Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam

Winner of the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award "This delightful account is packed with insights…[Wheeler] is a consummately American physicist whose wide-ranging career spans much of a disturbing century." —Michael Riordan, New York Times Book Review

"A paradigm of scientific autobiography: candid and warm, as clear as crystal…John Wheeler has lived an immensely interesting and important life at the center of physics in the twentieth century."

"In this rich and wonderful book, we see John Wheeler grow from fire-cracker-lightning boyhood into perhaps the most innovative physicist-thinker of our time and one of the most powerful mentors of young scientists. As we watch him struggle with the deepest puzzles at the frontiers of science—the nature of space, time, gravity, and the quantum—we find ourselves immersed in the ethos of twentieth-century physics, and we glimpse the physics of the future. It's a great read."

John Archibald Wheeler currently holds an emeritus professorship at Princeton University, where he spent most of his career. Kenneth Ford is the retired director of the American Institute of Physics. He recently taught high-school physics and served as science director of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.