Leading physicist John Wheeler dies at age 96 (Forwarded)

Office of Communications
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

Media contact:
Kitta MacPherson, (609) 258-5729

For immediate release: April 14, 2008

Leading physicist John Wheeler dies at age 96

John Archibald Wheeler, a legend in physics who coined the term "black
hole" and whose myriad scientific contributions figured in many of the
research advances of the 20th century, has died.

Wheeler, the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus at Princeton
University, was 96. He succumbed to pneumonia on Sunday, April 13, at his
home in Hightstown, N.J.

Over a long, productive scientific life, he was known for his drive to
address big, overarching questions in physics, subjects which he liked to
say merged with philosophical questions about the origin of matter,
information and the universe. He was a young contemporary of Albert
Einstein and Niels Bohr, was a driving force in the development of both
the atomic and hydrogen bombs and, in later years, became the father of
modern general relativity.

"Johnny Wheeler probed far beyond the frontiers of human knowledge, asking
questions that later generations of physicists would take up and solve,"
said Kip Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the
California Institute of Technology, a prolific researcher and one of
Wheeler's best-known students. "And he was the most influential mentor of
young scientists whom I have known."

Wheeler, according to James Peebles, Princeton's Albert Einstein Professor
of Science Emeritus, was "something approaching a wonder of nature in the
world of physics."

Throughout his lengthy career as a working scientist -- he maintained an
office in Jadwin Hall until 2006 -- he concerned himself with what he
termed "deep, happy mysteries." These were the laws of nature on which all
else is built.

He also helped launch the careers of many prominent modern theoretical
physicists, among them the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. He learned
best by teaching. Universities have students, he often said, to teach the
professors.

"Johnny," which is what he was called by everyone, including his children,
was born in Jacksonville, Fla., on July 9, 1911, the first of four
children, to Joseph and Mabel ("Archie") Wheeler, a librarian and a
homemaker, respectively. The family moved when Joseph changed jobs, which
happened frequently. Over the years, they lived in Florida, California,
Ohio, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Vermont. Wheeler discovered science
through his father, who brought books home for the family to read to help
him judge whether they were worth purchasing for the library. Wheeler
devoured Sir John Arthur Thomson's classic "Introduction to Science" and
Franklin Jones' "Mechanisms and Mechanical Movements." He was guided by
the second book to build a combination lock, a repeating pistol and an
adding machine -- all from wood. He built crystal radio sets and strung
telegraph wires between his home and his best friend's. He almost blew off
one hand with dynamite one morning, tinkering with material that had been
declared off-limits.

Wheeler was the first in his family to become a scientist, heading to
Johns Hopkins University on a scholarship when he was 16, and finishing in
1933, at age 21, with a doctoral degree in physics. He went on to work at
the University of Copenhagen with the eminent physicist Niels Bohr, with
whom he co-wrote the original paper on the mechanism of nuclear fission
that helped lead to the development of the atomic bomb. After World War
II, Wheeler joined the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Project for a
year, playing a central role in developing the hydrogen bomb and serving
as a mentor to the physicist Richard Feynman. In 1951, he set up Project
Matterhorn at Princeton's new Forrestal Research Center.

He served as a member of the Princeton faculty from 1938 until his
retirement in 1976, after which he served as director of the Center for
Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas-Austin until 1986.

"Throughout his life, Johnny was an extraordinarily productive theoretical
physicist," said Marvin "Murph" Goldberger, the president emeritus of
Caltech, who had an office near Wheeler for decades as a longtime
Princeton faculty member. "His work was categorized by great imagination
and great thoroughness."

Looking back over his own career, Wheeler divided it into three parts.
Until the 1950s, a phase he called "Everything Is Particles," he was
looking for ways to build all basic entities, such as neutrons and
protons, out of the lightest, most fundamental particles. The second part,
which he termed "Everything Is Fields," was when he viewed the world as
one made out of fields in which particles were mere manifestations of
electrical, magnetic and gravitational fields and space-time itself. More
recently, in a period he viewed as "Everything Is Information," he focused
on the idea that logic and information is the bedrock of physical theory.

"John Wheeler, who started life with Niels Bohr in the '30s, in the
nuclear physics era, became the father figure of modern general relativity
two decades later," said Stanley Deser, a general relativitist at Brandeis
University. "Wheeler's impact is hard to overstate, but his insistence on
understanding the physics of black holes is one shining example."

Described by colleagues as ever ebullient and optimistic, Wheeler was
known for sauntering into colleagues' office with a twinkle in his eye,
saying, "What's new?" He gave high-energy lectures, writing rapidly on
chalkboards with both hands, twirling to make eye contact with his
students.

