One beautiful Fall day seventeen years ago I wandered into an office and my life profoundly changed. I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and was looking for a thesis advisor. Jadwin Hall was an intimidating place. Plenty of names familiar from my textbooks. Nobel laureates scattered about. And we were expected to just barge into their offices, and ask to work with them.
One office door was always open. As you walked by you could peek in, and see its occupant hard at work. Hunched over his notebook, scribbling away. Or standing by his bookcase, deep in thought. Most often at the blackboard, chalk in hand. This was John Archibald Wheeler, one of the legends of modern physics. He did foundational work on quantum mechanics, collaborating with Niels Bohr on some of the earliest work in nuclear fission. He invented the S-matrix. He played important roles in both the Manhattan project (atomic bomb) and the Matterhorn project (Hydrogen bomb). He made major contributions to general relativity, co-authoring with Charlie Misner and Kip Thorne the bible of the field. He was legendary for his way with words, coining such terms as wormholes, quantum foam, black holes, and the wave function of the Universe (the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). He trained generations of students; one of his first was Richard Feynman.
Fortunately, being a relatively clueless 20-year old, I was only dimly aware of these things. I was interested in gravity and cosmology, and I had heard Wheeler knew a thing or two about such topics. So I waltzed in, and asked if he had any projects I could work on. I staggered out of his office four hours later, laden with books, a clearly defined project in my hands. For the ensuing two years I spent essentially every weekday with Wheeler. Each morning I would rush over to his office, always to be greeted the same way: “What’s new?” I would have been up late the night before, desperately trying to find something interesting with which to answer that question. We would then spend hours working together, going over my results, scrutinizing my calculations, poring through the literature, brainstorming new ideas. Wheeler gave me a direct and personal introduction to the joys of research. We would break for lunch, and walk up to the faculty club. I often had trouble keeping up with him. He would always take the stairs (”No time to wait for an elevator!”). He would hook his arm into the banisters, and swing around, practically leaping from one flight to the next. This was 1990; Wheeler was 79 years old.
We would often work all afternoon (with the occasional interruption, the nuisance of having to leave for my class lectures). Every evening I would walk with him from Jadwin up across the full length of campus, to catch his bus. We would pass the corner of Ivy lane and Washington road, where he had scratched 137 into the concrete when they were pouring the sidewalk. We would pass Jones Hall, where he used to discuss relativity with Einstein. We would continue on through campus, crossing in front of Nassau Hall. Wheeler would insist we walk diagonally to the far gate, instead of exiting through the more convenient FitzRandolph Gate. An Undergraduate was not meant to exit FitzRandolph Gate until graduation, and Wheeler didn’t want to be responsible for what might occur were I to break tradition.
For two years I sat at the feet of the master, and I absorbed as much as I could. I learned about science, and about life. Wheeler had broad interests. We would often discuss biology, or history, or poetry. Over the ensuing years we kept in touch. We collaborated together on Wheeler’s last published paper.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Wheeler’s bedside. I tried to say thank you. But it was impossible to convey how much he means to me, and how grateful I am to him. In that moment when I crossed the threshold to his office, I was embarking on a new path. I am still on that path, and every day I am grateful to him for showing me the way.
John Wheeler died this morning.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Rest in Peace, John. You taught us all.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Beautifully written Daniel. I’m sorry for your loss, and the loss to physics.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Too bad that he died before seeing the LHC results
April 13th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
A truly great man. You had a unique experience and I thank you for sharing it.
Sam Cox
April 13th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
RIP
April 13th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Well written. Thanks for sharing this story.
April 13th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Very nice post. Sorry to hear such news.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
[...] 14, 2008 Great physicist John Archibald Wheeler passed away today. One of his students shares a story. Posted by Roppon Filed in Uncategorized ·Tags: physicist, [...]
April 13th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Excellently written, Daniel. Dr. Wheeler will be missed.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Very sad news, he was one of the physicists who everyone looked up to. Thanks for sharing the remembrance; it’s good to be reminded how inspiring a passion for science can be at its most pure.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
[...] Great Physicist Is Gone Although I haven’t seen the official obituary, noted physicist John Wheeler has, apparently died today, at the age of 96. In 1939 he worked with Neils Bohr, laying the foundations of our understanding [...]
April 13th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
[...] Archibald Wheeler: RIP I understand from this moving tribute by Daniel at Cosmic Variance that John Archibald Wheeler had passed away. Here is the first three paragraphs of Daniel’s [...]
April 13th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Daniel, I’m terribly sorry both for your personal loss and the loss to physics. But the world of science is better place for him having been in it, and we owe him a great debt.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Sorry to be unoriginal, but I did come over here to say, “Nice rememberance, Daniel.”
Sounds to me like you earned the time you got to spend with him, as well. And you’ll always have that going for you.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
A great man, indeed. I will mourn him.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Here is the New York Times obituary.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Daniel, really nicely written. I shared the news with several fellow academic descendants at the APS meeting today — everyone was very saddened. It’s amazing how many talks at this conference are given by someone whose scientific lineage goes through Johnny — it’s quite a legacy.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:03 am
me sad.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:31 am
That was beautifully written, Dan, and a wonderful tribute.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Thanks for a beautiful tribute.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Go! Explore the breadth and depths of the universe Mr. Wheeler. Absorb all the secrets and realize all the truths as you travel across the galaxies.
