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John Wheeler letter to Hugh Everett, 23-July-1957

JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER

Published May 19, 2011• 0 citations
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Abstract

Hugh Everett's thesis was ultimately published in September 1957 in a special issue of Reviews of Modern Physics, guest edited by Bryce DeWitt. This was Everett first and only journal publication on the topic. In July of that year, however, as the journal article was going to press, Wheeler spoke with mathematician and physicist Norbert Wiener about Everett's theory. Wiener argued about the importance of a measure in Everett's work. Everett, too, saw his derivation of a typicality measure as of central important, especially in the long thesis. But there is no evidence that Everett followed Wheeler's advice of writing a follow-up paper addressing the question of a measure on the space of branches more explicitly. Wheeler also, once again, encourages Everett to visit Bohr.

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Bryce S. DeWitt letter to J.A. Wheeler, Hugh Everett's copy, 07-May-1957

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As a close friend and collaborator of John Wheeler's, Bryce S. DeWitt was one of the first people to see a draft of the short version of Hugh Everett's thesis (he did not read the longer version until much later, as is evidenced by some of the complaints in this letter). In May 1957, DeWitt wrote a long and thoughtful letter to Wheeler about how Everett's theory had conceptual parallels with Einstein's theory of general relativity. Wheeler promptly forwarded a copy of the letter to Everett. DeWitt was unhappy with both wave function collapse and the Copenhagen Interpretation. He wrote that Everett's formalistic argument for pure wave mechanics was `"beautifully consistent''. But he could not accept the ontological ramifications of the theory because, `"I simply do not branch.'' This document is Everett's copy of the letter, as reproduced by Wheeler's secretary. It differs from Wheeler's own copy by several sentences at the bottom of page 4, cut off during the reproduction process. It is likely that Everett never saw these missing sentences.

•May 7, 1957•0 citations
Hugh Everett's thesis was ultimately published in September 1957 in a special issue of Reviews of Modern Physics, guest edited by Bryce DeWitt. This was Everett first and only journal publication on the topic. In July of that year, however, as the journal article was going to press, Wheeler spoke with mathematician and physicist Norbert Wiener about Everett's theory. Wiener argued about the importance of a measure in Everett's work. Everett, too, saw his derivation of a typicality measure as of central important, especially in the long thesis. But there is no evidence that Everett followed Wheeler's advice of writing a follow-up paper addressing the question of a measure on the space of branches more explicitly. Wheeler also, once again, encourages Everett to visit Bohr.
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.
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.
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.
As a close friend and collaborator of John Wheeler's, Bryce S. DeWitt was one of the first people to see a draft of the short version of Hugh Everett's thesis (he did not read the longer version until much later, as is evidenced by some of the complaints in this letter). In May 1957, DeWitt wrote a long and thoughtful letter to Wheeler about how Everett's theory had conceptual parallels with Einstein's theory of general relativity. Wheeler promptly forwarded a copy of the letter to Everett. DeWitt was unhappy with both wave function collapse and the Copenhagen Interpretation. He wrote that Everett's formalistic argument for pure wave mechanics was `"beautifully consistent''. But he could not accept the ontological ramifications of the theory because, `"I simply do not branch.'' This document is Everett's copy of the letter, as reproduced by Wheeler's secretary. It differs from Wheeler's own copy by several sentences at the bottom of page 4, cut off during the reproduction process. It is likely that Everett never saw these missing sentences.