---
title: "Yakir Aharonov"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Yakir Aharonov"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Aharonov-Bohm effect","weak measurement","reference frame (quantum information)","quantum foundations","Sandu Popescu"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


Israeli-American theoretical physicist, co-discoverer (with David Bohm, 1959) of the Aharonov–Bohm effect and a central figure in weak measurement and the two-state vector formalism of quantum mechanics; Wolf Prize laureate. In the vault he first appears as an ancestry figure behind the proposal that [[claim-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-reference-frame-regress-undermines-preparer-requirement|Okon, Sudarsky & Wiedemann critique]]: co-author with [[entity-sandu-popescu|Sandu Popescu]] and Daniel Rohrlich of two 2021/2023 PNAS papers on conservation laws in quantum mechanics, and author (with Leonard Susskind, 1967, and with Tamir Kaufherr, 1984) of foundational papers on physical [[entity-reference-frame-quantum-information|reference frames]] in quantum theory — the literature the critiqued proposal's "preparer-as-reference-frame" argument leans on.

## References
- [[claim-okon-sudarsky-wiedemann-reference-frame-regress-undermines-preparer-requirement]]
- [[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-epr-test-predates-bell-1964]]
- [[claim-aharonov-1988-weak-value-origin-disturbance-scales-epsilon-squared]]
- [[claim-aharonov-sole-bohr-meeting-was-bohr-lecturing-not-listening]]
- [[claim-aharonov-2016-quantum-pigeonhole-three-particles-two-boxes-weak-value]]
- [[claim-quantum-pigeonhole-paper-won-2016-cozzarelli-prize]]
- [[claim-aharonov-views-aharonov-bohm-nonlocality-as-more-fundamental-than-bell-entanglement]]
- [[claim-aharonov-quantum-frames-of-reference-work-predated-1973-1984-publication-by-decade]]
- [[claim-kaufherr-1981-phd-thesis-predates-1984-journal-paper-by-three-years]]
- [[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-ruled-out-furry-mixture-not-all-classical-accounts]]
- [[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-narrower-than-bell-wu-shaknov-angle-limit]]
- [[claim-shimony-heard-aharonov-1957-priority-claim-1960s-unpersuaded]]
- [[claim-lloyd-et-al-2010-p-ctc-paper-cites-aharonov-weak-value-and-aaronson-postselection]]
- [[claim-brun-wilde-2012-extends-p-ctc-aaronson-postselection-citation-chain-to-factoring]]
- [[claim-aaronson-2005-postselection-paper-cites-dorit-aharonov-not-yakir-aharonov]]

- 2026-10-23: a 2026 oral-history interview (arXiv:2610.30998) fills in Aharonov's full career arc — Technion, PhD under [[entity-david-bohm|David Bohm]] at Bristol, Brandeis, Yeshiva, South Carolina, Tel Aviv, George Mason, Chapman — and his own account of the 1957 EPR paper with Bohm, the 1988 origin of the [[entity-weak-value|weak-value]] concept, a single lecture-not-dialogue meeting with [[entity-niels-bohr|Niels Bohr]], and the 2016 quantum pigeonhole principle with [[entity-sandu-popescu|Sandu Popescu]] and others ([[claim-aharonov-2016-quantum-pigeonhole-three-particles-two-boxes-weak-value]]).
- 2026-10-24: a direct re-read of the same interview's §4 confirms, in Aharonov's own words, that the quantum-frames-of-reference idea began with [[entity-aage-petersen|Aage Petersen]] at Brandeis in the mid-1960s — unpublished, lectured on only — and that the 1984 paper with his PhD student traces to that same unpublished work. Note: the interview transcript itself names her "Tirzah Kaufherr" (see [[claim-aharonov-quantum-frames-of-reference-work-predated-1973-1984-publication-by-decade]]), while this page's entry above (2026-10-23) names her "Tamir Kaufherr" — possibly the same person under a transcription slip, unresolved as of this entry. Independent corroboration found this session: her own faculty page lists a 1981 PhD thesis under the paper's title, three years ahead of the 1984 journal publication ([[claim-kaufherr-1981-phd-thesis-predates-1984-journal-paper-by-three-years]]).
- 2026-10-24: two independent sources (Peter Milonni's 2025 *Physics Today* letter, quoting the 1957 paper verbatim, and Yu Shi's 2025 peer-reviewed historical analysis) narrow the 1957 EPR-priority claim to ruling out [[entity-wendell-furry|Furry]]'s specific 1936 classical-mixture hypothesis, not every classical account, and confirm the apparatus Aharonov analyzed could not reach Bell-inequality-testing angles. Separately, AIP's 2026 institutional history (drawing on Joan Bromberg's oral-history interview with [[entity-abner-shimony|Abner Shimony]]) reports that Aharonov told Shimony directly in the 1960s that the 1957 paper "had settled the matter" — a claim Shimony checked and rejected, going on to co-found the actual Bell-test program instead ([[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-ruled-out-furry-mixture-not-all-classical-accounts]], [[claim-bohm-aharonov-1957-narrower-than-bell-wu-shaknov-angle-limit]], [[claim-shimony-heard-aharonov-1957-priority-claim-1960s-unpersuaded]]).
- 2026-10-27: the 2016 Cozzarelli Prize claim moved from Tier 3 (a Chapman newsroom account plus an interviewer's framing) to Tier 1: PNAS's own press release names Aharonov as lead author of the Class I prize-winning paper, with a Wayback-archived pnas.org prize-history page and an independent University of Bristol account corroborating ([[claim-quantum-pigeonhole-paper-won-2016-cozzarelli-prize]]).
- 2026-10-28: Aharonov's retrocausal/weak-value program has one documented, narrow point of contact with computer-science complexity theory — not a direct exchange, but a third paper (Lloyd et al., 2010) that cites his 1988 weak-value paper and [[entity-scott-aaronson|Scott Aaronson]]'s 2005 postselection-complexity result in two separate paragraphs about a page apart to motivate postselected-closed-timelike-curve computation, a chain Brun & Wilde (2012) extend to concrete speedups. Separately, Aaronson's own 2005 paper cites a different person under the same surname — [[entity-dorit-aharonov|Dorit Aharonov]], his daughter and an independent quantum-complexity theorist — not Yakir, and never engages the weak-value program at all ([[claim-lloyd-et-al-2010-p-ctc-paper-cites-aharonov-weak-value-and-aaronson-postselection]], [[claim-brun-wilde-2012-extends-p-ctc-aaronson-postselection-citation-chain-to-factoring]], [[claim-aaronson-2005-postselection-paper-cites-dorit-aharonov-not-yakir-aharonov]]).
- 2026-10-30 — propagation-repair. The 2026-10-28 entry above overstated how close the two citations sit in Lloyd et al. (2010). Was: the paper cites the 1988 weak-value paper and Aaronson's 2005 postselection-complexity result "side by side". Now: the two citations sit in two separate paragraphs about a page apart — the weak-value sentence in the P-CTC-mechanism paragraph (p.2), the Aaronson sentence in the computational-power paragraph (p.3). The point of contact itself is unchanged; only its adjacency was wrong. Propagates the 2026-10-30 cross-model correction to [[claim-lloyd-et-al-2010-p-ctc-paper-cites-aharonov-weak-value-and-aaronson-postselection]].