Geon Wheeler: from nuclear to spacetime physicist

Unit for HPS, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

^a e-mail: dean.rickles@sydney.edu.au

Received: 18 August 2017
Published online: 25 June 2018

Abstract

We provide an account of John Wheeler’s transition from his work on elementary particle physics (in which particles provided the ultimate ontology in his worldview), to his work on gravitation and general relativity (in which spacetime geometry was the ultimate object out of which all other things were composed). We also describe his early work on quantum gravity largely as a long-standing attempt to derive the elementary particles from spacetime structure.