- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJohn Archibald Wheeler
- John Wheeler was born on July 9, 1911 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. He was married to Janette Hegner. He died on April 13, 2008 in Hightstown, New Jersey, USA.
- SpouseJanette Hegner(1935 - October 2007) (her death, 3 children)
- The Wheelers often spent summers on High Island in Maine. His wife, Janette Wheeler, bought their summer home in John's absence and was apprehensive about his reaction to it until, on his first day there, he placed a chair on the front lawn and sat looking at the view for the entire afternoon.
- Wheeler argued that sentient life exists nowhere in the universe except on Earth; that if the universe were not a "participatory universe" - one whose reality depends on our cooperation in observing it - it would have only the palest sort of reality.
- Wheeler and Richard Feynman once constructed a diagram so complicated that they were tempted to label it: "For figure caption, see text," thus making the entire article a caption for one figure!
- Richard Feynman once said affectionately, "Some people think Wheeler's gotten crazy in his later years, but he's always been crazy."
- Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says of Wheeler: "He brought the fun back into physics".
- I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
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