Techotic

US Physicist John A. Wheeler, who popularized mind-stretching ideas about black holes has died of pneumonia on Sunday at his home in Hightstown, New Jersey. According to his daughter, Alison Wheeler Lahnston, he suffered poor health for the last week. John was 96 year old.

In the world of science, the 20th century was seen as the century of physics, and Wheeler was its most imaginative adman. He was also science’s Zelig, seeming to be present at every important event or discovery. In a career that spanned eight decades, Wheeler consulted with Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer to build the atomic bomb, helped Edward Teller with the hydrogen bomb, argued quantum mechanics with Albert Einstein and then, in middle age, turned his nimble mind to some of the most challenging problems of cosmology.

[via latimes]