October 21, 2008

The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett

After his now celebrated theory of multiple universes met scorn, Hugh Everett abandoned the world of academic physics. He turned to top secret military research and led a tragic private life

By Peter Byrne

Editor's Note: This story was originally printed in the December 2007 issue of Scientific American and is being reposted from our archive in light of a new documentary on PBS, Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives.

Hugh Everett III was a brilliant mathematician, an iconoclastic quantum theorist and, later, a successful defense contractor with access to the nation’s most sensitive military secrets. He introduced a new conception of reality to physics and influenced the course of world history at a time when nuclear Armageddon loomed large. To science-fiction aficionados, he remains a folk hero: the man who invented a quantum theory of multiple universes. To his children, he was someone else again: an emotionally unavailable father; “a lump of furniture sitting at the dining room table,” cigarette in hand. He was also a chain-smoking alcoholic who died prematurely.

At least that is how his history played out in our fork of the universe. If the many-worlds theory that Everett developed when he was a student at Princeton University in the mid-1950s is correct, his life took many other turns in an unfathomable number of branching universes.

Full article here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hugh-everett-biography