Thanks for a well spent century.
A beautiful tribute.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:12 am
A beautifull tribute, and very well written.
April 14th, 2008 at 4:30 am
great minds live alike too, apparently
RIP
April 14th, 2008 at 4:48 am
[...] A tribute to Wheeler by one of his students – Daniel Holz – at Cosmic Variance. [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 4:52 am
A very touching tribute.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:35 am
Although I was a humanities major, John Wheeler was my most memorable teacher as an undergraduate. He remains my model of a Renaissance man.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Nice tribute to the legend.
April 14th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I fell in love with quantum gravity as an undergrad after reading the last chapter of
Misner, Thorne and Wheeler’s Gravitation. This chapter was clearly written by Wheeler. He made quantum gravity seem like the coolest thing imaginable.
Years later I met him at a conference and was too tongue-tied to say anything more than hello. He looked at my name tag and asked if I was related to Joan Baez. I’m afraid that’s the only conversation I ever had with him, though he affected me tremendously.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Sad indeed.
How many of that great generation (the Manhattan project generation) are left? Darn few, I would venture.
Thanks for the lovely tribute, Daniel.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Very sad news. Undoubtedly his works will last forever.
Can’t anyone provide an open-source photo of Wheeler for Wikipedia?
April 14th, 2008 at 9:22 am
[...] John Wheeler lives forever Through Uncertainty Principles I learned that professor John Archibald Wheeler passed away yesterday. More here and here. [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Such an interesting life, I wish I had met him.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Daniel, thank you for your thoughtful perspective on Prof. Wheeler and his life.
May he rest in peace.
Elliot
April 14th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Wheeler will always be remembered as the great physicist he was.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:38 am
[...] of modern physics John Wheeler has died. Daniel Holz writes a great [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 10:02 am
As a coauthor of Feynman, who’s kept in touch with Kip Thorne since before “Gravitation” was published, I’ve just lost the greatest living teacher of a teacher of mine — although he belonged to the cosmos.
I feel as though the top storey of my home has been ripped away by a violent storm, exposing me, helpless, to the elements.
For some time to come, whenever I teach Physics, I shall explain to my student who John Archibald Wheeler was, and how diminished the world is, following his phase transition.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Amazing story, you will be missed john, thanks for bringing so much to this world
April 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Khan Muhammad (#30) wrote:
>
> Can’t anyone provide an open-source photo of Wheeler for Wikipedia?
In a way that expressive painting accompanying the article would be just as suitable, as it aptly reflects his life occupied in modelling reality rather than simply recording it.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:38 am
My debt to John is immense. For the tremendous beauty of his ideas. For the sweetness with which he received me, talked to me, and asked me questions. Because most of my physics has been walking along his path. For a letter he wrote to me so long ago, which is still hanging on the wall of my office. Because John wanted to really know how the world is, and how we should change our thoughts to understand it. Because I think that that was the right path for physics. For his eyes when I met him last time. And for the things he told me at this last meeting, and I couldn’t hear his soft voice anymore. And so much I wanted to hear more from him. Dear, dear John, thanks for all this. Carlo
April 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Daniel, thanks very much for the heartfelt post. John will be missed.
I was fortunate enough to have met him briefly as a prospective student at Princeton. He told me a story that had something to do with a Native American woman and astronomy, but I can’t remember what it was . . . I was wondering if you might know it since he may have been fond enough of the story to repeat it often.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:03 am
He lived a wondrous life and his contributions were immense. It is we, the survivors, who are made poorer by his loss.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I had the pleasure to see Wheeler at the symposium held at Princeton in honour of his 90th anniversary. All I can say, having now left academia, is that as a young student of theoretical physics Wheeler and so many of his students and students’ students were a constant inspiration.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:09 am
That is very sad news. Thanks for sharing with us Daniel.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:33 am
I trust the posthumus Mr Nobel will give Prof. Wheeler
a posthumus Nobel Prize at the earliest opportunity.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:43 am
John wheeler is a true inspiration for physicists and physics enthusiasts across the globe. When I was struggling to understand General Relativity his eloquent
statement “Space-time tells matter how to move. Matter tells space-time how to curve” gave me some insight in to the subject.
He is true legend!
Raju
April 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I’m saddened by Dr. Wheeler’s passing and saddened for your loss. I do have a question. Why the number 137 in the sidewalk?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:48 am
He was probably the most unassuming person I ever met on the Princeton campus. He will definitely be missed, but his teachings live on in all of us who came in contact with him or his writings!
April 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Greg, re 137: Approximately 1/alpha?
