Related papers: John Archibald Wheeler: A Biographical Memoir
From 1929 to his death in 1944, A. Eddington worked on developing a highly ambitious theory of fundamental physics that covered everything in the physical world, from the tiny electron to the universe at large. His unfinished theory…
Stephen Hawking's contributions to the understanding of gravity, black holes and cosmology were truly immense. They began with the singularity theorems in the 1960s followed by his discovery that black holes have an entropy and consequently…
John Wheeler devised a gedanken experiment in which a piece of apparatus can be altered just before the arrival of particle, and this ``delayed choice'' can, seemingly, alter the quantum state of the particle at a much earlier time, long…
(transcript of a talk given by Prof.~Feshbach:) Nuclear physics has been and will be a major factor in science and technology. It makes unique and important contributions to medicine, to industry and to other sciences. Interaction with…
`Philosophy' was speakable for John Bell but is not for many physicists. The border between philosophy and physics is here illustrated through Brownian motion and Bell experiments. `Measurement', however, was unspeakable for Bell. His…
I present my encounter with John Bell at CERN, our collaboration and joint work in particle physics. I also will recall our quantum debates and give my personal view on Bell's fundamental work on quantum theory, in particular, on…
Julian Schwinger (1918--1994), founder of renormalized quantum electrodynamics, was arguably the leading theoretical physicist of the second half of the 20th century. Thus it is not surprising that he made contributions to gravity theory as…
The experience from Quantum Information has lead us to look at Quantum Theory (QT) and the whole Physics from a different angle. The information-theoretical paradigm---"It from Bit'---prophesied by John Archibald Wheeler is relentlessly…
This paper investigates the role of human subjectivity and its delimiters in articulating the universe in physics and cosmology. As a case study, we reflect upon the complex of ideas of the so called Participatory Universe by later J. A.…
A scientific biography of John Ward, who was responsible for the Ward Identity in quantum electrodynamics; the first detailed calculation of the quantum entanglement of two photons in electron-positron annihilation with Maurice Pryce; the…
We discuss the influential role of Niels Bohr's work in the anti-realist realist re-foundation of physics that took place during the 20th century. We will focus in how, developing the modern co-relational matrix of scientific understanding,…
The findings for which Aage Bohr and Ben R. Mottelson became co-winners of the 1975 Nobel prize in physics provided the basis for a comprehensive and operative answer to the central problem in the study of the nuclear structure, namely the…
In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, " 'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place, .... But they are connected with names. ... [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words." This…
Bringing forward the concept of convergence in moments from classical random variables to quantum random variables is what leads to what can be called algebraic central limit theorem for (classical and) quantum random variables. I reflect…
In his famous 1989 It from Bit essay, John Wheeler contends that the stuff of the physical universe, or it, arises from information or bits, encoded in yes or no answers. Wheeler's question and assumptions are reexamined from a post Aspect…
The main mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, which shows that the past is determined by our choice of what quantum property to observe. This gives the observer a participatory role in deciding…
David Brink was one of the leading theoretical nuclear physicists of his generation. He made major contributions to the study of all aspects of nuclear physics embracing nuclear structure, nuclear scattering, and nuclear instability. His…
Detlef D\"urr (1951-2021) was a theoretical and mathematical physicist who worked particularly on the foundations of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. This piece is a rather personal look back at him and his…
In 1963-71, a group of people, myself included, formulated and perfected a new approach to physics problems, which eventually came to be known under the names of scaling, universality, and renormalization. This work formed the basis of a…
David Finkelstein was very fond of the new information-theoretic paradigm of physics advocated by John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman. Only recently, however, the paradigm has concretely shown its full power, with the derivation of…