Satoshi Watanabe

Yakir Aharonov, one of the most decorated physicists alive, developed something called the two-state vector formalism.

The core idea originated with Satoshi Watanabe in 1955 and was rediscovered by Aharonov and Bergman and Leibowitz in 1964.

And what it says is this, a quantum system is describing two state vectors, one evolving forward in time from the moment of preparation, one evolving backward in time from the moment of measurement, both at once.

The present moment of any quantum system is determined by influences arriving from its past and influences arriving from its future.

So let me tell a very quick story about this.

In 1910, there was the birth year of a Japanese physicist, Satoshi Watanabe.

He was born in Japan, I believe did his undergraduate education at the University of Tokyo.

And when he completed his undergraduate education, this was in the early 1930s, 32, 33, so before World War II, he traveled to Europe as an exchange student, and he was sent to work with the great Louis de Broglie.