April 14th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
sic transit gloria mundi
April 14th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I’ve never met Wheeler, but his presence was obvious on the ninth floor of RLM, where I went to graduate school. I also apparently had his desk (since the drawers were full of his notes). It is amazing how much his influence is still felt, especially in the relativity community: people are still seduced by the ideas of spacetime foam, and geons, and “it from bit”, and many others…
April 14th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[...] Gisteren is John Archibald Wheeler, de bekende Amerikaanse natuurkundige én bedenker van het begrip ‘zwarte gaten’, op 96-jarige leeftijd overleden. De wetenschapper bezweek in zijn woning in Hightstown in de staat New Jersey aan de gevolgen van een longontsteking. Wheeler geldt als een van de toonaangevende theoretische natuurkundigen van de twintigste eeuw in Amerika. Hij werkte samen met Albert Einstein en Niels Bohr, en had een grote invloed op de ontwikkeling van de algemene relativiteitstheorie en quantum mechanica. Wheeler was de bedenker van de zogenaamde S-matrix, een wiskundige techniek in de quantum mechanica. In 1939 ontwikkelde Wheeler samen met Bohr een model ter verklaring van de atoomsplitsing. Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog werkte hij mee aan het Manhattan Project (met name aan de bom op Nagasaki) en later het Matterhorn B-project (ontwikkeling van de waterstofbom). De in 1911 in Florida geboren man werd het meest bekend door het feit dat hij in 1967 de naam “zwart gat” heeft bedacht voor een hemellichaam dat niet te zien is maar dat zodanig veel gravitatie uitoefent dat zelfs licht er niet aan ontsnapt. Andere bekende begrippen die Wheeler beroepshalve uit z’n mouw schudde waren ‘witte gaten’, ‘quantumschuim’ en de ‘golffunctie van het heelal’1. in 1973 publiceerde hij samen met Charles W. Misner en Kip S. Thorne het standaardwerk Gravitation. Een ontzettend dik boek vol formules, kan ik mij nog herinneren. Met Wheeler verliest de wetenschap een groot origineel denker. Bron: Cosmic Variance. [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I first met him as an undergrad and was fortunate enough to become one of his graduate students. It was wonderful to receive gems of wisdom like “Wheeler’s first moral principal” (never do a calculation unless you already know the answer) first hand. He was incredibly generous with his time and modest to a fault. He helped me through the darkest moments of my career. The slight contributions that I now strive to achieve in physics are motivated in part by my debt to him and the faith he showed in me when I had little of my own. Wheeler and Janette were like the grandparents that I never knew. He was the greatest scientific influence in my life. Hardly a day passes that I don’t think of him. He was the greatest man that I have ever known.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I loved John with all my heart! I was the biographer of Lise Meitner and in 1995, phoned him from University of Hawaii — “Do you remember me? I interviewed you ten years ago for my dissertation on Lise Meitner, and you were departing for Copenhagen — after being interviewed for NOVA by Carl Sagen! And I spilled a coke on you right after our video interview — how embarrased I was!” “Oh yes” – he replied, always the optimist, always the student of Bohr, broad-minded, cheerfully American “you are the beautiful historian! I would be happy to write the Foreword to your book on Meitner! Now let me tell you some stories about fission…” And then he would truly be off, sharing insights no historian may have ever known or written carefully about….
Johnny, we all loved you, we admired and respected you, but moreso, you were our ‘link’ to the Copenhagen Circle, the times before the war, and the reason we all work so hard for world peace. It was YOU who encouraged me, whispering in my ear “Now you keep up your good work, and always take a stand for peace!”
We will miss you — have a safe journey into the cosmos!
Patricia Rife
April 14th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Daniel, I am really saddened by this news, and very moved by your wonderful tribute.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
R.I.P.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
See John’s amazing, true story about the discovery of fission: P.Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Boston, MA: Birkhauser 1999). Thank you from all of us, John, for your bridge between Bohr and Einstein, and the insights you shared with the world. Hugs forever, Patricia
April 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
[...] and informative pieces about the man, his life and scientific achievements. See for example here, here, and here. With Wheeler gone, physics loses one of its very few living contacts with the [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Thank you.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Maybe there’s no hell or heaven, but it would be nice if somewhere outside of space and time there’s a big lecture hall with a huge blackboard where Professor Wheeler, Professor Bohr, Professor Einstein and Professor Feynman are spending the eternity uncovering the secrets of the universe through their brilliant insights and arguments.
And, for the sake of Dr. Einstein, that lecture hall better have an endless supply of tea
.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
[...] John Wheeler died today. Cosmic Variance has a nice tribute. [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I only ever spent a few hours with Wheeler in person, when he visited Queen Mary and Westfield College. If I recall correctly, Peter Szekeres was also visiting and during our obligatory trip to a local Indian restaurant they both swapped lengthy and detailed stories about their respective heart by-pass operations.
Although I am no longer in the field, Wheeler’s influence remains in my research and approach to teaching. He will be sorely missed.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
[...] (??? ?? ?????????? ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ??? cosmic variance) [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
====================================================
John Archibald Wheeler and the Smoky Dragon
by
Jonathan Vos Post
====================================================
“It from bit,” said John Archibald Wheeler,
giant of Physics, the last superhero
still standing, of Einstein, Feynman, Bohr;
S-Matrix master, mutating metaphor;
all collaborators, all decayed towards zero,
into the black hole of death, beyond any healer.