He entered physics in the 1930s by applying the new quantum mechanics to
the study of atoms and radiation. Within a few years, he turned to nuclear
physics because it seemed to hold the promise of revealing new and deeper
laws of the microscopic world. But it was "messy," he would later write,
and resistant to answers. Besides, working on fission, so crucial to
national defense during World War II, was a job, not a calling, he said.

In his autobiography, titled "Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam,"
written with his former student, the physicist Kenneth Ford, Wheeler found
"the love of the second half of my life" -- general relativity and
gravitation -- in the post-war years. "When they emerged, I finally had a
calling," he said.

He liked to name things.

In the fall of 1967, he was invited to give a talk on pulsars,
then-mysterious deep-space objects, at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space
Studies in New York. As he spoke, he argued that something strange might
be at the center, what he called a gravitationally completely collapsed
object. But such a phrase was a mouthful, he said, wishing aloud for a
better name. "How about black hole?" someone shouted from the audience.

That was it. "I had been searching for just the right term for months,
mulling it over in bed, in the bathtub, in my car, wherever I had quiet
moments," he later said. "Suddenly this name seemed exactly right." He
kept using the term, in lectures and on papers, and it stuck.

He also came up with some other monikers, perhaps less well known outside
the world of physics. A "geon," which he said probably doesn't exist in
nature but helped him think through some of his ideas, is a gravitating
body made up entirely of electromagnetic fields. And "quantum foam," which
he said he found himself forced to invent, is made up not merely of
particles popping into and out of existence without limit, but of
space-time itself, churned into a lather of distorted geometry.

Despite his sunny disposition, he carried with him a secret sadness. "He
was devoted to the memory of his younger brother, Joe, a Ph.D. in American
history with wife and child, who was killed in the bitter fighting against
the Germans in northern Italy," said Letitia Wheeler Ufford, his oldest
child. "His brother's last words to him were 'Hurry up, John,' as he
sensed that his older brother was working on weaponry to end the war. As
he got older, our father wept often over this brother."

And he had a brush with controversy, though he ultimately redeemed
himself. In January 1953, while traveling on a sleeper car to Washington,
D.C., he lost track of a classified paper on the hydrogen bomb which had
been in his briefcase. It was there when he went to bed but was missing by
morning. He was personally reprimanded by military officials at the
insistence of President Eisenhower and, as a strong believer in national
defense was personally embarrassed by the incident. Years later, in
December 1968, he was presented with the Fermi Award by President Johnson
for his contributions to national defense as well as to pure science. "I
felt forgiven," he wrote.

What drove Wheeler so ferociously for so many decades may be best
expressed by the physicist himself. In his autobiography, he put it this
way: "I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to
satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher, trying to
understand. Now, in my 80s, I am still searching. Yet I know that the
pursuit of science is more than the pursuit of understanding. It is driven
by the creative urge, the urge to construct a vision, a map, a picture of
the world that gives the world a little more beauty and coherence than it
had before. Somewhere in the child that urge is born."

Wheeler received numerous honors over the years, including the National
Medal of Science, the Albert Einstein Prize, the Franklin Medal, the Niels
Bohr International Gold Medal and the Wolf Foundation Prize. He was a past
president of the American Physical Society and was a member of the
American Philosophical Society, the Royal Academy, the Accademia Nazionale
dei Lincei, the Royal Academy of Science and the Century Association. In
the 1970s, he was a member of the U.S. General Advisory Committee on Arms
Control and Disarmament.

Wheeler was awarded honorary degrees from 18 institutions, including from
Princeton in 1986. In 2001, the University used a $3 million gift to
establish a new professorship, the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle
Professorship in Physics, in honor of Wheeler's research and service.

Wheeler was pre-deceased by his wife, Janette Hegner Wheeler, who died
last October. He is survived by his three children: Letitia Wheeler Ufford
of Princeton; James English Wheeler of Ardmore, Pa.; and Alison Wheeler
Lahnston of Princeton. He is also survived by eight grandchildren, six
step-grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and 11
step-great-grandchildren.

Burial will be private at his family's gravesite in Benson, Vt. There will
be a memorial service at 10 a.m. Monday, May 12, at the Princeton
University Chapel. The family asks that gifts be made to Princeton
University, the University of Texas-Austin for the John Archibald Wheeler
Graduate Fellowship or to Johns Hopkins University.

[NOTE: Images supporting this release are available at
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/a...8G77/index.xml ]