John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Is Dead at 96

[Barrett808]

Source: The New York Times

John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Is Dead at 96
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: April 14, 2008

John A. Wheeler, a visionary physicist and teacher who helped invent the theory of nuclear fission, gave black holes their name and argued about the nature of reality with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, died Sunday morning at his home in Hightstown, N.J. He was 96.

The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter Alison Wheeler Lahnston.

Dr. Wheeler was a young, impressionable professor in 1939 when Bohr, the Danish physicist and his mentor, arrived in the United States aboard a ship from Denmark and confided to him that German scientists had succeeded in splitting uranium atoms. Within a few weeks, he and Bohr had sketched out a theory of how nuclear fission worked. Bohr had intended to spend the time arguing with Einstein about quantum theory, but “he spent more time talking to me than to Einstein,” Dr. Wheeler later recalled.

As a professor at Princeton and then at the University of Texas in Austin, Dr. Wheeler set the agenda for generations of theoretical physicists, using metaphor as effectively as calculus to capture the imaginations of his students and colleagues and to pose questions that would send them, minds blazing, to the barricades to confront nature.

Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Dr. Wheeler, “For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/science/14wheeler.html

[jgraz]

1. Farewell, Dr. Wheeler.

[Me.]

2. Based On His Theories

I'd like to wish him great happiness with the great computer

[daleo]

3. Perhaps he yet lives

In one of "many worlds".

[Ian David]

6. Or perhaps he lives here...

[Sabriel]

4. He lived long enough to see his theories realized in Iraq. n/t

[Barrett808]

7. I was surprised to read that he supported the Vietnam war.

I wonder if his position ever changed.

[GodlessBiker]

5. 96? Wow. Perhaps he is in a superposition along with Schroedinger's Cat or something.

[damntexdem]

8. Not really dead, just ...

gone beyond the event horizon.

[girl gone mad]

9. Dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=39561&mesg_id=39561

[pitohui]

13. maybe these threads can be merged...mods? EOM

.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. Wow. RIP

A shame after all those physics courses I took, his name never became as legendary as an Einstein or a Bohr or a Schrodinger.

[bemildred]

11. RIP. A great man. nt

[pitohui]

12. very sorry to hear this

sleep well, dr wheeler