John Archibald Wheeler

John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911 – April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr to explain the basic principles of nuclear fission. Together with Gregory Breit, Wheeler developed the concept of the Breit–Wheeler process. He is best known for popularizing the term "black hole"[1] for objects with gravitational collapse already predicted during the early 20th century, for inventing the terms "quantum foam", "neutron moderator", "wormhole" and "it from bit",[2] and for hypothesizing the "one-electron universe". Stephen Hawking called Wheeler the "hero of the black hole story".[3]

Quick facts: John Archibald Wheeler, Born, Died, Alma ... ▼

John Archibald Wheeler
Wheeler in 1985
Born	(1911-07-09)July 9, 1911 Jacksonville, Florida, US
Died	April 13, 2008(2008-04-13) (aged 96) Hightstown, New Jersey, US
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University (PhD)
Known for	Breit–Wheeler process Wheeler–DeWitt equation Popularizing the term "black hole" Nuclear fission Geometrodynamics General relativity Unified field theory Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory Wheeler's delayed choice experiment One-electron universe Geon Regge–Wheeler–Zerilli equations S-matrix Quantum foam Coining the term "neutron moderator" Coining the term "superspace" Coining the term "wormhole" Lorentzian wormhole "It from bit" Participatory anthropic principle
Spouse	Janette Hegner
Awards	A. Cressy Morrison Prize (1945) Albert Einstein Award (1965) Enrico Fermi Award (1968) Franklin Medal (1969) National Medal of Science (1970) Oersted Medal (1983) J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1984) Albert Einstein Medal (1988) Matteucci Medal (1993) Wolf Prize in Physics (1997) Einstein Prize (APS) (2003)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of North Carolina Princeton University University of Texas at Austin
Thesis	Theory of the dispersion and absorption of helium (1933)
Doctoral advisor	Karl Herzfeld
Doctoral students	See list Jacob Bekenstein Claudio Bunster Demetrios Christodoulou Ignazio Ciufolini Hugh Everett Richard Feynman Kenneth W. Ford Robert W. Fuller Robert Geroch John R. Klauder Bahram Mashhoon Charles Misner Gilbert Plass Milton Plesset Gerald Harris Rosen Benjamin Schumacher Kip Thorne Jayme Tiomno John S. Toll Bill Unruh Robert Wald Katharine Way Arthur Wightman Cheuk-Yin Wong

At 21, Wheeler earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Karl Herzfeld. He studied under Breit and Bohr on a National Research Council fellowship. In 1939 he collaborated with Bohr on a series of papers using the liquid drop model to explain the mechanism of fission. During World War II, he worked with the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, where he helped design nuclear reactors, and then at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, where he helped DuPont build them. He returned to Princeton after the war but returned to government service to help design and build the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s. He and Edward Teller were the main civilian proponents of thermonuclear weapons.[4]

For most of his career, Wheeler was a professor of physics at Princeton University, which he joined in 1938, remaining until 1976. At Princeton he supervised 46 PhD students, more than any other physics professor.

Wheeler left Princeton at the age of 65. He was appointed director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas at Austin in 1976 and remained in the position until 1986, when he retired and became a professor emeritus.