Leading physicist John Wheeler dies at age 96

John Wheeler in 1991 - Below left: John Wheeler (third from left) walks through the woods at the Institute for Advanced Study with, from left, fellow physicists Albert Einstein of the institute, Hideki Yukawa of Kyoto University in Japan and Homi Bhabha of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India. Photos: Courtesy of the Wheeler family -   - John Archibald Wheeler, a legend in physics who coined the term "black hole" and whose myriad scientific contributions figured in many of the research advances of the 20th century, has died. Wheeler, the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus at Princeton University, was 96. He succumbed to pneumonia on Sunday, April 13, at his home in Hightstown, N.J. Over a long, productive scientific life, he was known for his drive to address big, overarching questions in physics, subjects which he liked to say merged with philosophical questions about the origin of matter, information and the universe. He was a young contemporary of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, was a driving force in the development of both the atomic and hydrogen bombs and, in later years, became the father of modern general relativity. "Johnny Wheeler probed far beyond the frontiers of human knowledge, asking questions that later generations of physicists would take up and solve," said Kip Thorne, the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, a prolific researcher and one of Wheeler's best-known students.