This book tells the fascinating story of the people and events behind the turbulent changes in
attitudes to quantum theory in the second half of the 20 th century. The huge success of
quantum mechanics as a predictive theory has been accompanied from the very beginning by
doubts and controversy about its foundations and interpretation. This book looks in detail at
how research on foundations evolved after WWII when it was revived until the mid 1990s when
most of this research merged into the technological promise of quantum information. It is the
story of the quantum dissidents the scientists who brought this subject from the margins of
physics into its mainstream. It is also a history of concepts experiments and techniques and
of the relationships between physics and the world at large touching on themes such as the
Cold War McCarthyism Zhdanovism and the unrest of the late 1960s.
