Scientists and mathematicians #1…

[A new feature just for my readers, wee bits of popular science nostalgia.]

John Archibald Wheeler (7/9/1911—4/13/2008) might have received only popular recognition for his students if he hadn’t coined the term “black hole” (Hawking popularly comes to mind first as the scientist most associated with black holes, of course). His most famous student was Feynman, but Misner and Thorne were two others (the doorstop-sized tome Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, is one classic on the subje...