Bryce DeWitt

Bryce DeWitt
Bryce with his wife Cécile
Born	Carl Bryce Seligman January 8, 1923 Dinuba, California, U.S.
Died	September 23, 2004(2004-09-23) (aged 81) Austin, Texas, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University (PhD)
Known for	DeWitt notation Wheeler–DeWitt equation Canonical quantum gravity Effective action Numerical relativity
Spouse	Cécile Morette ​ (m. 1951)​
Children	4
Awards	Dirac Prize (1987) Pomeranchuk Prize (2002) Einstein Prize (2005)
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical physics
Institutions	Institute for Advanced Study University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Texas at Austin
Doctoral advisor	Julian Schwinger
Doctoral students	Donald Marolf Larry Smarr

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

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

Personal life

He was born Carl Bryce Seligman, but he and his three brothers, including the noted ichthyologist, Hugh Hamilton DeWitt, 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 trained in World War II as a naval aviator, but the war ended before he saw combat.  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.

Academic life

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, New Jersey, worked at the Lawrence Livermore Lab (1952-'55), and then held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1956-'72) and, later, the University of Texas at Austin (1973-2004). 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.

He and his wife also organized the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference.

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.

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

• Deutsch, David; Isham, Christopher; Vilkovisky, Gregory (March 1, 2005). "Bryce Seligman DeWitt". Physics Today. 58 (3): 84–84. doi:10.1063/1.1897570.
• DeWitt-Morette, Cécile (2011). The Pursuit of Quantum Gravity: Memoirs of Bryce DeWitt from 1946 to 2004. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-14270-3. ISBN 978-3-642-14270-3.
• University of Texas obituary Archived May 11, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
• Oral history interview transcript with Bryce DeWitt and Cecile DeWitt-Morette on February 28 1995, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives