Hugh Everett III (; November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
who first proposed the
many-worlds interpretation
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum me ...
(MWI) of
quantum physics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...
, which he termed his "relative state" formulation. In contrast to the then-dominant
Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, principally attributed to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It is one of the oldest of numerous proposed interpretations of quantum mechanics, as featu ...
, the MWI posits that the
wave function
A wave function in quantum physics is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The wave function is a complex-valued probability amplitude, and the probabilities for the possible results of measurements mad ...
never collapses and that all possibilities of a
quantum superposition
Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. It states that, much like waves in classical physics, any two (or more) quantum states can be added together ("superposed") and the result will be another valid quantum ...
are objectively real.
Discouraged by the scorn of other physicists for MWI, Everett ended his physics career after completing his PhD. Afterwards, he developed the use of generalized
Lagrange multipliers
In mathematical optimization, the method of Lagrange multipliers is a strategy for finding the local maxima and minima of a function subject to equality constraints (i.e., subject to the condition that one or more equations have to be satisfied e ...
for
operations research
Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...
and applied this commercially as a defense analyst and a
consultant
A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization.
Consulting servic ...
. In poor health later in life, he died at the age of 51 in 1982. He is the father of musician
Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
.
Although largely disregarded until near the end of Everett's lifetime, the MWI received more credibility with the discovery of
quantum decoherence in the 1970s and has received increased attention in recent decades, becoming one of the mainstream
interpretations of quantum mechanics
An interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to explain how the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics might correspond to experienced reality. Although quantum mechanics has held up to rigorous and extremely precise tests in an extraord ...
alongside Copenhagen,
pilot wave theories, and
consistent histories
In quantum mechanics, the consistent histories (also referred to as decoherent histories) approach is intended to give a modern interpretation of quantum mechanics, generalising the conventional Copenhagen interpretation and providing a natural i ...
.
Early life and education
Hugh Everett III was born in 1930 and raised in the
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
area. Everett's parents separated when he was young. Initially raised by his mother (Katherine Lucille Everett née Kennedy), he was raised by his father (Hugh Everett Jr) and stepmother (Sarah Everett née Thrift) from the age of seven.
At the age of twelve he wrote a letter to
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
asking him whether that which maintained the universe was something random or unifying.
Einstein responded as follows:
Everett won a half scholarship to
St. John's College High School in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
From there, he moved to the nearby
Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by U.S. ...
to study
chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...
as an undergraduate. While there, he read about
Dianetics
Dianetics (from Greek ''dia'', meaning "through", and ''nous'', meaning "mind") is a set of pseudoscientific ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubba ...
in ''
Astounding Science Fiction
''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William C ...
''. Although he never exhibited any interest in
Scientology
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data indi ...
(as Dianetics became), he did retain a distrust of conventional medicine throughout his life.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
his father was away fighting in Europe as a
lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...
on the general staff. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Everett's father was stationed in
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
, and Hugh joined him, during 1949, taking a year out from his undergraduate studies. Father and son were both keen photographers and took hundreds of pictures of West Germany being rebuilt. Reflecting their technical interests, the pictures were "almost devoid of people".
Everett graduated from the Catholic University of America in 1953 with a degree in
chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...
, although he had completed sufficient courses for a
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
degree as well.
Princeton
Everett received a
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
fellowship that allowed him to attend
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
for graduate studies. He started his studies at Princeton in the mathematics department, where he worked on the then-new field of
game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
under
Albert W. Tucker, but slowly drifted into physics. In 1953 he started taking his first physics courses, notably ''Introductory Quantum Mechanics'' with
Robert Dicke
Robert Henry Dicke (; May 6, 1916 – March 4, 1997) was an American astronomer and physicist who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, cosmology and gravity. He was the Albert Einstein Professor in Scienc ...
.
During 1954, he attended Methods of Mathematical Physics with
Eugene Wigner
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his con ...
