Esteemed physicist John Wheeler dies at age 96

Considered one of the top physicists of the 20th century, Wheeler worked closely with Danish scientist Niels Bohr to develop a theory for nuclear fission and challenged Albert Einstein on debates over the nature of reality, existence and knowledge.

For many who knew him, Wheeler was just as extraordinary for his character as for his genius. “It was partly who he was, partly the way he was,” physics professor Peter Meyers said.

“He was really a towering figure in physics,” said physics department chair Curtis Callan GS ’64, who studied under Wheeler as a graduate student. “But he was also the friendliest, kindest and warmest man, a man that everyone loved.”

During World War II, Wheeler traveled to Los Alamos, N.M., to consult on the Manhattan Project. Later, Wheeler also led a group of physicists who developed much of the theoretical data demonstrating the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb as part of Project Matterhorn. The then-top-secret enterprise was the predecessor of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

An April 25, 1955 Daily Princetonian article on Wheeler emphasized the importance he placed on America’s drive to create the hydrogen bomb. “Liberty,” Wheeler stated, “is more important than peace.”

Jim Peebles GS ’62, the Albert Einstein professor of physics, emeritus, first met Wheeler when he arrived at Princeton in 1958 as a graduate student. “He deeply impressed me then and for the next half century as a truly admirable person and something approaching a wonder of nature in the world of physics,” Peebles said.

“It’s hard to imagine no longer seeing John’s cheerful face and hearing his eager question, ‘What’s new?’ ” Peebles added.

“Johnny Wheeler probed far beyond the frontiers of human knowledge, asking questions that later generations of physicists would take up and solve,” astrophysicist Kip Thorne GS ’65 said in a statement issued by the University.

Wheeler mentored the then-graduate student Thorne, who is now the Feynman professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Wheeler was born in 1911 in Jacksonville, Fla., and received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University.

He began teaching at Princeton in 1938 and stayed until 1976, when he faced mandatory retirement. He then taught at the University of Texas at Austin but later returned to Princeton. He was the Joseph Henry professor of physics, emeritus.

“He was intellectually fearless, and even in his later years, when his body began to fail him, he kept at it with an intensity that would be remarkable for a twenty-year-old,” physics professor and associate department chair Daniel Marlow said in an e-mail.

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An imaginative teacher

Wheeler was known not only for his intellectual prowess but also for his dedicated mentoring of eager minds in theoretical physics.

“I think what struck me most about Professor Wheeler was his passion for physics and his burning desire to understand the mysteries of nature,” Marlow said.

That Wheeler was a mastermind was no secret. Callan recalled one year when Wheeler headed a committee that developed the general exams for graduate students in physics.

“Wheeler decided that he wanted to create the entire exam that year, and it was particularly imaginative,” Callan said. “Many of the professors were glad they didn’t have to take it.”

Astrophysics professor Jeremiah Ostriker, who as an assistant professor in the late 1960s often approached Wheeler for his insight, said Wheeler was “very unusual as a scientist.” Ostriker is now the director of the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.

“He was very often right about important [scientific] matters without us ever being able to understand at all where his arguments came from,” Ostriker said. “When I went to see him, it was almost like consulting with an oracle.”

Wheeler mentored a generation of exceptional physicists, including Thorne and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman GS ’42.

“He was the most influential mentor of young scientists whom I have known,” Thorne said in the statement.

“He was extraordinarily interested in students and young people, sometimes beyond the bounds of the reasonable and practical,” Callan said. “He always took the approach that the person he was talking to was a reincarnated version of Richard Feynman.”

Callan recalled being very impressed by the depth and breadth of Wheeler’s mastery of physics and his ability to use common analogies and vivid illustrations to explain abstract phenomena.

Wheeler had the capacity to discuss difficult scientific concepts in terms understandable to laymen. His 1,279-page book “Gravitation,” which he co-authored with two former students, is a staple in its field and is known for its accessibility and witty humor.

Peebles said that in 1969, while he was teaching a course on cosmology, Wheeler approached him with an unusual request.

“John felt I should write up my notes [for the class] and turn them into a book,” Peebles explained. “I was reluctant, [but] he vowed to attend every lecture, take notes and hand them to me each day. The daily sight of that great physicist taking careful notes so unnerved me that I gave in, produced the notes and published the book.”

It was Wheeler’s confidence that transformed Peebles’ academic career. “It was a magnificently unselfish thing for him to do, and it was a wonderfully powerful boost to my career,” Peebles said.

When Wheeler came back to Princeton from Texas in his later years, Meyers remembered being thrilled as an assistant professor.

“It was just very exciting that he took such an active interest in everything going in this department,” he said. Meyers recalled that Wheeler would often “drop-in” just to talk.

Wheeler also made major contributions in a variety of other fields, including cosmic ray physics, structure and transformations of atomic nuclei and elementary particles, and general relativity.

He won the U.S. Department of Energy’s Enrico Fermi Award in 1968, the Albert Einstein Medal in 1988 and the Wolf Prize in 1997.

Wheeler is survived by three children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife Janette died in October 2007, at the age of 99. They were married for more than 70 years.

“By now, our hopes and concerns are so woven together that life of one without the other is inconceivable,” Wheeler wrote of his relationship with his wife in his autobiography in 1998.