Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics

This is really a wonderful scientific biography. Wheeler has an engaging, easy-going style that doesn't sacrifice detail and scholarly accuracy for readibility. It's almost like having a fireside chat with the great physicist about the entire history of 20th century physics. Wheeler's career spanned almost the entire 20th century and he worked in many areas, from atomic and radiation physics to nuclear physics, quantum theory, black holes and gravitation. He even made a brief foray into sociology when he attended a conference and spoke on "National Survival and Human Development," in which he emphasized the importance of a country developing the full capabilities of all citizens.In addition to learning about his own distinguished career, you meet just about every other important physicist and/or mathematician or had anything to do with physics (such as Carson Mark, who I didn't know about before, who Wheeler spoke highly of), and his account is full of interesting personal details about famous and non-famous physicists alike. Wheeler met or knew other great scientists like Einstein, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, Hans Bethe, Oppenheimer, Stanislaw Ulam, John von Neumann, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, Isidore Rabi, Leo Szilard, Carl Bohm, and many others too numerous to mention.In addition to the above famous names, I also learned something about many other names, both famous and not so famous, that I didn't know much about before, and Wheeler often briefly mentions what each scientist's contribution was about, especially when it influenced his own thinking. Wheeler provides some important insights about himself. For example, he commented on how much of his own productivity was due to the deadlines and time pressure he was under most of his career. Many of us have the impression that brilliant minds like Wheeler (much of it fostered by the public's stereotype of Einstein) create their amazing intellectual achievements in a world divorced from reality and the mundane aspects of everyday life, but Wheeler says that it was often all the deadlines he had to meet that was responsible for much of his best work. He was always having to meet deadlines for papers, class lectures, various reports, talks he was invited to give, and so on throughout the course of his career, and he said he was often spurred to work harder because of them, and often did his best work under the pressure of having to prepare a lecture or talk at the last minute.Overall, this is a very enjoyable, readable, and interesting biography about one of the great scientists of our time. By the way, just a personal note here. I'm not a physicist myself (actually, I'm a neurobiologist by training), but I'm the grand-nephew of physicist Ernest Lawrence, who won the 1939 Nobel prize for his invention of the first atom smasher or cyclotron, and who Wheeler met briefly when he was considering a move from Princeton to U.C. Berkeley.

During his tenure at Princeton university, John Archibald Wheeler has served as the mentor to such outstanding physicists as Richard P. Feynman, Kip Thorne and Hugh Everett. He was also great friends with such individuals as Albert Einstein & Niels Bohr. In short, his contributions to physics have been indispensable. This present work of his traces his life, a life that is (as the cover says) one of science. However, one of the nice facets of this book is that it goes beyond just the laboratory & reveals the personal life of this great man. We learn of the moving death of his brother in WWII, his worries and concerns over nuclear war (as well as the grapples with his conscience that he endured over the invention of the hydrogen bomb) and many other aspects of his life. He also tells stories of some of his most memorable students; not all of these were necessarily his most gifted pupils. Above all, Wheeler reveals a genuine human passion that has characterized his approach to science over the greater part of this century. One of the best biographies of a scientist I have ever read.

J.A. Wheeler should be considered as a symbol of the really fantastic development of (primarily, theoretical) physics in this century. He was closely acquainted with practically all key figures, the founding fathers of quantum theory and the both relativities; moreover, he is the spiritual father of many other great physicists (R.P. Feynman to be named as the most outstanding of them). Wheeler's brilliant scientific achievements in quantum theory, nuclear physics and general relativity are widely known. Now we have his autobiography written in collaboration with his former student, K. Ford. This book in fact is a treatise on history of modern physics, many intimate details of the latter being outlined in it with captivating simplicity and - at the same time - full scientific rigour. This is a real treasure for every physicist, especially a lecturing one, as well as for students in physics and its history. Such an encounter with our contemporary colleague teaches and instructs us in our science, its laws of development, as well as it gives a new and profound aspiration to everybody to critically look into his/her proper behaviour in science and its vicinities. Let God and the Authors forgive me a bit of critics, but I have to mention an error in p. 143 in a caption under drawings by G. Gamow: the first of them is not of Niels Bohr, but of Paul Ehrenfest (acting as Faust), see G. Gamow, Thirty Years That Shook Physics, Dover, 1966, pp. 177-178. Some further nontrivial biographic information about J.A. Wheeler can be found in J. Bernstein, Quantum Profiles, Princeton Univ. Press, 1991.

Well, now that I have the book I can up it to 5 stars. I also found that my memory was a little faulty, but what can you expect after 45 years. The boat greeting still makes a fun story.

This book is a real gem. J. A. Wheeler is truly one of the most innovative thinkers of this century. Anyone even remotly interested in science would benifit greatly from reading this book.