Hugh Everett III — Wikipedia Summary

Hugh Everett III (November 11, 1930 - July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who proposed the relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics, which later became the basis of the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). His theory dropped the wave function collapse postulate of quantum measurement theory, incorporating the observer in the same quantum state as the observation result. The quantum statistic becomes a measure of the branching of the universal wave function.

Life and Education

Born 1930, raised in Washington, D.C. area. At age 12 wrote to Albert Einstein asking whether that which maintains the universe is random or unifying; Einstein replied. Won a half scholarship to St. John’s College High School; then Catholic University of America; PhD at Princeton University under John Archibald Wheeler (thesis: “The Theory of the Universal Wave Function”, 1956-57). Published 1957 in Reviews of Modern Physics as “Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics” (Wheeler contributed the title).

Career

Largely disregarded until near the end of his life; left academia in 1957 to work in defense industry, founding small companies specializing in U.S. government contracts. His work gained credibility with the discovery of quantum decoherence in the 1970s and MWI has become one of the important interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Belief and Legacy

People who knew him reported Everett believed in the literal reality of the other quantum worlds; his son (musician Mark Oliver Everett of the band Eels) and wife reported he “never wavered in his belief”. His meeting with Bohr in Copenhagen (1959) was described by Everett as “doomed from the beginning”; Rosenfeld said Bohr could have no patience with him. Wheeler disavowed the theory in 1980.