Text / John Wheeler letter to Paul Benioff, 07-July-1977

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Title: John Wheeler letter to Paul Benioff, 07-July-1977
Creator: Wheeler, John A.
Contributor: Everett, Hugh, annotator
Date Created and/or Issued: 1977-07-07
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: Paul Benioff was a physicist and mathematician working as a research scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory. He published two papers on Everett interpretation shortly after this letter: Benioff (1977) ["Finite and infinite measurement in quantum mechanics and randomness: The Everett interpretation," Journal of Mathematical Physics 18(12), 2289] and Benioff (1978) ["A Note on the Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics," Foundations of Physics 8(9/10), 709]. In both cases, Benioff was interested in the role of infinite sequences of measurements in the Everett interpretation. In this letter, Wheeler seems to approve of Benioff's central point in the first paper (which appears to be the one he originally sent), but encourages Benioff to pass the preprint on to Everett. He also suggests that Benioff should call his topic of study the "Everett interpretation" and not the "Everett-Wheeler interpretation"—in part because Wheeler no longer subscribes to the view. The letter also includes a handwritten comment by Everett that Wheeler only accepts his interpretation on alternating Tuesdays.
Scope/Content: This document is a reproduction of a document found at the Hugh Everett archive, American Institute of Physics.
Type: text
Identifier: ark:/81235/d8j09wh94
http://hdl.handle.net/10575/1167
Language: English
eng
Subject: Wheeler, John A.
Everett, Hugh III
Correspondence
Benioff, Paul A.
Relation: Hugh Everett III Correspondence

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