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Henry Margenau letter to Hugh Everett, 8-April-1957

Henry Margenau

Published May 19, 2011• 0 citations
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Abstract

Henry Margenau was a German physicist and philosopher of physics who had previously written on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It seems that Hugh Everett---or rather, John Wheeler---sent Everett's thesis to Margenau and other physicists for comments. Margenau was the first to reply, and though he admits to not having looked at the work closely, he appears to approve. Margenau includes a preprint of a paper of his own to be published in the journal Philosophy of Science, and a reprint of an earlier paper from Physical Review.

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•May 19, 2011•0 citations
Henry Margenau was a German physicist and philosopher of physics who had previously written on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It seems that Hugh Everett---or rather, John Wheeler---sent Everett's thesis to Margenau and other physicists for comments. Margenau was the first to reply, and though he admits to not having looked at the work closely, he appears to approve. Margenau includes a preprint of a paper of his own to be published in the journal Philosophy of Science, and a reprint of an earlier paper from Physical Review.
In mid-March, 1957, as Hugh Everett III was preparing to defend his thesis and graduate, John Wheeler asked him to send preprints of the short thesis and Wheeler's companion article to Bohr and other prominent physicists. In April, H. J. Groenewold of Natuurkundig Laboratorium der Rijks-Universiteit te Groningen, Germany wrote to Everett and Wheeler with his criticism of the revised dissertation. He had previously read the long dissertation sent to Copenhagen. He thought that the preprint was a "much improved" abstract of a (rewritten) longer thesis, although he confessed to not being able to follow many of the arguments. Everett furiously annotated his copy of Groenewold's letter, answering his criticisms point by point and concluding that Groenewold, too, had not thoroughly studied his work.
After the publication of Hugh Everett's thesis and John Wheeler's commentary in the September 1957 issue of Reviews of Modern Physics, several physicists wrote to Everett and Wheeler to discuss the papers. This one, from a physicist at Johns Hopkins named Max Dresden, seems to approve of Everett's contributions, and suggests that it might be related to a project he and a student worked on shortly before. Wheeler, at least at this point, seems interested in continuing to work on topics related to Everett's thesis, and also appears to believe that future publications on related topics are forthcoming. This letter is particularly interesting because it suggests that not only did Wheeler believe Everett could get an academic job at a top university, but that Robert Sachs, a prominent theoretical physicist at University of Wisconsin Madison, was actively attempting to recruit Everett. Everett, however, refused to follow any of these leads.
MIT mathematician, physicist, and polymath Norbert Wiener was among the physicists who received preprints of Hugh Everett and John Wheeler's Review of Modern Physics articles. Wiener at this time was developing his own alternative mathematical/interpretive framework for quantum mechanics, and here he projects some of his own views on Everett while offering criticism of Everett's particular approach. Everett, meanwhile, disavows in his marginal comments several of the ideas that Wiener attributes to him.
In spring of 1956, John Wheeler was in residence at the Lorentz Institute in Leiden, Netherlands. In April, 1956 a copy of the long version of Hugh Everett's thesis was sent to the Institute; the next month, Wheeler traveled to Copenhagen to discuss the thesis with Bohr and others. This is a letter he wrote to Everett after he returned to Leiden, following up on his letter from the day before (in which he forwarded Alexander Stern's criticisms to Everett). Here he includes his notes from a conversation with Niels Bohr — dated 4 May 1956 — on Everett's thesis, and urges Everett to come to Copenhagen immediately to discuss his work with Bohr. He includes an offer to pay for Everett's travel from his own research funds. Although Everett would ultimately travel to Copenhagen in 1959, he did not accept the invitation Wheeler extends here.
MIT mathematician, physicist, and polymath Norbert Wiener was among the physicists who received preprints of Hugh Everett and John Wheeler's Review of Modern Physics articles. Wiener at this time was developing his own alternative mathematical/interpretive framework for quantum mechanics. This document is a draft of the letter Everett would ultimately send. Here he sketches his response to Wiener's comments on his preprint, emphasizing that he disagrees that his formulation of quantum mechanics requires a notion of Lebesgue measure on a Hilbert space.