John Archibald Wheeler

John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler (right) together with Eckehard W. Mielke () in front of lake in Holstein before the Hermann Weyl-Conference 1985 in Kiel, Germany
Born	(1911-07-09)July 9, 1911 Jacksonville, Florida, United States
Died	April 13, 2008(2008-04-13) (aged 96) Hightstown, New Jersey, United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of North Carolina Princeton University University of Texas at Austin
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D)
Thesis	Theory of the dispersion and absorption of helium (1933)
Doctoral advisor	Karl Herzfeld
Doctoral students	Jacob Bekenstein Claudio Bunster Demetrios Christodoulou Ignazio Ciufolini Hugh Everett Richard Feynman Kenneth W. Ford Robert Geroch John R. Klauder Bahram Mashhoon Charles Misner Milton Plesset Benjamin Schumacher Kip Thorne Jayme Tiomno Bill Unruh Robert Wald Katharine Way Arthur Wightman
Known for	Breit–Wheeler process Wheeler–DeWitt equation Popularizing the term "black hole" Nuclear fission Geometrodynamics General relativity Unified field theory Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory Wheeler's delayed choice experiment Participatory Anthropic Principle
Notable awards	Albert Einstein Award (1965) Enrico Fermi Award (1968) Franklin Medal (1969) National Medal of Science (1970) Oersted Medal (1983) J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize (1984) Albert Einstein Medal (1988) Matteucci Medal (1993) Wolf Prize in Physics (1997) Einstein Prize (APS) (2003)
Spouse	Janette Hegner

John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911 – April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in explaining the basic principles behind nuclear fission. Together with Gregory Breit, Wheeler developed the concept of Breit–Wheeler process. He is best known for linking the term "black hole" to objects with gravitational collapse already predicted early in the 20th century, for coining the terms "quantum foam", "neutron moderator", "wormhole" and "it from bit", and for hypothesizing the "one-electron universe".

Wheeler earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Karl Herzfeld, and studied under Breit and Bohr on a National Research Council fellowship. In 1939 he teamed up with Bohr to write a series of papers using the liquid drop model to explain the mechanism of fission. During World War II, he worked with the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, where he helped design nuclear reactors, and then at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, where he helped DuPont build them. He returned to Princeton after the war ended, but returned to government service to help design and build the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s.