sudarshan, a colleague he met in Trieste, to the University of Texas at Austin, where he became an associate professor in 1968. 

There he published the first edition of Quantum Mechanics and built international collaborations. His years in Trieste had taught him the beauty of the international community, where one’s creativity and depth of knowledge translated into authority, and his Ph.D. student Mark Loewe said that Bohm’s different approach set the book apart and established it as a seminal text on quantum theory. His dedication to international knowledge was during a time when the scientific world was split between East and West, and he often delivered prizes to Russian physicists. Along with 3 colleagues, he created the Group Theory and Fundamental Physics Foundation at UT that awarded the Wigner Medal, which Bohm would steward. Other international collaborations were his style. He collaborated often with physicists in Mexico. Some of his collaborators at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, such as Augusto Garcia and Piotr Kielanowski, worked on initial editions of Quantum Mechanics and continued to work with him on manuscripts. Like President Jimmy Carter who died on the same day, he worked with Israelis and Egyptians (Drs. Ne’eman and Komi) and strove to represent both perspectives. He also worked extensively with Spanish physicist Manuel Gadella. Among his honors, he garnered the Humboldt Award from the Max Plank Institute in Garching, Germany; held the Elena Aizen de Moshinsky Chair at the National University of Mexico; was a senior Fullbright Fellow at Tel Aviv University in Israel; and won the Humboldt Prize from the Werner Heisenberg Institute in Munich. 

He is survived by his daughter, Anita B. Bohm; sons Rudolf A. Bohm and Arun Y. Bohm; their mother, Sharifa Fatima Bohm; and his wife, Darlene C. Wiley-Bohm. There will be a Celebration of Life on his birthday, April 26, 2025 at The University of Texas where a poem by Rabindranath Tagore from Gitanjali will be read (a favorite). His family asks that in lieu of flowers or gifts, donations be made to a physics scholarship for TAMUK students named in his honor. Please contact Rudi Bohm for details on celebration and donations.

 

APPOINTMENTS:

Professor  University of Texas at Austin 1975--present
Associate Professor  University of Texas at Austin 1968--1975
Research Associate  Syracuse University, N.Y. 1966--1968
IAEA Research Fellow  International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy 10/64--5/66
Research Fellow  University of Marburg, Germany 4/64--9/64
Wissenschaftl. Assistant  Technical University, Karlsruhe, Germany 1963--1964

Visiting Appointments: Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goteborg, Sweden; Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany (several appointments, 1971-81); Solvay Institute, Brussels, Belgium (1979); University of Würzburg, Germany (Humbold Prize Awardee, 1982); Tel Aviv University, Israel (Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Fellow, 1981; Senior Fulbright Fellow, 1987); National University of Mexico (Elena Aizen de Moshinsky Chair, 1997); Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany (Humboldt Award 1999/2000).

 

RECENT PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

Member, Standing Committee for the International Group Theory Colloquia; Chairman and Founder, Group Theory and Fundamental Physics Foundation (which administers the Wigner Medal); Organizer, Symposium on Semigroups, Goslar, Germany (1996); Co-organizer, The NATO Summer Institute in Salamanca, Spain (1992); Organizer, The First Workshop on Time Asymmetric Quantum Physics and Rigged Hilbert Space Mathematics (1998); Director, The Second and Third Workshops on Time Asymmetric Quantum Physics and Rigged Hilbert Space Mathematics, Clausthal, Germany (1999 and 2000)


RESEARCH:

Group theoretical methods in particle physics, the idea of the spectrum generating group, relativistic spectrum generating group and relativistic collective models. Also research on the quantum geometric phase and foundations and applications in molecule physics (1989-93). Work on the rigged Hilbert space formulation of quantum mechanics (1964-66), with applications to decay and Golden Rule, time evolution semigroup (1975-81), irreversible quantum theory (1993-2001).

