John Bell’s Unpublished Notes About de Broglie’s Pilot Wave

In this contribution we present and discuss an unpublished note of John Bell on the de Broglie’s Pilot Wave. The note is the result of the analysis of the scientific correspondence and other original documents made available by Mrs. Mary Bell, wife and colleague of John, performed form one of us (A.L.) in a PhD project devoted to the historical reconstruction of the scientific thought of John Bell and confirms the highly original character in theoretical research. Among Bell’s original documents, a manuscript entitled “Notes for a history of the pilot wave” confirms that the Irish researcher considered central the idea of the pilot wave. We will present, moreover, a comparison between the unpublished note and the short writing published in 1988 in memory of de Broglie, that suggests that Bell had in mind to write a more elaborate work on this subject. Unfortunately, its sudden and untimely disappearance has put the end word to this project.