John Archibald Wheeler

Wheeler got married to Janette Hegner on June 10, 1935 after courting her for two years. Janette was a student of history at the ‘John Hopkins University’ and later took up teaching position at ‘Rye Country Day School’. The couple have three children.

This eminent scientist breathed his last on April 13, 2008 in New Jersey, six months after his wife’s demise. He was suffering from pneumonia and was aged 96 at the time of his death.

On July 9, 1911, John Archibald Wheeler was born to Joseph Lewis Wheeler and Mabel Archibald Wheeler in the city of Jacksonville, Florida, United States.

Both his parents worked as librarians and he had three younger siblings Joseph, Robert and Mary.

Wheeler attended a local school in Vermont where the family resided during 1921-22 and later studied at the ‘Rayen High School’ in Ohio. He then attended the ‘Baltimore City College’ from where he graduated in 1926.

He received a scholarship to the ‘John Hopkins University’ sponsored by the state of Maryland. While working at the ‘National Bureau of Standards’ during the summer of 1930, he released his first scientific paper.

Under the tutelage of physicist Karl Herzfeld he worked on his thesis for the doctoral studies and was awarded a Ph. D. in 1933. His thesis dealt with dispersion and absorption of the inert gas Helium.

During 1934-35, he worked in collaboration with physicists Gregory Breit and Niels Bohr. It was in 1934 that Wheeler in collaboration with Breit discovered the mechanism by which light can be converted to matter. The process was named after its founders as the ‘Breit-Wheeler Process’ and marked the beginning of the latter’s scientific career.

He then embarked on his first teaching assignment at the ‘University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’, a public research university. As an assistant professor he was offered an annual salary of $2300.

Owing to his interest in particle physics, in the year 1938 he accepted the position of an associate professorship at the ‘Princeton University’. The same year he collaborated with theoretical physicist Edward Teller to investigate the liquid drop model of atomic nucleus.

In 1939, following the discovery of nuclear fission Archibald collaborated with Niels Bohr and the duo set about examining the phenomenon of fission in Uranium, in order to elucidate the process. They concluded that it was the unstable isotopes of fissionable materials that released the energy upon being bombarded by neutrons.

Wheeler was inducted into the ‘Manhattan Project’ in 1942 and he was a part of the ‘Metallurgical Laboratory’ that was in charge of developing the nuclear reactor. The findings of the research he undertook, with Robert F. Christy another theoretical physicist, were published in a paper ‘Chain Reaction of Pure Fissionable Materials in Solution’.

John Archibald was renowned for making numerous contributions to the field of science but his work in the field of nuclear fission and fusion reaction is of paramount significance. He was involved in the making of first ever atom bomb and later the Hydrogen bomb.