Nick Herbert is an American physicist and author, best known for his book Quantum Reality.

Herbert studied Engineering Physics at the Ohio State University

Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

, graduating in 1959. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1967 for work on nuclear scattering experiments. After a one year teaching job at Monmouth College

Monmouth College

Monmouth College is a four-year coeducational private liberal arts college located in Monmouth, Illinois, United States.-History:Monmouth College was founded on April 18, 1853 by the Second Presbytery of Illinois, a frontier arm of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church...

 in Illinois, Herbert held a number of posts in industry. The most illustrious of these was senior physicist at Memorex

Memorex

Memorex began as a computer tape producer and expanded to become a major IBM plug compatible peripheral supplier. It is now a consumer electronics brand of Imation specializing in disk recordable media for CD and DVD drives, flash memory, computer accessories and other electronics.Established in...

 Corporation in Santa Clara, California, where he developed new magnetic materials, as well as magnetic, electrostatic and optical measuring devices, and carried out theoretical work on Lorentz microscopy. He was also senior physicist at Smith-Corona Marchant Corporation in Palo Alto, California where he developed a new theory of xerographic process and worked on early developments in ink jet printing.

While employed in industry, Herbert was part of the Fundamental Fysiks Group

Fundamental Fysiks Group

The Fundamental Fysiks Group was founded in San Francisco in May 1975 by two physicists, Elizabeth Rauscher and George Weissmann, at the time both graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The group held informal discussions on Friday afternoons to explore the philosophical...

 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

, founded in May 1975 by Elizabeth Rauscher

Elizabeth Rauscher

Elizabeth A. Rauscher is an American physicist and parapsychologist. She is a former researcher with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Stanford Research Institute, and NASA....

 and George Weissmann. The group's initial interest was in the interpretation of quantum mechanics

Interpretation of quantum mechanics

An interpretation of quantum mechanics is a set of statements which attempt to explain how quantum mechanics informs our understanding of nature. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and thorough experimental testing, many of these experiments are open to different interpretations...

, the EPR paradox

EPR paradox

The EPR paradox is a topic in quantum physics and the philosophy of science concerning the measurement and description of microscopic systems by the methods of quantum physics...

, and Bell's inequality, but members pursued diverse interests that lay outside of mainstream physics, exploring psychedelic drugs, psi phenomena, the nature of consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

, and speculative connections of these areas with quantum physics. During the 1970s and 1980s, Herbert and Saul-Paul Sirag organized a yearly Esalen

Esalen Institute

Esalen Institute is a residential community and retreat in Big Sur, California, which focuses upon humanistic alternative education. Esalen is a nonprofit organization devoted to activites such as meditation, massage, Gestalt, yoga, psychology, ecology, and spirituality...

 Seminar on the Nature of Reality, bringing together participants to discuss the interpretation of quantum mechanics. With Richard Shoup of Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC

PARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....

, Herbert constructed a "Metaphase Typewriter", a "quantum operated" device whose purpose was "to communicate with disembodied spirits". Despite many tests, including an attempt to contact the spirit of Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini

Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts...

 on the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the group reported no success with the device.

In 1981, Herbert proposed FLASH, a scheme for sending signals faster than the speed of light

Speed of light

The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...

 using quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement

Quantum entanglement occurs when electrons, molecules even as large as "buckyballs", photons, etc., interact physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical description , which is...

. Of this proposal, quantum computing pioneer Asher Peres

Asher Peres

Asher Peres was an Israeli physicist, considered a pioneer in quantum information theory. According to his autobiography, he was born in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in France, where his father, a Polish electrical engineer, had found work laying down power lines...

 wrote, "I was the referee who approved the publication of Nick Herbert’s FLASH paper, knowing perfectly well that it was wrong. I explain why my decision was the correct one, and I briefly review the progress to which it led." Chief among the results that Peres claimed stemmed from a refutation of Herbert's proposal was the no-cloning theorem, proved by Wootters

William Wootters

William Kent Wootters is an American physicist, and a leading contributor to the field of quantum information theory. He proved the no cloning theorem in a joint paper with Wojciech H. Zurek. It was also independently discovered by Dennis Dieks. He has also worked on the quantification of...

, Zurek

Wojciech H. Zurek

Wojciech Hubert Zurek is a well-known physicist and a Laboratory Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is a leading authority on quantum theory, especially decoherence. His work also has a lot of potential benefit to the emerging field of quantum computing.Zurek earned his M.Sc. in Kraków,...

, and Dieks

Dennis Dieks

Dennis Dieks is a Dutch physicist and philosopher of physics. In 1982 he proved the no-cloning theorem . In 1989 he proposed a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, later known as a version of the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics...

.

Books

• Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. New York: Doubleday, 1985.
• Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics. New York: Dutton, 1988.
• Elemental Mind: Human Consciousness & the New Physics. New York: Dutton, 1995.
• Alice Zwischen Den Welten (with Bill Shanley). DVA, 1999.