At Home in the Universe

Colleague and confidant of Einstein and Bohr, and pioneer of nuclear fission, John A. Wheeler is one of our most original and profound thinkers. In 1939 he published, with Niels Bohr, the first paper to successfully describe nuclear fission in terms of quantum physics - research that led to his involvement in the Los Alamos project. This volume presents essays by John Archibald Wheeler on the science and art of physics. Wheeler writes on a variety of major figures, including Max Planck, Marie Curie, Joseph Henry, Hideki Yukawa and, particularly, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. His wide-ranging essays reflect on the universe as a home for man and the responsibilities of a citizen-scientist, as well as cosmology, the art of science and death.