Goodbye to John Archibald Wheeler

A very personal tribute at Cosmic Variance by Daniel Holz.

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Going off to a rugby alumni weekend generally requires entering a 48-hour news blackout, at least for me. Of course, the outside world doesn't stop just because I'm enjoying myself, so I emerge from my fog this morning to find that John Archibald Wheeler passed away. The New York Times obit is here…
Daniel Holz at Cosmic Variance has a beautifully written obit for John Wheeler. We are grateful for the time the great thinkers spend on us students. Wired has an article on the updating of the classic experiments by Benjamin Libet on the fact that conscious choices occur after the brain has…
Holz at Cosmic Variance comments I only met Wheeler once that I recall. Interesting man. Many years ago, I was in Japan and needed some assistance from the US embassy. The INS officer looked at my papers, looked up and said: "you're a physicist? Do you know John Wheeler?" Fortunately, I had then…
In 2011 Daniel Holz gave a Heinz R. Pagels Public Lecture at the Aspen Center for Physics on the topic of Gravitational Waves. The talk is one of the better explanations of what this is all about, with a bonus introduction!