John Archibald Wheeler passed away on Sunday morning in the US. He is one of the last of the heroes from the Golden Age of physics, which has seen giants like Einstein, Heisenberg and Feynman advancing our knowledge of Nature by leaps.
Wheeler is responsible for popularising concepts of general relativity, as well as introducing the terms "black hole" and "wormhole" to the scientific community. While he himself has not won a Nobel Prize (though he did get a Wolf Prize not too long ago), he has supervised Feynman on his approach to quantum electrodynamics which lead to the 1965 Nobel Prize for Feynman. Other than Feynman, other well-known students of his are Kip Thorne, Jacob Bekenstein (who contributed significantly to black hole thermodynamics) and Hugh Everett (famous for the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics).
I think it cannot be denied that with his passing, it symbolised the end of the Golden Age. What comes next... who shall be the next superhero... it shall remain to be seen.
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