Bernard d’Espagnat

Bernard d’Espagnat (born August 22, 1921, Fourmagnac, France—died August 1, 2015, Paris) was a French physicist and philosopher whose research into the philosophical foundations of quantum physics addressed the conflict between the realist and instrumentalist views of the results of quantum mechanics—that is, whether they reflect underlying physical reality or are merely rules for predicting the outcomes of experiments. He was awarded the 2009 Templeton Prize for his notion of a “veiled reality” (réel voilé).

D’Espagnat was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Polytechnique in Paris. In 1950 he received a doctorate in physics, under the direction of Louis de Broglie, from the University of Paris. After a year as a research assistant to Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, d’Espagnat worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). In 1959 he was appointed to the faculty of what later became the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay; he was made a full professor in 1967 and professor emeritus in 1987. He was also director of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and Elementary Particles at Paris-Sud.

D’Espagnat’s work on Bell’s theorem (which indicates that the realist interpretation is not viable and which appears to have received experimental confirmation) led him to reject conventional realism, but the fact that scientific theories remain falsifiable by experiment steered him to the idea that a veiled reality underlies the phenomena of physics. His more-important publications include Conceptions de la physique contemporaine (1965; “Conceptions of Contemporary Physics”), which was awarded the Prix Lecomte du Noüy; Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1971); À la recherche du réel: le regard d’un physicien (1979; In Search of Reality: The Outlook of a Physicist); “The Quantum Theory and Reality” (Scientific American, November 1979); Un Atome de sagesse: propos d’un physicien sur le réel voilé (1982; “An Atom of Wisdom: Writings by a Physicist on Veiled Reality”), which was awarded the Prix Robert Blanché; Le Réel voilé: analyse des concepts quantiques (1994; Veiled Reality: An Analysis of Present-Day Quantum Mechanical Concepts); and Traité de physique et de philosophie (2002; On Physics and Philosophy).

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D’Espagnat, the recipient of numerous honours, was elected to the International Academy of Philosophy of Science in 1975 and to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1996.