Bryce DeWitt — Wikipedia Summary

Bryce Seligman DeWitt (born Carl Bryce Seligman; January 8, 1923 - September 23, 2004) was an American theoretical physicist noted for his work in gravitation and quantum field theory. He popularized the “many-worlds” formulation and gave it its name.

Role in MWI

Responsible for the wider popularization of Everett’s theory, which had been largely ignored for a decade after publication in 1957. The phrase “many-worlds” is due to DeWitt. With Neill Graham 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 softened the extreme view of universal splitting, embracing decoherence approaches (Zeh, Zurek, Hartle, Gell-Mann) around 1970.

Academic Life

BA (summa cum laude), MA, PhD from Harvard (PhD 1950, supervisor Julian Schwinger). Postdoc at Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Lawrence Livermore Lab (1952-1955); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1956-1972); University of Texas at Austin (1973-2004). Organized the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference (quantum gravity) with wife Cecile DeWitt-Morette. Awards: Dirac Prize 1987, Pomeranchuk Prize 2002, APS Einstein Prize 2005 (posthumous).