John Archibald Wheeler, 96, summer resident of South Bristol, 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.
John was the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus at Princeton University. He succumbed to pneumonia on 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.
Throughout his lengthy career as a working scientist — he maintained an office in at Princeton University 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. 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.
John 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 WWII, he 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.
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. Besides, working on fission, so crucial to national defense during WWII, 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, John 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.
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.
He kept using the term, in lectures and on papers, and it stuck.
John 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.
He 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 John’s research and service.
John 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, N.J., James English Wheeler of Ardmore, Penn., and Alison Wheeler Lahnston of Princeton, N.J.; 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. Memorial service 10 a.m., Mon., 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.