Ninety-six years when wormhole pneumonia
pulled him away from consensus space-time,
into the ultimate language of clarity,
collapsing at last to his own singularity,
the plutonium peak of the Matterhorn,
Manhattan Project, the rocket-base crime,
“a smoky dragon” — spirits of ammonia.
“We are no longer satisfied with insights
only into particles, or fields of force,
or geometry, or even space and time.”
His way with words, a deep internal rhyme,
blinding as an ultraviolet source,
and so he writes, calculates, and re-writes.
“Today we demand… some understanding
of existence itself,” he said to all teachers,
stretching the metrics of Physics to breaking,
we recall, our hearts aching, star-quaking
geometrodynamics for creatures
beyond the horizon, an instrument landing.
“Black hole… teaches us that space can be crumpled
like a piece of paper, into an infin-
itesimal dot, that time can be extinguished,”
he lectured, in his black coat, distinguished,
“like a blown-out flame,” our identical twin
aging faster, falling in, stressed spacesuit rumpled.
He wrote: “The laws of physics that we regard
as ’sacred,’ as immutable, are anything
but.” Not abstract. He made it astrophysics.
He dragged the game at last into metaphysics.
Starlight shining on his golden ring
Magician slams down the ace, last playing card.
Into the unified field, this is not tragic.
Fissioning atom, conceived as liquid drop,
beyond the cosmos, John Archibald Wheeler,
Physicist, prophet, poet, teacher, feeler,
“wave function of the universe” — without stop;
“mass without mass” — magic without magic.
1240-1435
14 Apr 2008
====================================================
Copyright (c) 2008 by Magic Dragon Multimedia.
All rights reserved Worldwide. May not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered, in its entirety, and without charge.
====================================================
April 14th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Very nice remembrance; than you for sharing. May Prof. Wheeler rest in peace.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
The Wheeler Family has been reading your lovely comments; I hope you will let us share them at the service to be held at the Princeton University Chapel Monday May 12th at 10 AM (best check with the University before making plans), or at the get-together afterwards. Sincerely, James E Wheeler
April 14th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
@ James
I’m sure that all who expressed their thoughts would be honored to have their words shared during the service.
Perhaps we may soon look back and echo his quest for understanding the universe:
“Oh, how could it have been otherwise?”
Be well.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
John Wheeler was one of the last of the Giants of 20th Century Physics..we will all miss him..even those of us who did not know him well.
April 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I’m sad to see such a great thinker go. I really learned a lot from his (with Edwin F. Taylor) Space Time Physics. I was also impressed by his attempt to get a handle on the anthropic issues and foundational questions of “what is reality” etc, although my own impressions don’t match his.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Thanks for sharing your beautiful memories Daniel.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
[...] with Dennis Overbye’s obituary in Times, read Daniel Holz’s moving remembrance over at Cosmic Variance, and then browse at will through what will be an increasingly overwhelming tide of tributes, all [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
That was a beautifully written and touching tribute to a giant of a man. For anyone who has even a passing interest in science, his is one of the shoulders we stand upon.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
That was a beautiful remembrance.
John Wheeler has long been my favorite physicist. I discovered him while reading popular physics books as a teenager, when again and again I would come across crazy-sounding quotations by Wheeler about the foundations of physics and quantum theory.
I’ve collected many quotations by and about John Wheeler over the years, and have added today some new ones that I had not yet come across. I hope you don’t consider this spam, but I thought you or your readers might be interested in perusing them: quotations by or about John Wheeler.
If that URL gets mangled, the last link at http://strangewondrous.net/search is also a query for everything by or about him.
Science has lost one of its greatest practitioners; those who knew him have lost a great man. My condolences to his family and friends.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
[...] Brilliant physicist John Archibald Wheeler died yesterday. Daniel Holz has a moving eulogy over at Cosmic [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Saw John Wheeler give a talk at the NY Academy of Sciences in NYC in 1979. The occasion was the 100th Anniversary of Einstein’s birth. Great talk. Great guy.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
[...] many already since his death. You may go read the obituary by Dennis Overbye, the touching "goodbye" by Daniel Holz, a student of him, on CosmicVariance, and other blog entries such as this and [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Thank you to everyone for the thoughtful comments. Wheeler was an exceptional human being. The world is a poorer and duller place without him.
Greg (#46), it is indeed 1/fine structure constant, as argumenter suggests.
Jamie, I’m sure I speak for everyone in welcoming you to use whatever comments you would like. You have many “siblings” in the community of Johnnie’s students and grand-students, and we share your loss.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Thank you for your great effort, Dr. Wheeler. You will always be one of my heroes.
(e squared/hc = 1/137…)
[1] JA Wheeler, Proc 3rd Int Symposium, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, 1989, pg 354-368.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:48 am
[...] the Cosmic Variance blog, a personal tribute from one of his [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Requiescat in pace .
April 15th, 2008 at 4:11 am
[...] The New York Times and especially Cosmic Variance have [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 4:40 am
We lost a giant…
Daniel, thank you for this kind words…
April 15th, 2008 at 7:15 am
And the world continues on a path of destruction. Nice guys may be, but they have contributed nothing!
