Hugh Everett III, American physicist and mathematician (died 1982)

Hugh Everett III was an American physicist who proposed the relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics. This influential approach later became the basis of the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). Everett's theory dropped the wave function collapse postulate of quantum measurement theory, incorporating the observer in the same quantum state as the observation result. The quantum statistic becomes a measure of the branching of the universal wave function. Everett also helped found small companies specializing in contracts with the US government.