Henry Stapp

Henry Pierce Stapp (born March 23, 1928 in Cleveland ) is an American theoretical physicist and philosopher.

Stapp studied at the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in 1951 and at the University of California, Berkeley , with a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate with Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain in 1955. He was a post-doctoral student with Wolfgang Pauli at the ETH Zurich and was also in Munich in 1958 with Werner Heisenberg . From 1959 he was a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory .

Among other things, he dealt with the analysis of the nuclear force from nucleon-nucleon scattering processes, axiomatic S-matrix theory (a leading trend in theoretical elementary particle physics in the 1960s), parity violation. Later, philosophical work on quantum mechanics was added, which he had been concerned with since the 1950s, but initially did not publish. Like Eugene Wigner ( Wigner's friend ) before, he advocates the thesis that the collapse of the wave function requires a conscious observer. From this he developed a theory of consciousness in which thought processes have a quantum mechanical basis and are stabilized via the quantum Zeno effect . It is influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and its process and reality .

Fonts

• Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions, Springer 2017
• The Mindful Universe: Quantum mechanics and the participating observer, Springer 2011
• Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics, Springer 2009
• with JM Schwartz, M. Beauregard: Quantum theory in neuroscience and psychology: A neurophysical model of mind-brain interaction, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Volume 360, 2005, pp. 1309-1327.

Web links

• Page to Stapps theses at Information Philosopher
• Page with his writings at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004