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Marginal notes on DeWitt-Graham anthology

Everett, Hugh

Published Jan 1, 1973• 0 citations
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Abstract

Hugh Everett made several marginal notes in his copy of the DeWitt-Graham (1973) anthology, which was discovered in a DC-area used book store by Dr. George Wesley. This document contains scans of the pages on which Everett's handwriting appears. He seemed particularly frustrated by DeWitt and Graham's insistence that there was a difficulty in his derivation of the typicality measure that formed the basis for Everett's notion of probability in pure wave mechanics.

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

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Among Hugh Everett's files were a number of handwritten documents related to the writing of his thesis. Some of them were early notes on ideas and material that ultimately appeared in the long thesis. This document, found loose among Everett's papers, includes brainstorming notes on possible titles for the long thesis. He originally settled on The Theory of the Universal Wave Function, but then changed it to Quantum Mechanics without Probability before distributing drafts to Bohr and others.

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Annotations on Neill Graham thesis, "The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics"

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"Wave Mechanics Without Probability," long thesis with handwritten corrections, 1956-1973

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Hugh Everett's long thesis was submitted to John Archibald Wheeler, his doctoral thesis advisor, in January 1956 under the title "Quantum Mechanics by the Method of the Universal Wave Function.'' It was retitled "Wave Mechanics Without Probability'' and circulated in April of that year to several prominent physicists, including Niels Bohr. Largely due to the criticism of the long thesis by the Copenhagen colleagues, Everett and his advisor John Wheeler rewrote Everett's thesis in the winter of 1957 to produce a much shorter version, which Everett subsequently defended for his Ph.D. under the title "On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.'' While the long thesis was organized around the quantum measurement problem and how it is best solved by pure wave mechanics, the short thesis presented Everett's relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics more as a suitable theory for the development of quantum gravity, cosmology, and field theory. The short thesis no longer contains Everett's chapter on information theory and correlation, his survey of possible solutions to the measurement problem, or his extended discussion of the nature of physical theories. What remains is a distilled presentation of pure wave mechanics, his principle of the fundamental relativity of states, and his derivation of the standard quantum statistics. The short thesis was retitled for publication in Reviews of Modern Physics in July 1957 as "The 'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics.'' The version below closely follows the Reviews of Modern Physics article. The long thesis itself was not published until 1973 in the DeWitt and Graham Princeton University Press anthology. It was published under the title "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function." Although Everett did not publish the long thesis, he nonetheless kept a copy of it, and appears to have returned to it periodically to make changes even after the short thesis appeared in print. This document is a scanned version of Everett's personal copy of his long thesis, with his collected comments and changes.

•May 20, 2011•0 citations
Hugh Everett made several marginal notes in his copy of the DeWitt-Graham (1973) anthology, which was discovered in a DC-area used book store by Dr. George Wesley. This document contains scans of the pages on which Everett's handwriting appears. He seemed particularly frustrated by DeWitt and Graham's insistence that there was a difficulty in his derivation of the typicality measure that formed the basis for Everett's notion of probability in pure wave mechanics.
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.
Among Hugh Everett's files were a number of handwritten documents related to the writing of his thesis. Some of them were early notes on ideas and material that ultimately appeared in the long thesis. This document, found loose among Everett's papers, includes brainstorming notes on possible titles for the long thesis. He originally settled on The Theory of the Universal Wave Function, but then changed it to Quantum Mechanics without Probability before distributing drafts to Bohr and others.
Hugh Everett's long thesis was submitted to John Archibald Wheeler, his doctoral thesis advisor, in January 1956 under the title "Quantum Mechanics by the Method of the Universal Wave Function.'' It was retitled "Wave Mechanics Without Probability'' and circulated in April of that year to several prominent physicists, including Niels Bohr. Largely due to the criticism of the long thesis by the Copenhagen colleagues, Everett and his advisor John Wheeler rewrote Everett's thesis in the winter of 1957 to produce a much shorter version, which Everett subsequently defended for his Ph.D. under the title "On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.'' While the long thesis was organized around the quantum measurement problem and how it is best solved by pure wave mechanics, the short thesis presented Everett's relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics more as a suitable theory for the development of quantum gravity, cosmology, and field theory. The short thesis no longer contains Everett's chapter on information theory and correlation, his survey of possible solutions to the measurement problem, or his extended discussion of the nature of physical theories. What remains is a distilled presentation of pure wave mechanics, his principle of the fundamental relativity of states, and his derivation of the standard quantum statistics. The short thesis was retitled for publication in Reviews of Modern Physics in July 1957 as "The 'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics.'' The version below closely follows the Reviews of Modern Physics article. The long thesis itself was not published until 1973 in the DeWitt and Graham Princeton University Press anthology. It was published under the title "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function." Although Everett did not publish the long thesis, he nonetheless kept a copy of it, and appears to have returned to it periodically to make changes even after the short thesis appeared in print. This document is a scanned version of Everett's personal copy of his long thesis, with his collected comments and changes.