, although he remained active with mathematics and presented a paper on military game theory in December. He passed his general examinations in the spring of 1955, thereby gaining his
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. , and then started work on his dissertation that would (much) later make him famous. He switched thesis advisor to
John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in e ...
some time in 1955, wrote a couple of short papers on
quantum theory
Quantum theory may refer to:
Science
*Quantum mechanics, a major field of physics
*Old quantum theory, predating modern quantum mechanics
* Quantum field theory, an area of quantum mechanics that includes:
** Quantum electrodynamics
** Quantum ...
and completed his long paper, ''Wave Mechanics Without Probability'' in April 1956.
In his third year at Princeton, Everett moved into an apartment which he shared with three friends he had made during his first year,
Hale Trotter
Hale Freeman Trotter (30 May 1931 – 17 January 2022)biographical information from ''American Men and Women of Science'', Thomson Gale 2004 was a Canadian-American mathematician, known for the Lie–Trotter product formula, the Steinhaus–Johns ...
, Harvey Arnold and
Charles Misner
Charles W. Misner (; born June 13, 1932) is an American physicist and one of the authors of '' Gravitation''. His specialties include general relativity and cosmology. His work has also provided early foundations for studies of quantum gravity ...
. Arnold later described Everett as follows: It was during this time that he met Nancy Gore, who typed up his ''Wave Mechanics Without Probability'' paper. Everett married Nancy Gore the next year.
The long paper was later retitled as ''The Theory of the
Universal Wave Function''.
Wheeler himself had traveled to
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
in May 1956 with the goal of getting a favorable reception for at least part of Everett's work, but in vain. In June 1956 Everett started defense work in the Pentagon's
Weapons Systems Evaluation Group The Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (abbreviated WSEG) was formed in 1949 to carry out Operational Research work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army and the United States Secretary of Defense. The group oversaw the appraisal of ...
, returning briefly to Princeton to defend his thesis after some delay in the spring of 1957. A short article, which was a compromise between Everett and Wheeler about how to present the concept and almost identical to the final version of his thesis, was published in ''
Reviews of Modern Physics
''Reviews of Modern Physics'' (abbreviated RMP) is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Physical Society. It was established in 1929 and the current editor-in-chief is Michael Thoennessen. The journal publishes r ...
'' Vol 29 #3 454-462, (July 1957), accompanied by an approving review by Wheeler. Everett was not happy with the final form of the article.
[ Everett received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 1957 after completing his doctoral dissertation titled "On the foundations of quantum mechanics."
]
Career
Upon graduation in September 1956, Everett was invited to join the Pentagon's newly-forming Weapons Systems Evaluation Group The Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (abbreviated WSEG) was formed in 1949 to carry out Operational Research work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army and the United States Secretary of Defense. The group oversaw the appraisal of ...
(WSEG), managed by the Institute for Defense Analyses. Between 23–26 October 1956 he attended a weapons orientation course managed by Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Ba ...
at Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
to learn about nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
s and became a fan of computer modeling while there. In 1957, he became director of the WSEG's Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. After a brief intermission to defend his thesis on quantum theory at Princeton, Everett returned to WSEG and recommenced his research, much of which, but by no means all, remains classified. He worked on various studies of the Minuteman missile
The LGM-30 Minuteman is an American land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in service with the Air Force Global Strike Command. , the LGM-30G Minuteman III version is the only land-based ICBM in service in the United States and r ...
project, which was then starting, as well as the influential study ''The Distribution and Effects of Fallout in Large Nuclear Weapon Campaigns''.
During March and April 1959, at Wheeler's request, Everett visited Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
, on vacation with his wife and baby daughter, in order to meet with Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...
, the "father of the Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, principally attributed to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It is one of the oldest of numerous proposed interpretations of quantum mechanics, as featu ...
of quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
". The visit was a complete disaster; Everett was unable to communicate the main idea that the universe is describable, in theory, by an objectively existing universal wave function (which does not "collapse"); this was simply heresy to Bohr and the others at Copenhagen. The conceptual gulf between their positions was too wide to allow any meeting of minds; Léon Rosenfeld
Léon Rosenfeld (; 14 August 1904 in Charleroi – 23 March 1974) was a Belgium, Belgian physicist and Marxist.
Rosenfeld was born into a Jewish secularism, secular Jews, Jewish family. He was a polyglot who knew eight or nine languages and ...
