Basil Hiley obituary

The Guardian

24-03-2025

My father, Basil Hiley, who has died aged 89, was a theoretical physicist who was particularly renowned for his research collaborations with the American David Bohm, working with him on the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Together they published many articles emphasising the wholeness of the quantum process and on the concept of Bohm's 'implicate order', which proposes a deeper, underlying reality where everything is interconnected and enfolded, contrasting with the 'explicate order' of our everyday, unfolded world.
That work culminated in their book The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (1993), which offered a radical perspective on quantum mechanics, aiming for a more intuitive and coherent understanding of the theory's meaning.
Basil was born in Burma (now Myanmar) to James, a major in the Indian army, and his wife, Sybil (nee Toller). He spent much of his early life in India until in 1947, at the age of 12, his family came to the UK.
Attending Brockenhurst County grammar school in Hampshire, he developed a flair for maths and physics and went on to gain a physics degree at King's College London. He stayed there to complete a PhD before joining Birkbeck College in 1961 as a research assistant to Bohm.
Basil remained at Birkbeck, researching and lecturing, for the next two decades, and in 1995 was appointed to the chair in physics. When the college closed its physics department in 1997 he retired, but continued his research as an unpaid emeritus professor at University College London, working generously with a new generation of physicists who were keen to take his ideas forward. The originality of his work was recognised in 2012 by the Majorana prize, awarded to those who have shown 'peculiar creativity, critical sense, and mathematical rigour' in theoretical physics.
In 2020 he was a key contributor to the documentary Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm, and he also appeared in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time titled The Measurement Problem in Physics (2009). The Antony Gormley sculpture Quantum Cloud, unveiled in London in 1999, is said to have been inspired by some of Basil's work.
Basil held his last seminar two days before his death. On the day he died he had spent the morning doing some physics and the afternoon listening to AFC Bournemouth, the team he supported, winning 5-0 against Nottingham Forest.
He was predeceased by his wife, Sylvia (nee Hart), whom he married in 1959 after they had met at school. He is survived by their two children, Andrew and me, and two grandchildren.