April 15th, 2008 at 10:17 am
[...] Daniel, who blogs at Cosmic Variance and who was one of Wheeler’s more recent students, has this touching tribute, which serves as a profound example of the power of professors to induct students into the world of [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Science has lost a great.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am
The world may be a rotten place in many ways, but it
is guys like Wheeler who redeem our species.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
a really good article, and very passionate.
may he rest in peace, such people are very rare, and missed by many… it’s such a shame when they go…
April 15th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
My condolences. We have lost one of the giants of modern theory of gravitation and cosmology.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
[...] Addendum: Don’t miss Cosmic Variance’s beautiful tribute. [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Science lovers from all over the world are shocked by the news. I have written an obituary in Bengali language in the blog named “Sachalayatan”. I know that none of you can read it. Anyone interseted can merely have a look:
Goodbye, John Wheeler: Obituary in Bengali
April 15th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Johnny Wheeler was a great physicist and a great man. Amidst the crooked timber of humanity, Prof. Wheeler stood straight and graced many lives with his intellect, humor, optimism, and generosity. Michael Hennelly
April 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
If I can one day see farther, it would be by standing on the shoulders of Giants like John A. Wheeler. Dear John (you are so much part of many of us at the moment, that I cannot bring myself to call you Professor Wheeler, though I have an immense respect for you), it is men like you who have tried to make this world a better place, but more importantly wise men like you who have made it possible for young people like me to continue on our quest of understanding, wherever that might take us. I have never met you, but for me it is not important, because your presence could be felt across the great distances, in many ways.
Daniel, thank you for sharing those memories in such wonderful and truly heartfelt prose.
My condolences go to the Wheeler family, and all people who have lost in him an admirable companion, friend and teacher.
May I point out a nice archive which has an interview of John, which you can access here.
A physics graduate student from a small island, Mauritius.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
For me, Johnny Wheeler started out as a kind of antimodel, who became a role model as I matured enough to understand the depth of thought behind his enigmatic slogans. Indeed, he anticipated so many things that seemed to us novel. Long before eternal inflation, the landscape and cosmological natural selection, Wheeler was thinking about “reprocessing the universe” in bouncing singularities giving rise to new universes, where random variations in the laws would give rise to what he called “law without law.” It was no coincidence that John Baez named “spin foam” models after Wheeler’s thoughts on “spacetime foam”, and no surprise when we began to see traces of his “matter without matter.” And only with the development of quantum information theory did it become possible to formulate clearly what he meant by “it from bit.”
What stands out in memory was his interest, always humbly expressed, in what younger people were doing and thinking, as well as his openness to disagreement, whether about quantum foundations or arms control policy. Once in a conference Carlo Rovelli told John he sounded like Martin Heidegger, and the next time I saw John he reported that he had been reading that philosopher, but finding it difficult. What was always so impressive was his pressing of the simplest, most naïve questions: “Why the quantum?” I think he asked in every conversation we had, and each time he sounded freshly perplexed.
One memory that comes to mind today is a graduate seminar I dropped into during a visit to UT Austin around 1980, where he gave out 3 by 5 inch file cards. He asked everyone to write down in the fewest number of symbols their understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, to be used as a crib sheet if we were given a physics examination on confronting Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. I wonder if he still had his card with him, and what was on it.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It makes me wish I knew him. Beautiful.
To keep the mind active throughout life, especially with deep thoughts such as his…I feel sure he had a full, rich life.
I’m not a scientist, just an engineer. But we know where the real genius lies.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Touching. I shared it with a colleague who knew him slightly, and he shared it with his students today. I think he liked how you met him.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I can only imagine that the memorial service will be a virtual (or actual) Who’s Who of physics for the last 50 years.
SO where are the Wheelers, Bethes, Feynmans,…of today?
Maybe we do not yet recognize them. Maybe they are all doing biology. Maybe it is a different world.
Curious, too, that a blog devoted mainly to “hard” science, with many thoughtful discussions (and some less so) discussions on the roles of science and religion, would have several cutesy metaphors of theorists deriving equations in Heaven.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:16 am
beautiful post, Dan.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Goodbye John! We will never forget you.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:54 am
He didn’t just live. He was alive. As long as we remember him, he still lives.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:07 am
[...] Goodbye. Daniel Holz was an advisee of the late, great John Archibald Wheeler. Here, he remembers the master. [...]
April 16th, 2008 at 7:17 am
I was trained as a molecular biologist, not a physicist. These past few years, indulging my curiosity about “Why Life?” led to the more fundamental “Why Anything?” It is exactly the question John Wheeler would ask and it led to my reading John Wheeler’s autobiography, Gravitation and his other masterful texts, in order to frame the question more intelligently. I began to know the man. One can feel grief as action at a distance. Safe journey and safe harbor. Now, that discussion with Bohr and Einstein can resume. Perhaps they will soon glimpse the answers.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
“Born a poor young country boy”, I never have been close to any giant in any field. But, as a student, “Gravitation” was always at my hand, and it was a pleasure to read and re-read it. Seeing this “goodbye”, and remembering my experiences in the “academia” of my country, I really felt the loss… The world needs more men like him.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I am minded of an exhortation by
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910-1994):
> Live modestly and do serious things.