PUBLICATIONS  RELATED TO TIME ASYMMETRIC QUANTUM THEORY:

OTHER SIGNIFICANT PUBLICATIONS:


Wigner Medal Bio for Arno Bohm

From Wigner Medal Website

Arno Rudolf Bohm studied Physics in West Berlin, finishing his Ph.D. in 1966 at the Free University of Berlin under the supervision of Prof G. Ludwig. The title of his dissertation was Spectrum Generating Groups. During the next two years he served as Post-Doctoral Researcher at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (Italy) and another two years at the Syracuse University in New York. In 1968, He moved onto The University of Texas at Austin as Associate Professor with tenure and in 1975 became Full Professor, where he stayed until his recent retirement as Professor Emeritus.

During his years in Berlin, he was working in diverse problems in Quantum Field Theory and collaborated with M. Polivanov, one of the advocators of string theory. During his time in Trieste, he collaborated with A.O. Barut in one of his more long lasting scientific quests: the study of dynamic groups. Dynamic groups and their algebra not only provide of an interpretation of symmetries on quantum systems, they also provide of values of physical magnitudes of these systems, in particular values of the energy, mass of quantum particles, etc. We may say that this became one of his main areas of interest as he moved to the University of Texas and the forthcoming years. We may say that his contribution to this field was impressive, publishing an amount of more than 90 scientific articles on the subject.

Because of this interest and research productivity, Prof Bohm welcomed his first graduate students who were eager to collaborate. Two of his earliest graduate students were Bruce Mainland and Robert Teese. At the same time, he collaborated with distinguished colleagues both from the USA and abroad, such that E.C. G. Sudarshan, A. García, J. Werle, W. Beiglbock, Y. Neeman, P. Kielanowski and L.C. Biedenharn. Other Ph. D. students that worked on this area were, R. Aldinger, M. Loewe, P. Moylan, P. Magnollay, M. Kmieck, Yoshiro Sato, Nathan Harshman, Peter Bryant, Hani Kaldass, R.C. Bishop, Haydar Uncu, Hai Bui, Brian Kendrick to name a few. All have obtained positions in different Institutions in both in the U.S and throughout the world.

Prof. Bohm continued his involvement and interactions with his students after graduation. He always opened doors for them and offering possibilities to work with other colleagues. He promoted his ex Ph. D. students for post-doctoral positions, thanks largely to his scientific connections in Europe, mainly in Germany but also in other countries like Italy, Egypt or Belgium. His generosity is well documented. He always helped his former students or collaborators to improve their position or to find new professional relationships or opportunities and he did this without any compensation whatsoever.

In science, it is natural that the study of one subject drives to the study of other ones, not only those clearly connected to the former. Thus in the 80’s, Prof. Bohm moved in a natural fashion from Dynamic Groups and the study of Quantum Particles and onto the analysis of extended objects, such as quantum strings or the quantum relativistic rotator. Here, he had a new collaborator, L.J. Boya from Spain with whom he has analyzed other problems such as Supersymmetries or some quantum singular objects including the one dimensional hydrogen atom with its multiple subtleties.

At the beginning of the nineties a new subject came with great impetus, it was the problem of the geometric phases, according to which quantum systems may not reach the original state after an evolution with an end coinciding with its point of departure. This study requires a knowledge of Differential Geometry and Prof Bohm underwent its study. He published half a dozen articles on the subject. One of his coauthors was A. Mostafazadeh. The most interesting contributions were published in the book The Geometric Phase in Quantum Systems, by A. Bohm, A. Mostafazadeh, H. Koizumi, Q. Niu, J. Zwanzinger, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2003.

At this time, Prof. Bohm has already written the ground-breaking volume, Quantum Mechanics: Foundations and Applications, Springer Verlag, Berlin and New York, first edition 1979. It has become a masterpiece among the pedagogical texts of this subject. This book has acknowledged two more editions, one in 1986 and another one, enlarged with the recent finds on Geometrical Phases, in 1993, plus translations into Russian and Mandarin. This book has been used across the globe as a textbook by many.

It was P.A.M. Dirac who made the first attempt to mathematically formalize quantum mechanics. However, Dirac did not have at this time sufficient tools to make his great formalism mathematically rigorous. The von Neumann formulation using Hilbert spaces and operators on these structures, later continued and completed by many scientists, did not satisfy the requirements of the Dirac construction.

