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Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful book on the life of an influential physicist
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book on the life of an influential physicist
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Remarkable scientist, admirable man
Review: Having noticed over the years that Prof. John Archibald Wheeler's name turns up in an amazing variety of physics-related articles and anecdotes, I was particularly primed to read his autobiography. The book doesn't follow a simple from-birth chronology, but rather begins with Wheeler teaching at Princeton and volunteering to meet the ship carrying his mentor, Niels Bohr, at a New York City dock in January of 1939. From that pivotal moment at the brink of World War II, Wheeler fills out his story by reaching back to childhood and forward to his long career in teaching, research, and national service. We learn of his brother Joe, whose body lay in a foxhole on an Italian hillside until it was reduced to bones. Wheeler reminds us that if the Manhattan Project had geared up one year earlier, the lives of his brother and many others might have been spared. Wheeler's remarkable character pervades the book and helps make it unique and interesting. In a profession legendary for strong intellects and egos, he has achieved and maintained a pomposity coefficient of zero. His judgments of other people are unfailingly generous, but also astute enough to be interesting and revealing. He provides candid firsthand impressions of legendary figures such as Bohr, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Teller, Ulam, Heisenberg, Fermi, Szilard and Feynman . We also learn about many less well-known colleagues, friends and students whom he finds memorable for various reasons. In contrast to the eminent-scientist stereotype, Wheeler has always enjoyed teaching undergraduates and is genuinely interested in the problems and aspirations of the young people entrusted to his care. Like the brilliant George Gamow, Wheeler has a talent for explaining difficult concepts and illustrating them with whimsically inventive diagrams. The book's autobiographical threads are interwoven with a rich tapestry of subtle but plainly-spoken physical insights on dozens of topics, some arcane enough to leave even the author slightly bemused. I believe anyone interested in physics will find a personal revelation or two among Wheeler's lucid, informal scientific explanations. There are touches of Gamowesque humor too, such as his theory that the fates somehow conspired to entangle him with a string of Hungarian emigres. The title concepts of the book -- Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam -- were all named by Wheeler himself. He began his career at the minute scale of particle physics, moved on to the grand sweep of relativistic cosmology, and finally circled back to the hyperminuteness of quantum foam. Of course there is nothing really disjointed about such a journey, since connections among the nested scales of nature constitute one of the grand unifying themes of physics.
Rating:
Summary: Great Fun To Read
Review: I had the great fortune to meet Dr. Wheeler this year, and was thus inspired to read his autobiography. I'm very glad I did so. It is well written as well as beautifully organized. For someone who can understand the most esoteric concepts of physics, it is a blessing that he can share then with us in a manner which may make them somewhat comprehendable even though most readers will not have had a physics backround. For the physicist this is a must read since Dr. Wheeler is one of the pioneers in relativity and quantum (modern) physics--not to mention he is one of the few remaining who were there with Einstein, Bohr and others. Further, for the beginning scientist, this book introduces one to the ideas in physics that will occupy the next century. He ends his book with some of the questions that physicists will face, such as why the quantum? For the non-scientists, Dr. Wheeler is a gentleman whose life is very intriguing. Some parts of the book may be a little invovled, but as one lady told me, "you can just skim those." The life of a man who lived through WWII is fascinating enough to enjoy reading. Also, his times with such famous physicsist's as Einstein, are a pleasure to read. Some of the more interesting features of his book include his discussions on gravity, on black holes (he coined the name), how nuclear reactors work, and of the famous scientists (including Einstein, Bohr, Feynmann, etc.). Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable achievement by a remarkable scientist
Review: I learned a lot from this important book, even though I am a chemical engineer. Especially insightful is the chapter "It from Bit", where the famous two-slit experiment is well explained and where its meaning and implications are brought home in a powerful (and to me new) way. The author(s) say(s) that history is very important, and Wheeler shows both an interest and a passion for history. As we become more mature, we all tend to agree on this. So the only annoying thing about this remarkable book is its treatment of Austrians. (I have no Austrian blood that I know of...) Saying that both Mach and Schroedinger are Germans (p. 92 and p. 323) is probably an offense to these scientists, but also a disregard for simple and well known facts; one then cannot help but wonder whether some of the more important and difficult facts are right in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding autobiography and popular science book
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Physics aside
Review: The physics is fine but this is an autobiography. What kind of a man is Wheeler? I got the impression he spent as much time avoiding offending anybody important as he did on physics. He sounds like an amiable sycophant.
Rating:
Summary: Physics aside
Review: The physics is fine but this is an autobiography. What kind of a man is Wheeler? I got the impression he spent as much time avoiding offending anybody important as he did on physics. He sounds like an amiable sycophant.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent autobiography
Review: 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.
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