Who was Everett?
Hugh Everett III (1930-1982) did his undergraduate study in chemical engineering at the Catholic University of America. Studying von Neumann’s and Bohm’s textbooks as part of his graduate studies, under Wheeler, in mathematical physics at Princeton University in the 1950s he became dissatisfied (like many others before and since) with the collapse of the wavefunction. He developed, during discussions with Charles Misner and Aage Peterson (Bohr’ assistant, then visiting Princeton), his “relative state” formulation. Wheeler encouraged his work and preprints were circulated in January 1956 to a number of physicists. A condensed version of his thesis was published as a paper to The Role of Gravity in Physics conference held at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in January 1957. Everett was discouraged by the lack of response from others, particularly Bohr, whom he flew to Copenhagen to meet but got the complete brush-off from. Leaving physics after completing his Ph.D., Everett
