Hugh Everett III

Lore & Background

Hugh Everett III was an American physicist. He was born in 1930 and raised near Washington, D.C. His parents separated when he was young, and from age seven he was raised by his father and stepmother. As a child, he wrote to Albert Einstein asking whether the universe was maintained by something random or unifying, and Einstein replied. Everett attended St. John's College High School on a half scholarship before studying chemical engineering at the Catholic University of America. During a year off from his undergraduate studies, he joined his father in West Germany, where they both pursued photography, taking hundreds of pictures of the country's reconstruction that were "almost devoid of people." He graduated in 1953 with a degree in chemical engineering, having also completed sufficient coursework for a mathematics degree. At Princeton University on a National Science Foundation fellowship, he began in mathematics under Albert W. Tucker, working on game theory, but gradually shifted to physics. He took his first physics courses in 1953, including Introductory Quantum Mechanics with Robert Dicke. In 1954, he studied Methods of Mathematical Physics with Eugene Wigner. After passing his general examinations in spring 1955, he began work on his dissertation. He switched thesis advisor to John Archibald Wheeler and completed the long paper "Wave Mechanics Without Probability" in April 1956. He married Nancy Gore, who had typed that paper. After completing his PhD, he worked for the Pentagon in the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, where he became director of the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He also helped found small companies that contracted with the U.S. government.

Reader's Guide

Hugh Everett III's most significant contribution is the relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics, which later became the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). This approach eliminated the wave function collapse postulate and treated the observer as part of the same quantum state as the observation result, with the quantum statistic becoming a measure of branching of the universal wave function. Although his work was largely disregarded during his lifetime, it gained credibility with the discovery of quantum decoherence in the 1970s and has received increased attention in recent decades, making MWI one of the important interpretations of quantum mechanics. Everett's career after physics focused on defense analysis and consulting. He worked on classified studies for the U.S. government, including the Minuteman missile project and nuclear fallout distribution. He also founded small companies that applied military modeling to civilian problems and conducted research on affirmative action programs. His work continues to influence both physics and philosophy of science.

Did You Know?

• At age 12, Everett wrote to Albert Einstein asking whether the universe was maintained by something random or unifying; Einstein replied, calling him a 'very stubborn boy.'
• After leaving physics, Everett worked on classified studies for the U.S. government, including the Minuteman missile project and nuclear fallout distribution.