Yakir Aharonov (Hebrew: יקיר אהרונוב‎; born 1932 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli physicist specializing in quantum physics. He is a Professor of Theoretical Physics and the James J. Farley Professor of Natural Philosophy at Chapman University in California. He is also a distinguished professor in Perimeter Institute. He also serves as a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University in Israel. He is president of the IYAR, The Israeli Institute for Advanced Research.

His research interests are nonlocal and topological effects in quantum mechanics, quantum field theories and interpretations of quantum mechanics. In 1959, he and David Bohm proposed the Aharonov–Bohm effect for which he co-received the 1998 Wolf Prize.

In 1988 Aharonov et al. published their theory of weak measurement, which doesn't disturb the quantum state being observed. This work was motivated by Aharonov's long time quest to experimentally verify his theory that apparently random events in quantum mechanics are caused by events in the future (two-state vector formalism). Verifying a present effect of a future cause requires a measurement, which would ordinarily destroy coherence and ruin the experiment. He and his colleagues were able to make weak measurements and verify the present effect of the future cause.

Yakir (Hebrew: יַקִּיר‎‎), is an Israeli settlement and a communal village located in the West Bank's Samarian mountains about 35 km east of Tel Aviv near Revava and Nofim, on Road 5066 roughly between Barkan and Karnei Shomron. Founded in February 1981, it sits at 420 metres above sea level and is under the jurisdiction of the Shomron Regional Council. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

Over 260 families live in this Orthodox Jewish community, and more property is being developed to accommodate a growing need for housing in the town.^{[citation needed]}

Avshalom Cyrus Elitzur (Hebrew אבשלום כורש אליצור; born 31 May 1957, Iran) is an Israeli physicist and philosopher.

Avshalom Elitzur was a senior lecturer at the Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He is noted for the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-testing problem in quantum mechanics, which was publicised by Roger Penrose in his book Shadows of the Mind.

Elitzur received no formal university training before obtaining his PhD. His parents emigrated from Iran to Israel in 1959 when he was two years old, and settled in Rehovot. He left school at the age of sixteen and began working as a laboratory technician at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

In 1987, he published his book: Into the Holy of Holies: Psychoanalytic Insights into the Bible and Judaism. During that same year, he was invited to present an unpublished manuscript on quantum mechanics at an international conference in Temple University in Philadelphia. Consequently, he was later invited by Yakir Aharonov of Tel Aviv University, the doyen of physicists in Israel, to write a doctoral thesis on the subject. He was the chief editor of natural sciences in Encyclopaedia Hebraica. In 2008, he was a visiting professor at Joseph Fourier University.

Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew: דורית אהרונוב‎; born 1970) is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in quantum computing.

Aharonov graduated from Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a BSc in Mathematics and Physics in 1994. She then graduated from Weizmann Institute of Science with an MSc in Physics. She received her doctorate for Computer Science in 1999 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her thesis was entitled "Noisy Quantum Computation." She also did her post-doctorate in the mathematics department of Princeton University, and in the computer science department of University of California Berkeley.

In 2005, Aharonov was profiled by the journal Nature as one of four "young theorists... who are making waves in their chosen fields.", and in the following year, she then received the Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research.

Dorit Aharonov is the niece of physicist Yakir Aharonov.

Aharonov's research is mainly about quantum information processes, which includes: