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John Wheeler /  Physicist

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1 - Oath of Allegiance

 
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The first school I went to was in Washington, during World War I, with my grandparents, on my mother's side. And I remember their discomfort with the idea of everybody being required to take the oath of allegiance. They were not opposed to allegiance but they disliked the idea of swearing to anything. It sounded too much like a religion. Did that result in your declining to pledge to the flag? I did not get to the point, as I remember right, of declining to take the oath of allegiance, but I remember their discomfort with it. And discomfort later with any required tests.

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Views: 5782
Total stories: 130 stories
Filmed: December 1996
Listeners: Ken Ford
Ken Ford took his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1953 and worked with Wheeler on a number of research projects, including research for the Hydrogen bomb. He was Professor of Physics at the University of California and Director of the American Institute of Physicists. He collaborated with John Wheeler in the writing of Wheeler's autobiography, 'Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics' (1998).
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John Wheeler, one of the world's most influential physicists, is best known for coining the term 'black holes', for his seminal contributions to the theories of quantum gravity and nuclear fission, as well as for his mind-stretching theories and writings on time, space and gravity.

John Wheeler: more stories

1
Oath of Allegiance
Duration: 1m 13s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 5782 | Not yet rated
2
Early introduction to algebra and letters
Duration: 1m 5s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 1838 | Not yet rated
3
Ambidexterity
Duration: 52s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 1115 | Not yet rated
4
Influential teachers
Duration: 2m 9s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 812 | Not yet rated
5
Parents
Duration: 5m 7s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 476 | Not yet rated
6
Father and Johns Hopkins University scholarship
Duration: 2m 27s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 373 | Not yet rated
7
Vermont one-room schoolhouse, skipping grades
Duration: 1m 13s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 341 | Not yet rated
8
Ingenious Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices
Duration: 2m 33s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 551 |
9
Boyhood books
Duration: 1m 49s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 527 | Not yet rated
10
Calculus and cousin Archibald
Duration: 46s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 699 | Not yet rated
11
Fireworks and explosions, age 10
Duration: 3m 11s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 401 | Not yet rated
12
Setting off bottle rockets to celebrate discoveries
Duration: 1m 22s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 202 | Not yet rated
13
Spanish-American war cannon
Duration: 3m 36s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 195 | Not yet rated
14
Johns Hopkins University
Duration: 3m 0s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 268 | Not yet rated
15
Johns Hopkins: engineering and physics
Duration: 3m 33s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 356 | Not yet rated
16
Johns Hopkins: doctorate years, summer jobs and tutoring
Duration: 3m 44s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 255 | Not yet rated
17
Johns Hopkins: Robert Wood, Pfund, Dieke, Bearden, Feather; optics,X-rays and radioactivity
Duration: 5m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 183 | Not yet rated
18
Far infrared research and the Depression
Duration: 2m 16s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 161 | Not yet rated
19
Johns Hopkins: favourite professors in English, French history, mathematics
Duration: 1m 59s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 183 | Not yet rated
20
Johns Hopkins: social life
Duration: 2m 5s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 199 | Not yet rated
21
Meeting Janette Hegner; work in Denmark with Niels Bohr
Duration: 2m 21s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 281 | Not yet rated
22
First job: University of North Carolina
Duration: 1m 39s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 204 | Not yet rated
23
Choosing to work with Gregory Breit for post doctoral research. Cosmic rays: Compton and Millikan
Duration: 3m 38s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 245 | Not yet rated
24
Physics in the early 1930s. Discovery of the neutron
Duration: 4m 29s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 254 | Not yet rated
25
Cosmic rays opposed to accelerators. Pair theory
Duration: 1m 37s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 173 | Not yet rated
26
'Everything is particles' considered
Duration: 1m 48s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 252 | Not yet rated
27
Listening to Niels Bohr
Duration: 1m 40s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 497 | Not yet rated
28
Physics journals and refereeing of papers
Duration: 2m 29s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 267 | Not yet rated
29
Bohr's critiques
Duration: 52s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 278 | Not yet rated
30
Unpublished paper with Milton Plesset
Duration: 1m 4s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 154 | Not yet rated
31
Being in Europe
Duration: 1m 24s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 177 | Not yet rated
32
Hitler and depression era Germany
Duration: 2m 26s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 257 | Not yet rated
33
Colleagues in Copenhagen: Otto Frisch and James Franck
Duration: 1m 25s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 187 | Not yet rated
34
Colleagues in Copenhagen: Impressions of Werner Heisenberg
Duration: 42s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 418 | Not yet rated
35
Fermi: bombarding nuclei. Bohr's compound nucleus model and the liquid drop model (Part 1)
