“s work, wrote to and met with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen seeking his approval of Everett”
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John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler 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 explored positron-electron pair production from the collision of two photons, now known as the Breit–…
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science · American theoretical physicist (1911–2008) · physicist · nuclear physicist · theoretical physicist · university teacher · non-fiction writer · astrophysicist · also John Archibald Wheeler, J Wheeler, John A. Wheeler, J.A. Wheeler, John Wheeler, Wheeler
Born 9 July 1911 · Died 13 April 2008 · Q202631
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2026· 1 entry
2020· 1 entry
Ars Technica: Topic: John Archibald Wheeler
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2008· 7 entries
Died 2008-04-13.
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Wheeler died of pneumonia at the age of 96 in Hightstown, New Jersey
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“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
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“Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine, but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we heretofore suspected…The physical world is in some deep sense tied to the human being.”
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“We will first understand how simple the universe is when we realize how strange it is.”
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“I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times.”
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“I had the good fortune of having my first and only heart attack last January ... I call it good fortune because it taught me that there's a limited amount of time left and I better concentrate on one thing: How come existence? How come the quantum? Maybe those questions sound too philosophical, but maybe philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers.”
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2003· 1 entry
Awarded Einstein Prize (2003).
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2001· 1 entry
Princeton used a $3 million gift to establish the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professorship in Physics
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1999· 1 entry
Awarded Science Writing Award for Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics (1999).
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1996· 1 entry
Awarded Wolf Prize in Physics (1996).
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1995· 1 entry
Awarded Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1995).
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1993· 1 entry
Won Matteucci Medal (1993).
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1992· 1 entry
Won Oskar Klein Medal (1992).
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1990· 1 entry
Wheeler suggested that at the smallest scale physics is binary
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1989· 1 entry
Awarded Marcel Grossmann Award (1989).
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1988· 1 entry
Won Albert Einstein Medal (1988).
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1984· 1 entry
Awarded J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1984).
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1983· 1 entry
Won Oersted Medal (1983).
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1982· 1 entry
Won Niels Bohr International Gold Medal (1982).
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1979· 1 entry
Wheeler spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), asking it to expel parapsychology, which had been admitted ten years earlier at Margaret Mead's request
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1976· 1 entry
And remained in the position until 1986, when he retired and became a professor emeritus
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1970· 1 entry
Won National Medal of Science (1970).
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1969· 1 entry
Won Franklin Medal (1969).
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1968· 1 entry
Awarded Enrico Fermi Award (1968).
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1967· 1 entry
During a talk he gave at the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), although the term had been used earlier in the decade
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1966· 2 entries
Won Golden Plate Award (1966).
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The Enrico Fermi Award in 1968, the Franklin Medal in 1969, the Einstein Prize in 1969, the National Medal of Science in 1971, the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal in 1982, the Oersted Medal in 1983, the J
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1965· 1 entry
Awarded Albert Einstein Award (1965).
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1957· 1 entry
Wheeler introduced the concept and word wormhole to describe hypothetical "tunnels" in space-time
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1954· 1 entry
Awarded Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award (1954).
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1951· 1 entry
Wheeler obtained Bradbury's permission to set up a branch office of the Los Alamos laboratory at Princeton, known as Project Matterhorn, which had two parts
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1950· 1 entry
There was no practical design for a hydrogen bomb
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1949· 2 entries
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1949).
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But not published until 1953, resulted in a series of measurements of the Chang radiation emitted by muons
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1947· 1 entry
Career landmark: professor (1947).
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1946· 2 entries
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1946).
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Which allowed him to spend the 1949–50 academic year in Paris
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1944· 2 entries
Wheeler had been concerned that some nuclear fission products might be nuclear poisons, the accumulation of which would impede the ongoing nuclear chain reaction by absorbing many of the thermal neutrons needed to contin
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“so close to creating a nuclear weapon to end the war. I couldn”
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1940· 1 entry
Wheeler conceived his one-electron universe postulate: that there was in fact only one electron, bouncing back and forth in time
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1939· 3 entries
The day Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II
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Bohr brought the news of Lise Meitner's and Otto Frisch's discovery of fission to America
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Collaborated with Bohr on a series of papers using the liquid drop model to explain the mechanism of fission
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1938· 2 entries
Wheeler joined Edward Teller in examining Bohr's liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus; they presented their results at a meeting of the American Physical Society in New York
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Of an associate professorship at Johns Hopkins University in favor of an assistant professorship at Princeton University
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1937· 1 entry
But he wanted to be able to work more closely with experts in particle physics
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1933· 2 entries
Studied at Johns Hopkins University, Doctor of Philosophy (1933).
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And 1934, and then in Copenhagen under Niels Bohr in 1934 and 1935
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1930· 1 entry
As part of a summer job at the National Bureau of Standards
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1926· 1 entry
Wheeler entered Johns Hopkins University with a scholarship from the state of Maryland
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1921· 1 entry
To 1922 on a farm in Benson, Vermont, where Wheeler attended a one-room school
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1911· 1 entry
Born 1911-07-09.
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