John Archibald Wheeler
- Note: This page is about Doctor John Wheeler the scientist not John Wheeler the actor.
John Archibald Wheeler (born 1911) is an American theoretical physicist. One of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein, he tried to achieve Einstein's project of a unified field theory. In the 1960s, he formulated the so-called geometrodynamics, a program of physical (and ontological) reduction of every physical phenomenon such as gravitation and electromagnetism to the geometrical properties of a (curved) space-time. Aiming at a systematical identification of matter with space, geometrodynamics has often been said to be a systematic prolongation of the philosophy of nature as conceived by Descartes and Spinoza. Wheeler's geometrodynamics, however, failed to explain some important physical phenomena, such as the existence of fermions or that of gravitational singularities. Wheeler himself therefore abandoned this theory in the early 1970s. He continued his career as a physicist, making some very important contributions to theoretical physics.
Later on, for example, he coined the term black hole and the "it from bit".
Prof. Wheeler had a colorful style of presentation, characterized by expressions like "mass without mass"; therefore it is fitting that the festschrift for his sixtieth birthday was entitled Magic Without Magic: John Archibald Wheeler: A collection of essays in honor of his sixtieth birthday , Ed: John R. Klauder, {W. H. Freeman ,1972, ISBN: 0716703378)
His students included Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne.
Books
- Geometrodynamics
- Gravitation ISBN 0716703440
- Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity ISBN 020138423X
- Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity ISBN 0716723271
- Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics ISBN 0393319911 partially an autobiography.
- At Home in the Universe ISBN 1563965003
- A Journey Into Gravity and Spacetime ISBN 0716760347
- Law Without Law theorizes experiments utilizing photons from distant locations in the universe, imaged using galaxy clusters as lenses, but which are detected using apparatus for quantum entanglement, thereby influencing history billions of years in the past.
External links
- http://www.usd.edu/phys/courses/phys300/gallery/clark/wheeler.html
- Science Show - 13-09-2003 Profile of John Wheeler