Skip to main content

Text / John Wheeler letter to Alexander Stern, 25-May-1956

Have a question about this item?

Item information.

Title
John Wheeler letter to Alexander Stern, 25-May-1956
Creator
Wheeler, John A.
Date Created and/or Issued
1956-05-25
Contributing Institution
UC Irvine, Libraries, Special Collections
Collection
Hugh Everett III Manuscripts
Rights Information
Copyrighted
This material is provided for private study, scholarship, or research. Transmission or reproduction of any material protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. The authors or their heirs retain their copyrights to the material. Unless otherwise indicated, the original files were donated to the American Institute of Physics (https://history.aip.org/ead/20130435.html). For permission to publish, contact Jeffrey A. Barrett, representative for the Everett estate, j.barrett@uci.edu.
Description
Scope/Content: Alexander Stern was an American physicist and engineer who spent many years during the 1950s and 1960s is residence at Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. In April, 1956 a copy of the long version of Hugh Everett's thesis was sent to the Institute; the next month, Wheeler traveled to Copenhagen to discuss the thesis with Bohr and others. Soon after he left, Stern held a seminar on Everett's work, during which he recorded some of the reactions of members of the Institute to Everett's ideas. After the seminar, Stern wrote a long letter to John Wheeler describing his own (and reporting on his colleagues') dissatisfaction with Everett's theory. Here Wheeler replies to Stern. This letter shows both sides of Wheeler delicate position on his student's work: on the one hand, he defends Everett, while simultaneously insisting that Everett's theory is not in conflict with Bohr's.
Scope/Content: This document was found in the basement of Mark Everett in 2007 by Mark Everett and Peter Byrne.
Type
text
Identifier
ark:/81235/d87m04d29
http://hdl.handle.net/10575/1123
Language
English
eng
Subject
Stern, Alexander W.
Bohr, Niels H.D.
Wheeler, John A.
Quantum mechanics -- Copenhagen interpretation
Quantum measurement problem
Pure wave mechanics
Everett, Hugh III
Correspondence
Relation
Hugh Everett III Correspondence

About the collections in Calisphere

Learn more about the collections in Calisphere. View our statement on digital primary resources.

Copyright, permissions, and use

If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.

Share your story

Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.

Explore related content on Calisphere: