[NJARC] Obit -- famous physicist with local connection

[John Ruccolo]

^BC-Obit-Wheeler, 1st Ld-Writethru,0590
^Physicist John Wheeler, who worked on atom bomb, gave
'black holes' their name, dies at 96
^Eds: UPDATES with statement from President Bush and
first lady.

   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.
   AP-CS-04-14-08 1821EDT




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