, one of Bohr's devotees, talking about Everett's visit, described Everett as being "undescribably icstupid and could not understand the simplest things in quantum mechanics". Everett later described this experience as "hell...doomed from the beginning".
However, while in Copenhagen, in his hotel, he started work on a new idea to use generalized Lagrange multipliers
In mathematical optimization, the method of Lagrange multipliers is a strategy for finding the local maxima and minima of a function subject to equality constraints (i.e., subject to the condition that one or more equations have to be satisfied e ...
for mathematical optimization
Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...
. Everett's theorem, published in 1963, relates the Lagrangian bidual to the primal problem.
In 1962 Everett accepted an invitation to present the relative-state formulation (as it was still called) at a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics held at Xavier University
Xavier University ( ) is a private Jesuit university in Cincinnati and Evanston (Cincinnati), Ohio. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,860 stud ...
in Cincinnati. In his exposition Everett presented his derivation of probability and also stated explicitly that observers in all branches of the wavefunction were equally "real." He also agreed with an observation from the floor that the number of branches of the universal wavefunction was an uncountable infinity.
In August 1964, Everett and several WSEG colleagues started Lambda Corp. to apply military modeling solutions to various civilian problems. During the early 1970s, defense budgets were curtailed and most money went to operational duties in the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
, resulting in Lambda eventually being absorbed by the General Research Corp.
In 1973, Everett and Donald Reisler (a Lambda colleague and fellow physicist) left the firm to establish DBS Corporation in Arlington, Virginia
Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county is ...
. Although the firm conducted defense research (including work on United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
ship maintenance optimization and weapons applications), it primarily specialized in "analyzing the socioeconomic effects of government affirmative action programs" as a contractor under the auspices of the Department of Justice
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
. For a period of time, the company was partially supported by American Management Systems, a business consulting firm that drew upon algorithms developed by Everett. He concurrently held a non-administrative vice presidency at AMS and was frequently consulted by the firm's founders.
Everett cultivated an early aptitude for computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
at IDA and favored the TRS-80
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...
at DBS, where he primarily worked for the rest of his life.
Later recognition
In 1970 Bryce DeWitt
Bryce Seligman DeWitt (January 8, 1923 – September 23, 2004), was an American theoretical physicist noted for his work in gravitation and quantum field theory.
Life
He was born Carl Bryce Seligman, but he and his three brothers, including th ...
wrote an article for ''Physics Today
''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. I ...
'' on Everett's relative-state theory, which evoked a number of letters from physicists. These letters, and DeWitt's responses to the technical objections raised, were also published. Meanwhile DeWitt, who had corresponded with Everett on the many-worlds / relative state interpretation when originally published in 1957, started editing an anthology on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. In addition to the original articles by Everett and Wheeler, the anthology was dominated by the inclusion of Everett's 1956 paper ''The Theory of the Universal Wavefunction
The universal wavefunction (or wave function), introduced by Hugh Everett in his PhD thesis ''The Theory of the Universal Wave Function,'' informs a core concept in the relative state interpretationHugh Everett, Relative State Formulation of Quant ...
'', which had never been published before. The book was published late in 1973, sold out completely, and it was not long before an article on Everett's work appeared in the science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
magazine, ''Analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
''.
In 1977, Everett was invited to give a talk at a conference Wheeler had organised at Wheeler's new location at the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
. As with the Copenhagen visit, Everett vacationed from his defense work and traveled with his family. Everett met DeWitt there for the first and only time. Everett's talk was quite well received and influenced a number of physicists in the audience, including Wheeler's graduate student, David Deutsch
David Elieser Deutsch ( ; born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of ...
, who later promoted the many-worlds interpretation to a wider audience. Everett, who "never wavered in his belief in his many-worlds theory",[.] enjoyed the presentation; it was the first time for years he had talked about his quantum work in public. Wheeler started the process of returning Everett to a physics career by establishing a new research institute in California, but nothing came of this proposal. Wheeler, although happy to introduce Everett's ideas to a wider audience, was not happy to have his own name associated with Everett's ideas. Eventually, after Everett's death, he formally renounced the theory.
