Hugh Everett

The Libraries is pleased to announce an exciting new online digital collection of scanned original documents and audio recordings related to Hugh Everett III (1930 – 1982), the American physicist who first proposed what has come to be known as the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics. The collection (link) is now available in UCIspace @ the Libraries, an innovative new library service that provides faculty and students with the ability to publish, manage, and preserve their scholarly output in an open access platform supported by the Libraries.

As a graduate student at Princeton University, Hugh Everett, III developed a new way of thinking about quantum mechanics. His thesis, The "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics, received scant attention when published in 1957, but gained popularity in the 1970s as other scientists explained how it involved the existence of many splitting worlds. While many disagree about how to interpret Everett's theory, there is a growing consensus that Everett's pure wave mechanics provides the best prospect for solving the infamous quantum measurement problem.

The UCIspace @ the Libraries' collection contains scans of nearly everything that Everett wrote on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and it provides open access to these original documents to scholars around the world.

A joint collaboration between the Libraries and UCI Logic & Philosophy of Science Professor Jeffrey Barrett, the Everett collection of historical documents is an essential companion to Barrett's forthcoming work, The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Collected Works 1955 - 1980 with Commentary (Princeton University Press). Together with investigative reporter Peter Byrne, Barrett selected 229 documents that shed light on the development and reception of Hugh Everett's many worlds theory.

The UCIspace @ the Libraries' collection contains scans of nearly everything that Everett wrote on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and it provides open access to these original documents to scholars around the world. While this collection will not solve the problem of how to best interpret Everett's theory, it does provide the definitive statement of Everett's own views in his own words.

UCIspace @ the Libraries gave Professor Barrett confidence that the scanned materials would remain accessible for future generations. The service offers faculty a secure, fully searchable, persistent home for diverse kinds of digital research content. "We are very pleased with the result of this collaboration with our UC Irvine Libraries colleagues," said Barrett. "The online collection would not have been possible without their support and advice."

For further information, please contact Michelle Light, Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship at michelle.light@uci.edu or 949.824.7193.