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

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Title: John Wheeler letter to Alexander Stern 25-May-1956
Creator: Wheeler, John A.
Contributor: Misner, Charles W., annotator
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 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 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. One copy of the letter went to Everett; this copy remained with Wheeler. Wheeler makes several additional marginal notes on the letter, as it seems, did Everett's fellow graduate student Charles Misner. Misner defends Everett against Stern's attacks.
Scope/Content: This document is a reproduction of a document found in the John A. Wheeler papers at the American Philosophical Society.
Type: text
Identifier: ark:/81235/d81z4264v
http://hdl.handle.net/10575/1202
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
Misner, Charles
Relation: Hugh Everett III Correspondence

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