Bryce DeWitt

And the GRF's essay contest continues to this day.

Some past winners of the contest include Bryce DeWitt and Nobel laureates George Smoot and Stephen Hawking.

Not bad

company.

Let's talk about the Wheeler-DeWitt equation because this is wild.

In the late 1960s, John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt tried to apply quantum machinery to the whole cosmos.

John Wheeler, by the way, was one of the giants of 20th century physics.

He coined the term black hole.

But if this whole idea of splitting bothers you, well, you're not alone.

Theoretical physicist Bryce DeWitt is said to have visited Everett and praised him for the elegant mathematics of his idea, but told him that he was bothered by the gut feeling that he didn't feel like he was constantly splitting himself.

to power all versions of himself.

Everett is said to have coolly responded, do you feel like you're orbiting the sun at 30 kilometers per second? Touche, DeWitt said, conceding on the spot.

May 31st, 1957.

Hugh Everett III, a 26-year-old physicist working after Princeton, writes a four-page letter from Arlington, Virginia to Bryce DeWitt.

DeWitt has attacked the central weakness in Everett's proposed quantum theory.

A measuring device gives one result.

The title matters.

Everett did not title the paper Many Worlds.

That language became attached to the theory later, especially through Bryce DeWitt.

Wheeler's assessment appeared immediately after Everett's article.