H. Dieter Zeh

H. Dieter Zeh
Born	(1932-05-08)8 May 1932 Braunschweig, Free State of Brunswick
Died	15 April 2018(2018-04-15) (aged 85) Freudenstadt, Baden-Württemberg
Nationality	German
Education	Technical University of Braunschweig University of Heidelberg
Known for	Many-minds interpretation Quantum decoherence
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical physics
Institutions	University of Heidelberg
Thesis	Untersuchungen zur Theorie des $\alpha$-Zerfalls  (1961)
Doctoral advisor	Hans-Jörg Mang

Heinz-Dieter Zeh (German: [tseː]; 8 May 1932 – 15 April 2018), usually referred to as H. Dieter Zeh, was a professor (later professor emeritus) of the University of Heidelberg and theoretical physicist.

Education and career

Zeh was born in Braunschweig and studied physics at the Technical University of Braunschweig and nuclear physics at the University of Heidelberg under J. Hans D. Jensen. At Heidelberg, he also investigated alpha particle formation in nuclei with Hans-Jörg Mang and Zeh investigated the topic for his PhD thesis under Mang. Between 1964 and 1965, Zeh was a research assistant at California Institute of Technology and in 1965 and between 1967 and 1968 at the University of California, San Diego. He later became a professor in Heidelberg.

Research

Zeh's research revolves around the fundamental problems of quantum mechanics since the 1960s, in particular with Hugh Everett III's many-worlds interpretation. Zeh was one of the developers of the many-minds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the discoverer of decoherence, first described in his seminal 1970 paper.

Bibliography

• The Problem Of Conscious Observation In Quantum Mechanical Description (June, 2000).
• The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time, 2001, ISBN 3-540-42081-9
• Decoherence and the Appearance of a Classical World in Quantum Theory, 2003, ISBN 3-540-00390-8 (with Erich Joos, Claus Kiefer, Domenico Giulini, Joachim Kupsch, Ion-Olimpiu Stamatescu)
• "On the interpretation of measurement in quantum theory", 1970, Foundations of Physics, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 69–76

See also

• Epistemological Letters
• Measurement problem
• Quantum suicide and immortality

External links

• Zeh's old homepage
• Obituary for H. Dieter Zeh