John Wheeler

Theoretical physicist

John Wheeler (1911-2008) was an eminent American physicist known for coining the term ‘black hole’. Born in Florida, he attended Baltimore City College and received his PhD (at the age of 21) from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1933. He was professor of physics at Princeton University between 1938 and 1976 and then taught at the University of Texas at Austin until 1987. He collaborated with Albert Einstein at Princeton, and also with Niels Bohr – a Danish physicist with whom he worked on the Manhattan Project. He continued to work on the development of the Hydrogen Bomb during the 1950s.

Having argued against the concept of ‘gravitationally completely collapsed objects’, Wheeler came around to the idea in 1967, spontaneously describing them as ‘black-holes’. He also developed a theory of geometrodynamics and produced a definitive textbook on General Relativity – Gravitation (1973). In his later years he wrote his autobiography, Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam (1998) and a final book: How Come The Universe? How Come Us? How come Anything? (2002). He died on April 13, 2008.