Death and legacy
At the age of 51, Everett, who believed in quantum immortality
Quantum suicide is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of physics. Purportedly, it can falsify any interpretation of quantum mechanics other than the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrö ...
, died suddenly of a heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...
at home in his bed on the night of July 18–19, 1982. Everett's obesity, frequent chain-smoking
Chain smoking is the practice of smoking several cigarettes in succession, sometimes using the ember of a finished cigarette to light the next. The term chain smoker often also refers to a person who smokes relatively constantly, though not ne ...
and alcohol drinking almost certainly contributed to this, although he seemed healthy at the time. A committed atheist, he had asked that his remains be disposed of in the trash after his death. His wife kept his ashes in an urn, but she eventually complied with his wishes after a few years. About Hugh's death his son, Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
, later said:
Of the companies Everett initiated, only Monowave Corporation still exists (in Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
as of March 2015). It is managed by co-founder Elaine Tsiang, who received a Ph.D. in physics under Bryce DeWitt
Bryce Seligman DeWitt (January 8, 1923 – September 23, 2004), was an American theoretical physicist noted for his work in gravitation and quantum field theory.
Life
He was born Carl Bryce Seligman, but he and his three brothers, including th ...
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
before working for DBS as a programmer.
Everett's daughter, Elizabeth, died by suicide in 1996 (saying in her suicide note that she wished her ashes to be thrown out with the garbage so that she might "end up in the correct parallel universe to meet up w thDaddy"), and in 1998, his wife, Nancy, died of cancer. Everett's son, Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
, who found Everett dead, is also known as "E" and is the main singer and songwriter for the band Eels
Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...
. The Eels album ''Electro-Shock Blues
''Electro-Shock Blues'' is the second studio album by American Rock music, rock band Eels (band), Eels. It was released in the United Kingdom on September 21, 1998, and October 20 in the United States by record label DreamWorks Records, DreamWork ...
'', which was written during this time period, is representative of these deaths.
Mark Everett explored his father's work in the hour-long BBC television documentary '' Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives''. The program was edited and shown on the Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...
's ''Nova
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...
'' series in the USA during October 2008. In the program, Mark mentions how he wasn't aware of his father's status as a brilliant and influential physicist until his death in 1982.
See also
* Everett phone
Notes
References
Many-worlds sources
*
**
* The original and most comprehensive paper on many-worlds. Investigates and recasts the foundations of quantum theory in information theoretic terms, before moving on to consider the nature of interactions, observation, entropy, irreversible processes, classical objects etc.
*
* A study of the painful three-way relationship between Hugh Everett
Hugh Everett III (; November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who first proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, which he termed his "relative state" formulation. In contrast to the then-dominant Cope ...
, John A Wheeler and Niels Bohr
Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...
and how this affected the early development of the many-worlds theory.
Operations research sources
*
*
*
Biographical sources
The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family
by Peter Byrne,
*John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in e ...
, ''Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam'', . pp 268–270
Interview: Parallel lives can never touch
Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
talking to Peter Aldhous, New Scientist, 24 November 2007.
Are we closer to a 'theory of everything'?
Susan Watts interview with Stephen Hawking and Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
, Wednesday, 8 September 2010
*Mark Oliver Everett
Mark Oliver Everett (born April 10, 1963) is the American lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist and sometimes drummer of the rock band Eels. Also known as E, he is known for writing songs tackling subjects such as death, loneliness, d ...
, ''Things the Grandchildren Should Know'',
External links
Oral history interview transcript with Hugh Everett in May 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
The Life of Hugh Everett
lecture by Peter Byrne.
UCIspace @ the Libraries digital collection: Hugh Everett III Manuscripts
*
Everett's Relative-State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics
– Jeffrey A. Barrett Jeffrey A. Barrett is Chancellor's Professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he specializes in philosophy of physics.
Education and career
He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University.
...
's article on Everett's formulation of quantum mechanics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Everett, Hugh
1930 births
1982 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American physicists
American atheists
American operations researchers
Catholic University of America alumni
Princeton University alumni
Thermodynamicists
Philosophers of science
Quantum physicists
Theoretical physicists
20th-century atheists