For all his supposed “craziness”,
Wheeler did that, in spades.
David Broadhurst
April 16th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
This was a lovely tribute to John Wheeler and the memories that have stayed with different people.
Following his lineage in terms of his students, also leaves a impression on the history of information that has become part of our everyday life. These are tributes too on how much a person like John Wheeler can influence the course of time in these unfolding events like LIGO and the continued search for Gravitational waves.
This quote below made an impression on me to the extent that people like John Wheeler assigned an interpretation to the exercise, and that many tried to follow in his footsteps.
Geons, Blackholes & Quantum Foam by John Archibald Wheeler, with Kenneth Ford, page 236, para 2.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[...] Cosmic Variance has a very moving goodbye post by one of Wheeler’s graduate students and friend. Related [...]
April 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Wheeler inspired generations of young minds by coining the word “Blackhole” for a star which even do anot allow light to escape. It is not by fluke he coined that right word. It is not a serendipity. It is due to the gact that he is real teacher who has the poetic sense. We are not fortunate to have him as our teacher. But from Kip Thorne, Feynman and others we know that wheeler was really genius, good human being and ecellent teacher of Physics. A legend passsed away. Let his soul be at peace at singularity of “Blackhole”
AP Radhakrishna
April 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
April 16th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
[...] Kevin Barnes mailed me this; I read much about Wheeler when I was young, he will be missed. Goodbye. | Cosmic Variance [...]
April 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
It’s obvious he meant a lot to you.
Wheeler was one of my great heroes.
“I am truley sorry for your lots.”, as they say.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
It’s sad that we often don’t hear about the influence that great minds have had on individuals until after their deaths. Thanks for the article. RIP Dr. Wheeler.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
[...] Goodbye – Cosmic Variance [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 5:10 am
[...] — Cosmic Variance [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/04/13/goodbye/] « [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 7:59 am
[...] of the great physicist John Archibald Wheeler, and after reading all the comments on this beautiful tribute to him, a strange feeling is left on [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
I am always in conflict with two views of the world… a part of me that is filled with hate knowing that before his death far too few new this mans name, his contributions, the value to the whole… while all of them could tell you Paris Hiltons newest dogs name.
However in the same thought, the masses be damned, THIS is what mankind is capable of. The evidence we have value, potential, and a future. The drive to expand the whole of knowlage, not to get rich, not to shove another brightly colored product into your unused closet… but simply to know.
If men like this made up 10% of our world, even 5%… mankind would see a burst of knowlage and prosparity beyond what we can imagine.
May the minds he left behind truely know what humanity is capable of, and live up to his example.
Rest in Peace
April 17th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Great story and well written thanks for enlightening me.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Daniel, what a Blessed Man you are!!!! I didn’t know Dr. Wheeler but I know his son. Dr. James Wheeler. He is a Pathologist at The Univ Of Penn. He is an outstanding Pathologist and teacher. We are Blessed to have him here teaching our Residents and Students…….
April 17th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
[...] Goodbye no Cosmic Variance [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Don’t know if anybody’s interested but here is a link to an in-depth series of video interviews of John Wheeler:
http://www.peoplesarchive.com/browse/movies/2359/
From just a few years ago, John is in fine form, and always speaks in clear, measured sentences, about the remarkable history he has been a part of.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:47 am
[...] A wonderful tribute to the man can be found here. [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Johnny Wheeler was my thesis supervisor and hero. I learned so much from him — and not just physics. During World War-II, we didn’t see much of him. He was away (Manhattan Project) and I joined the US Navy. After the War, I got interested in cosmic rays and found him willing to spend time with me –- often at odd moments — once when traveling on a train to Wilmington. I will never forget him during my PhD oral exam. Oppenheimer and Bohr were both there; Oppy because he was interested in my topic, Bohr because he was visiting Wheeler. Oppy asked a difficult question – then got up to the blackboard to answer it himself and never sat down. Bohr fell asleep and Wheeler was truly embarrassed. I passed the exam. —Fred Singer *48
April 18th, 2008 at 11:20 am
[...] Holz, one of bloggers at Cosmic Variance, was one of Wheeler’s students. He has a very moving goodbye posted there. It’s worth a read. __________________ "I often say that when you can measure [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[...] Today’s web page is Goodbye. | Cosmic Variance [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I never met Wheeler, but Gravitation is one of my favourite books. I have learned a great deal from him by proxy, and expect to continue to learn from him in the future.
Paul
April 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I have no professional connection with John Wheeler, but as for so many others, he was a source of inspiration for me. I was a budding physics undergraduate in the late 70’s when I discovered “Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler” and was so struck by what I found among its trove of pages that for a while I attempted to study General Relativity with the guidance of a patient professor.
That interest continued long enough that I became involved briefly as a graduate student with a group searching for gravity waves. About the time my interests bent from gravitation toward other areas of physics, I had the chance to meet John Wheeler – not to become an acquaintance, but to meet the man and hear some of his views – and he inspired me again.