Based on previous works of some mathematicians, I.M. Gel’fand invented the today known as Gel’fand triplets or Rigged Hilbert Spaces in order to help to classify representations of Lie algebras. Nevertheless with K. Maurin, they have shown a spectral theorem that fits quite well with the representation formula for observables proposed by Dirac. This result is today known as the Gal’fand-Maurin Theorem.

Thanks to his international connections and his knowledge of the Russian language, Prof. Bohm immediately realized the importance of this result. As soon as 1964, he had published on the Lecture Notes of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste the article Rigged Hilbert Spaces, where it was shown for the first time the need of this structure in order to give a rigorous meaning to the Dirac formulation. Later in 1966, he published the article Rigged Hilbert Spaces and Mathematical Description of Physical Systems. These two papers were seminal and in the subsequent years, works dealing with the mathematical basis of the Dirac formulation in terms of Rigged Hilbert Spaces (RHS) appear with the signature of qualified mathematical physicists. Among them, J.E. Roberts, J.P. Antoine or O. Melsheimer.

Quantum Theory of resonances and unstable quantum systems was an unresolved puzzle in the seventies. The fact that the decay of most quantum unstable systems, such as elementary particles, during practically all times of observation with the instruments available at that time, were exponential, implied some epistemological contradictions. First of all, time evolutions are produced by self-adjointing Hamiltonians, which give unitary time evolutions, which seems to be incompatible with exponential decays. Then, vector states for unstable quantum systems, henceforth called Gamow states, have to be eigenvectors of self-adjoint Hamiltonians with complex eigenvalues, a fact inconsistent with the Hilbert space formulation of quantum mechanics. Prof Bohm soon realized that the formulation on RHS solved the puzzle. This research was reported on a series of articles published between 1979 and 1981 in Letters in Mathematical Physics or Journal of Mathematical Physics.

It is perhaps noteworthy to say that in his book Quantum Mechanics: Theory and Applications he already introduced the RHS formalism as well as a primer on the description resonance phenomena with RHS, so that his students were the first ones in contact with this formalism.

All these works lead naturally to the notion of irreversibility in quantum mechanics produced by quantum unstable systems. RHS constructed with the help of some complex analytic functions on a half plane (Hardy functions) seem to help with this situation. This idea lead to a collaboration between Prof Bohm and coworkers with a group lead by the Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and coworkers, mainly I. Antoniou. The construction of RHS with Hardy functions and its applications to quantum resonances was published in a book: A. Bohm, M. Gadella Dirac Kets, Gamow Vectors and Gelfand Triplets, Springer Lecture Notes in Physics, vol. 348, New York, 1989. Prof. Bohm studied later the possible relation between quantum irreversibility and an arrow of time, in several articles. Some of his last Ph.D. students wrote their Dissertations on this subject.

Prof Bohm was very active internationally, delivering numerous scientific talks in many universities in Europe or America, as well as contributions to a big number of international conferences. He was member of the Standing Committee that organized the biannual International Group Theory Colloquia and awarded the prestigious Wigner Medal to prominent scientists distinguished by their contribution of Group Theory in Physics.

Prof Bohm has been, in addition of an outstanding scientist, a great and motivating teacher. Many students which have taken his courses mainly in Austin may certify this assert. He gave many opportunities to students from sharing his knowledge and ideas to give them opportunities away Austin, particularly in Europe. This was motivated by his generosity and his desire of help, which show his great quality as human being. This last mentioned quality of him is the one that I particularly want to underline. He was always very helpful and of great support to his friends. He instilled confidence with all who worked with him.

In 1978 the Group Theory Colloquium was organized at the University of Texas at Austin and the organizer was Prof. Bohm. During the Colloquium he wanted to honor Eugene Wigner for his great contributions in the study of symmetries in physics and also to recognize new contributions in the same field.

To honor Eugene Wigner with the Medal with his name was simple, but not easy to obtain Wigner’s approval and secure the support of the scientific community. Invaluable help was provided by John Archibald Wheeler, Wigner’s close friend from Princeton. John Wheeler in 1976, at age of 65, retired from Princeton and accepted an offer from the University of Texas at Austin, where he stayed next 10 years.

