Keyword: johnwheeler

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

    04/14/2008 12:47:47 AM PDT · by LibWhacker · 6 replies · 430+ views
    New York Times ^ | 4/14/08 | Dennis Overbye
    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. Skip to next paragraph 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....