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 (January 8, 1923 – September 23, 2004) was a theoretical physicist renowned for advancing gravity and field theories. He systematically approached the quantization of general relativity, in particular, developed canonical quantum gravity and manifestly covariant methods that use the heat kernel. B. DeWitt formulated the Wheeler-deWitt equation for the wavefunction of the Universe with John Archibald Wheeler and advanced the formulation of the 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, master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. His Ph.D. (1950) supervisor was Julian S. Schwinger. Afterwards he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Dirac Prize in 1987, the American Physical Society's Einstein Prize in 2005, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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. (20 years later this change of name so angered Felix Bloch that he blocked DeWitt's appointment to Stanford University and DeWitt instead moved to Austin, Texas.) He served in World War II as a naval aviator. He was married to accomplished mathematical physicist Cecile DeWitt-Morette. He died September 23, 2004 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 81. Survived by his wife and four daughters.

[edit] 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 978-0198510932.
• "Sopra un raggio di luce", Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2005.

[edit] further reading

• David Deutsch, Christopher Isham, Gregory Vilkovisky (2005). "Bryce Seligman DeWitt". Physics Today 58 (3): 84. doi:10.1063/1.1897570. 

[edit] External links

• University of Texas obituary
• SPIRES list of Dewitt's most-famous papers
• Dirac Prize citation, International Centre for Theoretical Physics
• Einstein Prize citation, American Physical Society

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