John Wheeler was an extraordinary person. He may be the only physicist, who was the Ph.D. adviser of the two Nobel Prize winners. He loved teaching and he loved helping people, so he provided expertise and moral support to his young colleague, office neighbor and friend, Arno Bohm, in establishing the Wigner Medal. To ensure its future and continuity, the Wigner Medal was administered by the Group Theory and Fundamental Physics Foundation, with Prof. Bohm as its Chair from its inception until his death in 2024.

For the history of the Wigner Medal and Arno Bohm's contribution to its creation see: Wigner Medal History

Arno Bohm's Early Life written by his wife, Darlene Wiley

One of Arno's former doctoral students recently inquired about his early life. In truth, Arno never spoke about his childhood. It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 that he began, occasionally, to share glimpses of his experiences growing up in East Germany.

In the final years of his life, as he struggled with hallucinations, childhood memories of the Nazi regime and its atrocities would vividly resurface. These episodes revealed the deep and lasting impact that era had left on him. Arno was acutely aware of the scale of suffering inflicted during that time. Though he himself had endured hardship, he never failed to acknowledge that millions had suffered far more. His compassion for others was profound and unwavering.

Arno possessed a clear, unflinching and deep understanding of the total destruction wrought by Hitler’s regime. For him, the moral and historical consequences of that period were deeply personal. His relationship with his own national identity was conflicted throughout his life.

Arno was born in 1936 in Stettin, Germany—now Szczecin, Poland. His father was a civil engineer during the war building highways, airfields, bridges and secretly worked for the underground resistance as a Social Democrat from the very beginning of Hitler’s ascension. After the war in a matter of a few months, disillusioned, his father left the Communist Party hierarchy—on one condition: that his sons could still attend university.


Until 1944, Arno’s childhood was idyllic—loving parents, a beautiful home overlooking the Oder River. Then came the evacuation.  Arno, his mother, grandmother, and brother were ordered to walk to Damgarten, 250 kilometers from Stettin, pushing a baby buggy with what they could carry. They slept in barns, a few safe houses, avoided patrols, and scavenged for food. Once they arrived at Damgarten, they were ordered to return to Stettin and spent two months on a coal barge in the Baltic, exposed to the elements. From there, they were loaded onto Russian Army trucks and taken to Schwerin.


In postwar Schwerin, life was tough: food and coal were scarce, erratic schooling, and brutal Russian patrols. Their 2-room apartment housed not only Arno’s family of five but also a revolving door of Russian officers and their girlfriends. Finally in 1949, they moved to Neustrelitz and his intellectual gifts began to emerge. His math and physics teachers saw promise, offering him physics books in German and Russian and complex math problems beyond his years. (His buddies would give him chocolate to do their homework.)


He also had a Russian teacher—an exiled aristocrat—who helped him master Russian. That skill would become essential in his later research on the Rigged Hilbert Space.

Upon his Abitur in 1955 at the Gymnasium Carolinum, Arno enrolled in civil engineering in Dresden at the Technische Hochschule—following in his father’s footsteps.  He found the coursework for engineering tedious so after one semester, he escaped by train to West Berlin in the spring of 1957.  And this time, he studied exactly what he desired; mathematics with Kähler and physics with Ludwig.

 

Arno R. Bohm Photo Album
Arno Rudolf Bohm
Arno Rudolf Bohm

Arno Bohm and Nobel Prize Scientist, Eugene Wigner.

 

Arno Bohm presenting Wigner Medal to Professor Joshua Zak, 2014
Joshua Zak Technion, Haifa, Israel for his discovery of the magnetic translation group and the phase and transform that bear his name.
The ceremony for the Wigner Medal took place on July 16, 2014 in the Aula Academica of Ghent University, a historical building dating from 1826.
Photo by Nic Vermeulen

 

Professor Joshua Zak with Wigner Medal and family and friends, 2014
Arno and Darlene are behind woman in white blouse.
Photo by Nic Vermeulen

 
Arno Bohm in his UT office with student.
Arno Bohm and Peter Riley
Eugene Wigner, John Wheeler, Larry Biedenharn, ?, Arno Bohm
Arno Bohm
Darlene Wiley and Arno Bohm, UT Campus.

 

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