Bryce DeWitt (1923–2004)
American theoretical physicist noted for work in gravitation and quantum field theory. He popularized the many-worlds-interpretation and gave it its name.
Role in the Many-Worlds Interpretation
DeWitt was responsible for the wider popularization of Everett’s theory, which had been largely ignored for a decade after its 1957 publication. The phrase “many-worlds” is due to him. With Neill Graham, he edited The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (1973, Princeton Series in Physics). He said Everett, Wheeler, and Graham “do not in the end exclude any element of the superposition. All the worlds are there, even those in which everything goes wrong and all the statistical laws break down.” Later he softened the extreme view of universal splitting with every interaction, embracing the decoherence approaches of Zeh, Zurek, Hartle, and Gell-Mann around 1970.
Academic Life
Born Carl Bryce Seligman (8 January 1923); added “DeWitt” from his mother’s side in 1950. BA (summa cum laude), MA, and PhD from Harvard (PhD 1950 under Julian Schwinger). Postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study; Lawrence Livermore Lab (1952–55); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1956–72); University of Texas at Austin (1973–2004). With wife Cecile DeWitt-Morette organized the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference on quantum gravity. Awards: Dirac Prize (1987), Pomeranchuk Prize (2002), APS Einstein Prize (2005, posthumous). Died 23 September 2004.
References
- Wikipedia (2026). Bryce DeWitt. 1