Bryce DeWitt

Bryce Seligman DeWitt was born on January 8, 1923 (January 8, 1923 – September 23, 2004), he was an American theoretical physicist renowned for his work in gravitation and quantum field theory.

Bryce DeWitt
Bryce (right) and Cécile (left)
Born
Carl Bryce Seligman

January 8, 1923
Dinuba, California
DiedSeptember 23, 2004(2004-09-23) (aged 81)
Austin, Texas
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University
Known forDeWitt notation
Quantum Gravity
Numerical Relativity
Spouse(s)Cécile DeWitt-Morette
AwardsDirac Prize (1987)
Pomeranchuk Prize (2002)
Einstein Prize (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical physicist
InstitutionsInstitute for Advanced Study
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Texas at Austin
Doctoral advisorJulian Schwinger
Doctoral studentsDonald Marolf
Steven M. Christensen
Larry Smarr
Ali Mustafazade
Discussion in the main lecture hall at the École de Physique des Houches (Les Houches Physics School), 1972. From left, Yuval Ne'eman, Bryce DeWitt, Kip Thorne.
Bryce S. DeWitt (center) with Grigori A. Vilkovisky (left) and Andrei O. Barvinsky (right) at the 5th Seminar on Quantum Gravity, Moscow, May 28 – June 1, 1990

Life

He was born Carl Bryce Seligman, but he and his three brothers added "DeWitt" from their mother's side of the family, at the urging of their father, in 1950.   In the early-1970s, this change of name so angered Felix Bloch that he blocked DeWitt's appointment to Stanford University and DeWitt and his wife Cecile DeWitt-Morette, a mathematical physicist, accepted faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin. DeWitt served in World War II as a naval aviator.  He died September 23, 2004 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 81. He is buried in France, and was survived by his wife and four daughters.


Work

He pioneered work in the quantization of general relativity and, in particular, developed canonical quantum gravity, manifestly covariant methods, and heat kernel algorithms.  DeWitt formulated the Wheeler–DeWitt equation for the wave function of the universe with John Archibald Wheeler and advanced the formulation of Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. With his student Larry Smarr, he originated the field of numerical relativity.

He received his bachelor's (summa cum laude), master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. His Ph.D. (1950) supervisor was Julian S. Schwinger. Afterwards, he held a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Advanced Study,  in Princeton, NJ, worked at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, and then held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Dirac Prize in 1987, the Pomeranchuk Prize in 2002, and the American Physical Society's Einstein Prize posthumously in 2005, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.


Books
  • Bryce DeWitt, Dynamical theory of groups and fields, Gordon and Breach, New York, 1965
  • Bryce DeWitt, R. Neill Graham, eds., The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton Series in Physics, Princeton University Press (1973), ISBN 0-691-08131-X.
  • S. M. Christensen, ed., Quantum theory of gravity. Essays in honor of the 60th birthday of Bryce S. DeWitt, Adam Hilger, Bristol, 1984.
  • Bryce DeWitt, Supermanifolds, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.
  • Bryce DeWitt, The Global Approach to Quantum Field Theory, The International Series of Monographs on Physics, Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-851093-2.
  • Bryce DeWitt, Sopra un raggio di luce, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2005.
  • Bryce DeWitt, Bryce DeWitt's Lectures on Gravitation, Steven M. Christensen, ed., Springer, 2011.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.