Hugh Everett III

Hugh Everett III
Hugh Everett in 1964
Born	(1930-11-11)November 11, 1930 Washington, D.C., U.S.
Died	July 19, 1982(1982-07-19) (aged 51) McLean, Virginia, U.S.
Alma mater	Catholic University of America Princeton University (PhD)
Known for	Many-worlds interpretation Everett's theorem[1][2][3]
Children	Elizabeth Everett, Mark Oliver Everett
Scientific career
Fields	Physics Operations research Optimization Game theory
Institutions	Institute for Defense Analyses American Management Systems Monowave Corporation
Thesis	On the foundations of quantum mechanics (1957)
Doctoral advisor	John Archibald Wheeler

Hugh Everett III (/ˈɛvərɪt/; November 11, 1930 – July 19, 1982) was an American physicist who, in his 1957 PhD thesis, proposed relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics. This influential approach later became the basis of the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). Everett's theory dropped the wave function collapse postulate of quantum measurement theory, incorporating the observer in the same quantum state as the observation result. The quantum statistic becomes a measure of the branching of the universal wave function.^[4] After his PhD, Everett helped found small companies specializing in contracts with the US government.

Although largely disregarded until near the end of his lifetime, Everett's work received more credibility with the discovery of quantum decoherence in the 1970s and has received increased attention in recent decades, with MWI becoming one of the important interpretations of quantum mechanics.