John Archibald Wheeler (born 1911) is an Americantheoretical physicist. One of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein, he tried to achieve Einstein's project of a unified field theory. In the 1960s, he formulated the so-called geometrodynamics, a program of physical (and ontological) reduction of every physical phenomenon such as gravitation and electromagnetism to the geometrical properties of a (curved) space-time. Aiming at a systematical identification of matter with space, geometrodynamics has often been said to be a systematic prolongation of the philosophy of nature as conceived by Descartes and Spinoza. Wheeler's geometrodynamics, however, failed to explain some important physical phenomena, such as the existence of fermions or that of gravitational singularities. Wheeler himself therefore abandoned this theory in the early 1970s. He continued his career as a physicist, making some very important contributions to theoretical physics.
Later on, for example, he coined the term black hole and the "it from bit".
Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General RelativityISBN 020138423X
Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special RelativityISBN 0716723271
Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in PhysicsISBN 0393319911 partially an autobiography.
At Home in the Universe ISBN 1563965003
A Journey Into Gravity and Spacetime ISBN 0716760347
Law Without Law theorizes experiments utilizing photons from distant locations in the universe, imaged using galactic clusters as lenses, but which are detected using apparatus for quantum entanglement, thereby influencing history billions of years in the past.
Doctor John Wheeler should not be confused with John Wheeler the actor.
Wheeler was one of the pioneers of the theory of nuclear fission (with Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi), and participated in the development of the U.S. atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II.
Wheeler is truly an almost metaphysical thinker as he ponders the concept that the very laws of physics may be evolving analogous to the fashion of natural selection and evolution in biology.
JohnWheeler: The occasion was a meeting in the fall of 1967 at the Institute of Space Studies in New York to consider this marvellous work of Jocelyn Bell and Anthony Hewish on the pulsars.
John Archibald Wheeler was born in Jacksonville, Florida.
Wheeler's geometrodynamics, however, failed to explain some important physical phenomena, such as the existence of fermions or that of gravitational singularities.
Wheeler is almost metaphysical in speculating that the laws of physics may be evolving in a manner analogous to evolution by natural selection in biology.
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