The inspiration this time was different – a kind of inspiration evident in his writings, certainly, but a kind that personal interaction confirms in a way the written word cannot. John Wheeler was a man whose very personality effused wonder. I found it remarkable that a man of such experience and years – the kind who has “see it all” and “done it all” – could yet stand unjaded, with creativity and originality unblunted, and ignoring the fashions or currents of time could bridge nearly a half-century’s difference in maturity and capture the imagination of a young buck like me barely in my twenties. My own wanderings have long since take me afield, but I have not forgotten the man, nor have I let go of that sense of wonder.
We less for his passing, but we are greater because he was here.
Thank you, John.
David W. Brown
April 18th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
No offense to anyone here but Wheeler himself made the following comment in an interview which I cannot locate but will explain since it is one of the most inciteful things I ever picked up from him. He was asked by his interviewer what he was trying to pass on to his students for them to learn.
His response was that his students never learned a thing from him. Students do not learn from teachers. They learn by teaching.
I took that to mean that when we all turn to stand in front of a class and give a lecture there are many minds in our audience of students. The students’ viewpoints vary over a large spectrum with misinterpretations or new incites that we likely have not considered when we were students. Now, as teachers, we must consider them and be prepared to give a quantitative response if one is possible or an experiment that can realize the answer.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Reminds me of Tuesday’s with Morrie
April 19th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Thanks for this piece and the notification, which I hadn’t heard of. One of the greats of physics. Vale John Wheeler and thanks, from a layman. What a richness it must have been to work alongside him.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I cried at this, but not for any altruistic reason. I cried because I never had anyone take that kind of interest in anything I ever did.
You are blessed, lucky, and fortunate; be glad for what you have been given in the gift of a mentor, and much more in the gift of friendship.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Daniel, it is interesting what you are writing about Wheeler scratching 137 in
fresh concrete of a sidewalk. It seems to me that people of his generation involved in the bomb making had special feelings toward the 1/137. I remember that Ya.B.Zeldovich would walk a long way in an empty cloack room to hung his coat. When I asked him what was the necessity to go so far if there were so many empty places nearby, he replied that he always uses number 137, otherwise he can forget where his coat is hunging. What do you think will be the symbol of this generation ? Cosmic variance ?
April 20th, 2008 at 12:35 am
My respects.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Never mind. I stumbled upon this.
A coincidence occurs.
Peace.
April 20th, 2008 at 5:45 am
You are lucky, have a opportunities to knew this wonderful person .. May God bless him …
April 20th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
i am so sorry for your personal loss, and sorry to hear of john’s passing from this world. i think you have managed to convey much more than words to describe him and your relationship with him. i am very touched and saddened, and also inspired. selfishly, i wish i could have known him too, but really, he was and is an example to us all, at least the kind of example i embrace. may we all live so fully.
April 21st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
A GREAT MIND NEVER DIES! IT JUST CHANGES FORM!
GET TO WORK! This would be pleasing to him…
April 21st, 2008 at 5:55 pm
This made me cry.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:00 am
[...] died on April 13, but I was unaware of it until I decided to skim Cosmic Variance, which has this excellent article on him. The following quote from this article gives the broad strokes of some of his contributions [...]
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Very well written. Interesting story, sounds like a very wonderful guy.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
The public memorial service for Professor John A. Wheeler will take place on Monday May 12, at 10:00 a.m. in the Princeton University Chapel on the Princeton University campus.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 am
[...] Goodbye no Cosmic Variance [...]
May 17th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Years ago, I met with John at an APS conference, and had a few wonderful discussions regarding General Relativity and the origin of inertia. Afterwards we had lunch together, and on the way back to the hotel I got to understand why everybody called him a “gentleman within a gentleman.” As we were walking, I was deeply engrossed in the conversation and did not realize that his observant eyes had just measured a the agony of homeless man. He abruptly stopped a few yards afterwards, and looked into his wallet. He only had twenty dollar notes. He apologized to me and moved back to the homeless man, lovingly handed him the twenty saying: “You probably need this more than I do. I know how tough life is in the streets.” and patted the man on his back. His generosity and humanity left a much deeper impression on me than his arguments for and against Mach’s Principle… I’m sure he is in good company now. May he rest in peace.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Sir,
could you please fill me in about the VELOCITY of GRAVITY? We all know that time flies, but what about the speed of gravity? For example: if a couple of suns dissapear in a black hole. how fast would it influence its surroundings? I know gravity is a field. But how fasr does it travel the universe?
Yours sincerelly,
Guido Brandt Corstius, theacher of social science.
Soest, The Nethetrlands
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:20 am
My good man, deholz, I’m embarrassed to have stumbled upon this tribute so many weeks late.
All the good times we had there, brothers in arms half a lifetime ago, and yet I never really got into your head about how it was, working with Johnny. Now I know, from this evocative remembrance.
Sad to say that my chief recollection of your thesis work is that your tome was the very last submitted, the day after my second-to-last submission, both well past the department “deadline”. Slacker pride.
But here I read of an earnest young scholar, chumming around campus with a living legend of physics, working diligently at the feet of the master in close collaboration. I had no idea at all. What a blessing to have that experience as you were getting started on your career path. To say I am envious, having walked by that same door many a time but having chosen a different one, is gross understatement.
