John Wheeler was born in 1911 in the United States. As a young man he showed an intense interest in the sciences. Wheeler attained his Ph.D. in the area of physics. John Wheeler has done extensive research and has written many books. As an author, he has written many articles and books alone and in collaboration with several of his students. Wheeler was offered a faculty position at Princeton University which he accepted in the mid 1930's. He has been considered one of the best teachers of theoretical physics there or anywhere. He has always been very friendly and inspiring to his many students. In fact, he has served as the mentor of the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne who even surpassed his own reputation as a very productive physicist. His teaching style was such that he would provide help to his students whenever they asked for it and would give his students a nudge in the right direction whenever they were stuck. He has worked with such famous physicists as: Einstein, Thorne, Oppenheimer, Bohr, etc. In fact, Wheeler would sometimes take his first year students to the house of Albert Einstein. John Wheeler currently is a professor emeritus of Princeton University in New Jersey.

Wheeler has made many contributions to the scientific community. In 1939, he worked with Niels Bohr and co-authored an article on nuclear fission. He was the leader of the U.S. team that sought to create the first hydrogen bomb. In 1956, he helped to determine what types of materials are located inside dead, cold stars. That material was determined to be the element of iron because fusion will be an efficient process until the core reaches that state. The "Harrison-Wheeler Equation of State for Cold, Dead Matter" is currently used to determine what is occurring inside a dying star. This helped to pave the way for the theory that when the more massive stars die they become black holes. Ironically, Wheeler did not initially think that the formation of a black hole was possible until he was presented with some convincing evidence by a colleague. Once converted to this new idea, he was the first person to coin the phrase "black hole" for this phenomena. He also coined the phrase "black holes have no hair." This statement is true because they should be a perfect shape and not have any sorts of projections out of them. Wheeler and Kip Thorne helped to prove that it is not possible for cylindrical, magnetic field lines to implode. This revelation helped to eliminate the idea of a naked singularity. He also helped Thorne with the "Hoop Conjecture" which gives physicists an idea of how large a black hole may become as an object implodes. Wheeler also confirmed that a giant star with a mass greater than that of twice our Sun will implode when it dies. The resulting implosion is unable to create a white dwarf, a neutron star, or any other sort of dead, cold star unless it emits enough of its mass to go below the critical mass limit of twice our Sun. "In 1955, John Wheeler, by combining the laws of quantum mechanics and the laws of general relativity in a tentative and crude way, deduced that in a region the size of the Planck-Wheeler Length, 1.62*10^-33 centimeter or smaller, the vacuum fluctuations are so huge that space as we know it 'boils' and becomes a froth of quantum foam--the same sort of quantum foam as makes up the core of a spacetime singularity" (Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, 494). Wheeler has helped to lay the groundwork for several different sub-areas of theoretical physics by employing some of the basic concepts of the theories of relativity.

Wheeler will always be remembered as a great physicist, but he should also be remembered as a fine mentor and friend to his many students. He has helped to launch the careers of many prominent modern theoretical physicists.