[ETS/PARC List] NJ Manhattan Project Physicist John A. Wheele Has Died

[Victor Pennetta, Jr.]

   HIGHTSTOWN, N.J. (AP) _ Physicist John A. Wheeler,
> who had a key
> role in the development of the atom bomb and later
> gave the space
> phenomenon black holes their name, has died at 96.
>    Wheeler, for many years a professor at Princeton
> University,
> died of pneumonia Sunday at his home in Hightstown,
> said his
> daughter, Alison Wheeler Lahnston.
>    Wheeler rubbed elbows with colossal figures in
> science such as
> Albert Einstein and Danish scientist Niels Bohr, with
> whom Wheeler
> worked in the 1930s and '40s.
>    ``For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics
> superhero
> still standing,'' Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology scientist
> Max Tegmark told The New York Times.
>    President Bush and first lady Laura Bush released a
> statement
> mourning ``one of America's greatest physicists,''
> particularly
> noting Wheeler's role as an educator.
>    ``As a professor at Princeton University and the
> University of
> Texas-Austin, Dr. Wheeler inspired generations of
> students ... to
> transform their curiosity into scientific
> discoveries,'' they said.
>    Born in 1911, Wheeler was 21 when he earned his
> doctorate in
> physics from Johns Hopkins University. In the
> mid-1930s, he
> traveled to Denmark to study for a year with Bohr, who
> won a Nobel
> Prize for his work describing the nature of the atom.
>    In early 1939, with war looming in Europe, Bohr
> arrived in the
> United States with the news that German scientists had
> split
> uranium atoms. Working at Princeton, Bohr and Wheeler
> sketched out
> a theory of how nuclear fission worked.
>    During World War II, Wheeler was part of the
> Manhattan Project,
> the scientists charged with using nuclear fission to
> create an
> atomic bomb for the United States.
>    Unlike some colleagues who regretted their roles
> after bombs
> were dropped on Japan, Wheeler regretted that the bomb
> had not been
> made ready in time to hasten the end of the war in
> Europe. His
> brother, Joe, had been killed in combat in Italy in
> 1944.
>    Wheeler later helped Edward Teller develop the even
> more
> powerful hydrogen bomb.
>    The name ``black hole'' _ for a collapsed star so
> dense that
> even light could not escape _ came out of a conference
> in 1967.
> Wheeler made the name stick after someone else had
> suggested it as
> a replacement for the cumbersome ``gravitationally
> completely
> collapsed star,'' he recalled.
>    ``After you get around to saying that about 10
> times, you look
> desperately for something better,'' he told the Times.
>    In his 1998 autobiography, ``Geons, Black Holes &
> Quantum Foam:
> A Life in Physics,'' he wrote that the black hole
> ``teaches us that
> space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an
> infinitesimal
> dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out
> flame, and that
> the laws of physics that we regard as 'sacred,' as
> immutable, are
> anything but.''
>    Among Wheeler's students in the early 1940s was the
> future Nobel
> Prize-winner Richard Feynman.
>    While he spent most of his academic career at
> Princeton, Wheeler
> moved to the University of Texas in 1976 because
> Princeton's
> retirement age was looming.
>    His wife of more than 70 years, Janette, died in
> October. He is
> survived by three children and several grandchildren
> and
> great-grandchildren.