I never got to know Johnny, but I’d like to think I got to know *you* pretty well over those four years. I’m glad for Johnny that *you* walked through his door that day. Sounds to me like you both enriched each other’s lives greatly in the years to follow. That’s a rare and special thing, for a relatively clueless 20-year old.
Very glad that you could be with him near the end.
I’m deeply sorry for your loss, old friend.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
My name is Perry A. Lamb. I am the only living brother of Willis E. Lamb Jr. and I reside in Brunswick, Maine.
Willis and John Wheeler were among a select group of about 30 scientists who attended a conference at Shelter Island Inn on Long Island, N.Y. in June 1947. Some of these participants had already won Nobel Prizes before this meeting and others won it afterwards, including my brother Willis in 1955.
After years of uninformed reviews of physics happenings since this meeting it has always been obvious to me that all of the attendees at this meeting could and probably should have won the big prize, including John Wheeler.
Prior to April of this year, Wheeler and Lamb were the only Shelter Island attendees who were still living. Then, in May, John Wheeler died and then in June Willis passed away.
John Wheeler’s summer (or retirement) residence in Maine and I often thought I would liked to have visited him and asked him to explain the Lamb Shift to me. But, alas! Tempus fugit (sp?)
My belated sympathies to the Wheeler heirs.
Perry Lamb palamb@gwi.net
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 am
John Archibald Wheeler seems to have been a swell guy, besides being a great scientist.
On searching about him I was amazed to learn that in 1969, at the request of Margaret Mead, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) admitted the Parapsychological Association as a member. In 1979, John Wheeler, quite rightly pointed out that parapsychology, which includes such things as “extrasensory perception”, “psychokinesis”, “divination” and “mediumship”, all of which have been thoroughly debunked, was a pseudoscience and asked them to expell the association. The AAAS refused and the Parapsychological Association remains a member of the AAAS till today!
We could excuse some creationist institution for trying to pass off pseudoscience as science, but if the AAAS cannot distinguish between the two that does not bode well for science.
Perhaps as a tribute to John Archibald Wheeler, eminent scientists should take up this matter with AAAS and have them expelled forthwith.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
[...] from cosmicvariance.com Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at Wheeler’s bedside. I tried to say thank you. But it was [...]
August 18th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
R.I.P.
Black hole physics is an interesting topic. Thanks Wheeler for introducing the term “Black hole”.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
What a wonderful experience to have shared with such a fascinating individual.
Thank you for sharing your story.
p.s Who did that painting?..it’s amazing!
October 19th, 2008 at 10:39 am
My stepmother, Karen, adored Dr. Wheeler. She worked as caretaker to him and his wife when they stayed at their summer home in Maine. This was when they were both in their nineties. I was fortunate enough to meet him and shake his hand, though I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say to the author of such intellectually charged books as Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam. So he graciously accepted my cliched “an honor to meet you sir” babble. For the record, he experienced remorse for his hand in the Manhattan Project. Karen had the good fortune to talk to Mr. Wheeler about such things. May he continue to explore all that is quantum in a new dimension.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
[...] Goodbye – Cosmic Variance [...]
October 24th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
That was beautifull man
October 24th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Beautiful…thank you.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Встраиваемая бытовая техника, стиральные машины, портативная техника, аудио-видео, варочные поверхности.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:43 am
RIP
January 26th, 2009 at 1:08 am
As a physics graduate student, I only dreamed of pursuing relativity, and my career went along other lines. But John Wheeler’s ideas were so compelling and so exciting they pulled me back again and again, to read with amazement, a thrilling ride when I felt mired in prosaic routine. It was like soaring, the feeling that there was another dimension. After I heard him lecture in Berkeley, I always thought I would drop by his office to express my appreciation for enriching my life. Now all that will have to wait, but for those who also remember him, we share the reverence for his gift to our intellectual potential, and will not forget that he was one who really counted.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] John Wheeler passed away almost exactly a year ago. In commemoration of his tremendous contributions to physics, the current edition of Physics Today (the monthly magazine of the American Physical Society) is dedicated entirely to his memory. [Sadly, only select articles are public, which I find incomprehensible.] The issue includes an article on Wheeler’s early work on particles (written by Ken Ford), as well as one on his later work on fields, gravity, and information (by Charlie Misner, Kip Thorne, and Wojciech Zurek). There are also two reprints of articles authored by Wheeler, one on nuclear fission (describing his pioneering work with Niels Bohr), and one “introducing” black holes (written with Remo Ruffini). As a sign of Wheeler’s enduring legacy, the magazine ends with an article (by Terry Christensen) focused on his tremendous mentorship. [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 1:58 am
I never met the man, but through Feynman’s work I was influenced by him in ways I can’t describe. Suffice it to say that I owe him a debt I will be hard pressed to repay. May he rest in peace, and may G-d give him ample reward for his commitment to the unending search for Truth.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for this very touching tribute. Great men leaves an imprint that transcend time and space and this is pretty much what can be felt in your write-up.
Wheeler’s portrait is beautiful. Would you happen to know the artist?
thanks