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Physicist John A. Wheeler is Dead at 96
reverseengineer writes "Eminent physicist John Archibald Wheeler has died from pneumonia at the age of 96. The coiner of the terms 'black hole' and 'wormhole,' Wheeler popularized the study of general relativity, and advised a distinguished list of graduate students including Kip Thorne and Richard Feynman. Other work included a collaboration with Niels Bohr to develop the 'liquid drop' model of nuclear fission. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Dr. Wheeler, 'For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.'"
He came in once or twice to talk to the physics classes - nice man.
Condolences to the family.
Secondly while Hawking has made several important discoveries, he was cited by my college physics professor to be a 'pop' physicist. Hawking is a genius but mostly in theoretical physics. My professor also degraded Brian Greene to a much further point by saying he was nothing more than someone relaying physics to the general public. I also got into an argument about Sagan but I had an even harder time defending Sagan than Hawking.
While I've read books about the nature of space-time by Hawking, I noticed they were often co-written with Roger Penrose. In fact, if I were to ask you the most famous work of Hawking, what would you say? Probably A Brief History of Time.
What might follow is arguments of who is more important, the man who discovers this science or the man who makes it easily accessible and digestible by a vast majority of the five billion simpletons living on the earth?
Perhaps it can be said that Hawking is more than a pop-physicist but I'm aware of criticisms that he's mostly a public figure with a very romantic story behind him--condemned to a chair he took to books and became a brilliant scientist! I read his works and love him but I'm not a physicist so maybe that's why?
At any rate, whenever anyone dies a lot more respect is delivered unto them. Although I don't remember people saying much about Paul Erdos, I was shocked when people recognized Stanislaw Lem's death on such a large scale. It's a sad fact of our society, your work is commonly overlooked until you're dead.
My work here is dung.
He was a very good writer and that is what I knew about him until now. He wrote a series of paper explaining physics topics in lay man terms. I read several of them in the middle 90's using a dial up connection.
I will have to do a big search to find the current home for those papers. (if anyone knows, please share).
It's simply his opinion, so there's not much to say about it. Certainly someone can say Hawking did such and such, to provide evidence to the contrary, but really I think it comes down to looking into the past and seeing icons and titans that we don't have today. Perhaps it's those rosy colored glasses we wear when reminiscing, or maybe things really were grander back then. In either case, he was looking for something nice to say about a man he admired, and there's not much else to read into it.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I've taken cultural anthropology classes--even while in college! I still read many books about Native American/First Nation, Inuit, Inca, Pima, Hopi, Aztec and League of Five Nations peoples. I love their culture! I find more reward from reading their religious ceremonies and beliefs than I ever did find in the bible! Here a great man has passed in a great field, and we mar that with misanthropy. "Misanthropy?" Ha! By acknowledging that there are people smarter than other people, you assume I meant misanthropy? At least I started my post with condolences to Wheeler's colleagues, his family and thanking him for everything he did for us. How do you feel about "the death of a great man?" I wouldn't know, you spent your time attacking me for calling most of the populace of the world simple.
I'm not a physicist, I was merely hoping to relay what my physics professor had told me about being a real physicist. I never even sad I believe it, I admire all these men mentioned and feel a simpleton myself compared to them.
What in the hell is wrong with being simple anyway?
My work here is dung.
When Prof. Wheeler was at the University of Texas (and probably at Princeton as well) he used to give a penny to any student who found an error in what he had written on the chalkboard in class.
I wish I had kept mine.