John Gleason Cramer, Jr. (born October 24, 1934) is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

, known for his development of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. He has been an active participant with the STAR ( Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC) Experiment at the

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy-ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by an ...

(RHIC) at

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

, and the particle accelerator at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

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, Switzerland.

Early years

John Cramer was born in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, Texas. He attended Mirabeau B Lamar High School in Houston, and graduated with a BA in Physics from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

in 1957. He continued his studies, graduating with an MA in Physics from Rice University in 1959 and a Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University in 1961.

Career

After serving as a post-doctoral fellow at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

from 1961 to 1963, Cramer continued as an assistant professor at the same university from 1963 to 1964. He was an assistant professor at the University of Washington from 1964 to 1968, an associate professor from 1968 to 1974, and was appointed as a full professor in 1974. From 2007 to 2014, Cramer investigated the possibility that quantum nonlocality might be used for communication between observers through the use of switchable interference patterns. In the course of this work, he gained new understanding of the "show stopper" within the quantum formalism that prevents such nonlocal signaling: For each interference pattern, nature also provides and superimposes an "anti-interference pattern". These are always combined in a way that "erases" potential nonlocal signals. The two interference patterns complement each other, resulting in no perceptible interference pattern. Measurement changes can dramatically modify the individual interference patterns, but always so that this erasure occurs. In this way, nature is protected from the possibility of retrocausal signaling and its consequences and paradoxes. Cramer has been making regular appearances on the

Science Channel Science Channel (often simply branded as Science; abbreviated to SCI) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel features programming focusing on science related to wilderness survival, engineering, manu ...

and on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

Science Friday.

Writing

In addition to his approximately 300 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, John Cramer writes a regular column, "The Alternate View", appearing in every second issue, for ''

Analog Science Fiction and Fact ''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 ...

'' magazine. He also originated and published a paper on " The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (TIQM) in July 1986, which was inspired from the Wheeler-Feynman Time-symmetric theory. His book on quantum mechanics, ''The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions'' (2015), published by Springer Verlag, is a comprehensive introduction to the transactional interpretation. Cramer's simulation of the sound of the

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

, created using

Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...

, attracted some mainstream press attention in late 2003 and again in 2013. The simulation originated with an "Alternate View" article, "BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang" (January 2001).BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang
at the

Cramer describes the sound as "rather like a large jet plane 100 feet off the ground flying over your house in the middle of the night." Cramer has published two novels, '' Twistor'' (1989) and '' Einstein's Bridge'' (1997), both within the

hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's '' Islands of Space'' in the Novem ...

genre. Cramer was the 2010 Science Guest of Honor at

Norwescon Norwescon is one of the largest regional science fiction and fantasy conventions in the United States. Located in SeaTac in Washington state, Norwescon has been running continuously since 1978. "Norwescon" was also the name of the 8th World S ...

, a large science fiction and fantasy convention in the Seattle area.

Bibliography

Non-fiction

* ;"Alternate View" columns in ''Analog'' See als
AV Columns Online

Novels

* * *

Awards and recognition

* Elected Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(1991); * Nominated for the

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer The ''Astounding'' Award for Best New Writer (formerly the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) is given annually to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous ...

(1991); * Listed in

Who's Who in America Marquis Who's Who ( or ) is an American publisher of a number of directories containing short biographies. The books usually are entitled ''Who's Who in...'' followed by some subject, such as ''Who's Who in America'', ''Who's Who of American Wome ...

(from 43rd Edition, 1984); * Elected Fellow,

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

(1974); *

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 ...

Fellow at

(1959–61); * Sigma-Xi Thesis Award at Rice University (1959); * Bausch-Lomb Science Award at Lamar High School Graduation (1953);

Personal life

Cramer married Pauline Ruth Bond in June, 1961. The couple have three children:

Kathryn Cramer Kathryn Elizabeth Cramer (born April 16, 1962) is an American science fiction writer, editor, and literary critic. Early years Kathryn Cramer is the daughter of physicist John G. Cramer. She grew up in Seattle and graduated from Columbia Univ ...

(born April, 1962), John G. Cramer III (born January 1964), and Karen Cramer (born April 1967).

References

* Profile i
Marquis Who's Who on the Web

External links

John G. Cramer's Home Page
– Includes a photograph of the author, contact information, and more

Physics News Update Number 723 #2, March 15, 2005 by Phil Schewe & Ben Stein. *
Scientific publications of John G. Cramer
on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 1970 ...

* John G. Cramer, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Washington, presents "The Quantum Handshake Explored.
YouTube video dated 1 Feb 2018
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