Date Created: 1957-11-24

Creator: Eisner, Elmer

Contributor(s): Wheeler, John A., annotator

Description: Elmer Eisner was a geophysicist working for Texaco in Houston, TX. Here he is responding to the published versions of Hugh Everett's short thesis and Wheeler's commentary. His idea seems to be that one cannot distinguish between intentional measurements made by some observer and other, "spontaneous" measurements. Although the formalism and language are not yet in place, this letter prefigures some later discussion on decoherence, insofar as Eisner is beginning to think about the role that spurious correlations with the environment can affect the evolution of the universal wave function. Unfortunately, we do not have John Wheeler's "off-hand" response to Eisner, nor do we know if Everett wrote anything as Wheeler requested.

Permanent Link To This Item: http://hdl.handle.net/10575/1197

Title: Elmer Eisner letter to John Wheeler, 24-November-1957

Subjects: Wheeler, John A. | Everett, Hugh III | Eisner, Elmer | Correspondence | Relative states, branches, and worlds

Type: Archives and Manuscripts

Language: en_US

Rights: 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 and Professor Jeffrey A. Barrett. The author(s) of the material or their heirs retain copyright to this material.
Used with the permission of the copyright holder and the estate of Hugh Everett, III.

Provenance: This document was found in the basement of Mark Everett in 2007 by Mark Everett and Peter Byrne.

Publisher: University of California, Irvine Libraries. Irvine, California 92623-9557. http://www.lib.uci.edu.