Duration: 3m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 215 | Not yet rated
36
Fermi: bombarding nuclei. Bohr's compound nucleus model and the liquid drop model (Part 2)
Duration: 2m 5s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 157 | Not yet rated
37
Teaching Katharine Way at the University of North Carolina
Duration: 2m 16s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 185 | Not yet rated
38
North Carolina: resonating group structure and the scattering matrix (Part 1)
Duration: 5m 9s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 153 | Not yet rated
39
North Carolina: resonating group structure and the scattering matrix (Part 2)
Duration: 2m 35s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 109 | Not yet rated
40
First collaboration with Edward Teller; nuclear rotation
Duration: 3m 25s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 193 | Not yet rated
41
1938: decision to go to Princeton (Part 1)
Duration: 4m 45s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 196 | Not yet rated
42
1938: decision to go to Princeton (Part 2)
Duration: 2m 5s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 114 | Not yet rated
43
Bohr in America: nuclear fission (Part 1)
Duration: 4m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 152 | Not yet rated
44
Bohr in America: nuclear fission (Part 2)
Duration: 5m 52s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 113 | Not yet rated
45
Bohr and Wheeler: model of nuclear fission and the fission barrier, uranium-235 and -238 (Part 1)
Duration: 2m 19s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 140 | Not yet rated
46
Bohr and Wheeler: model of nuclear fission and the fission barrier, uranium-235 and -238 (Part 2)
Duration: 4m 35s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 130 | Not yet rated
47
Making plutonium, General Groves and Du Pont
Duration: 1m 26s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 192 | Not yet rated
48
Regrets, thoughts on war
Duration: 1m 9s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 321 | Not yet rated
49
Work with Richard Feynman
Duration: 5m 36s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 1089 | Not yet rated
50
Richard Feynman and Arline Greenbaum. Klaus Fuchs' car
Duration: 2m 31s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 696 | Not yet rated
51
Klaus Fuchs; the US Reactor Safeguard Committee
Duration: 4m 13s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 278 | Not yet rated
52
Appointment as Chief Scientific Liaison to Du Pont and the reactor project
Duration: 3m 8s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 126 | Not yet rated
53
Hanford Reactor problems: xenon and iodine poisoning: Wheeler and George Graves
Duration: 4m 40s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 145 | Not yet rated
54
More detailed account of the Hanford problems; Fermi's agreement
Duration: 3m 29s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 119 | Not yet rated
55
Locating the Du Pont pile: Washingon and the Cascade Mountains
Duration: 2m 37s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 106 | Not yet rated
56
Met Lab, Chicago 1942; Wheeler and Wigner: reactor coolants
Duration: 4m 22s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 127 | Not yet rated
57
Writing up papers
Duration: 1m 9s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 148 | Not yet rated
58
'Boiled down' explanation of 'action at a distance' concept
Duration: 47s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 244 | Not yet rated
59
Concept of the positron as an electron moving backward in time; meeting Stückelberg
Duration: 2m 15s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 504 | Not yet rated
60
Polyelectrons
Duration: 1m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 109 | Not yet rated
61
Princeton, 1945: cosmic rays and 'mesic' atoms; WY Chang
Duration: 5m 44s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 114 | Not yet rated
62
Work with John Toll; Guggenheim fellowship to France; meetings in Copenhagen with Bohr
Duration: 5m 21s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 95 | Not yet rated
63
1949: decision to leave Paris and return to Los Alamos to help work on the H-bomb
Duration: 2m 0s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 121 | Not yet rated
64
Theories conceived on a train. Selling the car in Paris
Duration: 3m 11s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 114 | Not yet rated
65
Returning to Los Alamos: state of the H-bomb; setting up H-bomb research at Princeton (Part 1)
Duration: 4m 34s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 114 | Not yet rated
66
Returning to Los Alamos: state of the H-bomb; setting up H-bomb research at Princeton (Part 2): Oppenheimer, the 'Matterhorn Gang'
Duration: 4m 9s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 116 | Not yet rated
67
The new research site at Princeton. Fire in the Rabbit building
Duration: 5m 16s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 78 | Not yet rated
68
Computing and the H-bomb; Marshall Rosenbluth, John Sheldon
Duration: 2m 16s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 90 | Not yet rated
69
Presenting the progress report to the General Advisory Board: Oppenheimer changes his mind
Duration: 3m 10s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 96 | Not yet rated
70
November 1, 1952: the Mike Test; the Eniwetok Atoll
Duration: 2m 50s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 136 | Not yet rated
71
Witnessing the explosion; Edward Teller's seismograph
Duration: 3m 20s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 168 | Not yet rated
72
Meeting Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Andrei Sakharov; Sakharov's release from exile: his conversation with Gorbachev
Duration: 4m 40s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 174 | Not yet rated
73
Background to the desire to teach a course in quantum theory and relativity at Princeton
Duration: 49s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 179 | Not yet rated
74
1952: teaching a course in relativity at Princeton; eventual writing of A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime
