John Archibald Wheeler, born 9 July, 1911,
Jacksonville USA.
He is undoubtedly one of the most influential
physicists of our age, whose tremendous depth and range of work shaped the future study of many topics in
physics. He will probably be remembered for two things however; his work on the
atomic bomb and his work on
black holes.
He became interested in science as a boy reading the scientific journals and his interest took him through his education at Baltimore City College through to receiving his
doctrate from
Johns Hopkins University in 1933. In 1938 he joined
Princeton, where he was the '
Joseph Henry'
Professor between 1966 and 1976, after which he left to join the
University of Texas at
Austin where he was made
Blumberg professor in 1981.
His studies with
Niels Bohr in
Copenhagen in 1939 lead to a joint paper, "The Mechanism of
Nuclear Fission". This paper was responsible for
uranium-235 being used to develop the atomic bomb.
In 1968 he recieved recognition for his long work on nuclear fission and
plutonium production, and was awarded the
Fermi prize by the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission. During 1969 to 1976 he was as a member of the U.S. General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament.
His work in the field of
astrophysics and
relativity initially lead him to vigourously oppose the theory that
stars could undergo
infinite collapse. However he later switched camps, and became one of the biggest supporters of the theory, indeed it was him who coined the phrase '
Black Hole' to describe such an object.
He also argued that the union of
quantum mechanics and
general relativity might be found be studying black holes; in fact some of his arguments seem to have anticipated
Hawking radiation.
Quotation :-
"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance.
As our island of
knowledge grows, so does the
shore of our
ignorance.