Duration: 3m 0s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 216 | Not yet rated
75
Thinking behind first major paper in relativity: geons: the concept of the geon
Duration: 2m 31s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 145 | Not yet rated
76
Possibility of spherical geon; stability and quantum theory; Wheeler-DeWitt Equation
Duration: 5m 40s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 182 | Not yet rated
77
Quantum ideas: quantum foam, Max Planck; Karl Popper
Duration: 4m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 222 | Not yet rated
78
Collapse of matter into a black hole
Duration: 2m 24s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 101 | Not yet rated
79
Tullio Regge; work on black holes (Part 1)
Duration: 2m 27s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 150 | Not yet rated
80
Tullio Regge; work on black holes (Part 2)
Duration: 2m 44s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 97 | Not yet rated
81
The black hole concept; some current thoughts
Duration: 2m 46s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 129 | Not yet rated
82
Embracing the black hole concept; search for the missing mass
Duration: 3m 7s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 119 | Not yet rated
83
1967: naming the black hole (Part 1)
Duration: 2m 53s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 207 | Not yet rated
84
1967: naming the black hole (Part 2): Feynman and Jacob Bekenstein
Duration: 1m 18s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 305 | Not yet rated
85
Rotation of a star
Duration: 1m 57s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 104 | Not yet rated
86
Entropy of a black hole; Jacob Bekenstein, Stephen Hawking
Duration: 3m 41s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 225 | Not yet rated
87
Hawking's pair production
Duration: 59s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 144 | Not yet rated
88
Principle of mutability (Part 1)
Duration: 2m 17s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 146 | Not yet rated
89
Principle of mutability (Part 2)
Duration: 2m 12s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 113 | Not yet rated
90
Mach's influence on physics and Kurt Gödel
Duration: 2m 43s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 259 | Not yet rated
91
Kurt Gödel nd the Closed Time-Like Line
Duration: 3m 31s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 223 | Not yet rated
92
Thoughts on Gödel (Part 1): no preferred direction of rotation
Duration: 2m 28s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 278 | Not yet rated
93
Thoughts on Gödel (Part 2)
Duration: 59s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 286 | Not yet rated
94
Relationship with Einstein (Part 1): Einstein and Spinoza
Duration: 1m 50s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 364 | Not yet rated
95
Relationship with Einstein (Part 2): God's dice
Duration: 1m 53s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 327 | Not yet rated
96
Origins of the book Gravitation with Thorne and Misner
Duration: 4m 51s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 191 | Not yet rated
97
Translating Gravitation into Russian and Chinese
Duration: 2m 45s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 107 | Not yet rated
98
Gravitation and Inertia: Wheeler's response to Engelbert Schücking; Francis Everitt
Duration: 4m 13s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 107 | Not yet rated
99
Discussing and formulating theories
Duration: 1m 36s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 113 | Not yet rated
100
Thoughts on gravitational radiation; Joseph Weber
Duration: 4m 11s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 84 | Not yet rated
101
Questions from Ken Ford: relativity: from mathematics to engineering
Duration: 1m 52s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 111 | Not yet rated
102
Questions from Ken Ford: sizes of black holes - smallest to largest (Part 1)
Duration: 1m 13s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 82 | Not yet rated
103
Questions from Ken Ford: sizes of black holes - smallest to largest (Part 2)
Duration: 3m 4s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 77 | Not yet rated
104
1976: decision to leave Princeton for the University of Texas
Duration: 2m 47s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 137 | Not yet rated
105
Texas: the Delayed Choice experiment (Part 1)
Duration: 2m 41s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 216 | Not yet rated
106
Texas: the Delayed Choice experiment (Part 2); work on quantum theory and measurement with Wojciech Zurek, problems with a French publisher
Duration: 2m 49s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 126 | Not yet rated
107
The certainty of quantum mechanics: correct predictions
Duration: 53s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 185 | Not yet rated
108
Quantum mechanics: can the laws of physics be violated? Questions about the Big Bang
Duration: 2m 55s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 219 | Not yet rated
109
Wheeler's drawing of the big U: concept of observer participancy
Duration: 1m 27s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 276 | Not yet rated
110
Niels Bohr: distinguishing between 'observation' and 'registration'
Duration: 2m 3s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 178 | Not yet rated
111
Bit from Binary Digit; what has information to do with reality?
Duration: 1m 58s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 247 | Not yet rated
112
Thoughts on this 'crazy world': discovering ideas, Wheeler's stone from Athens and the philosophers in the Garden of Academe
Duration: 2m 8s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 200 | Not yet rated
113
Thoughts on speculation
Duration: 46s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 176 | Not yet rated
114
Historic individuals and the future shape of science: Bernoulli, Leibniz (and Voltaire's ridicule of Leibniz)
Duration: 5m 0s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 203 | Not yet rated
115
Hugh Everett's thesis: many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
Duration: 2m 17s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 327 | Not yet rated
116
Wheeler's description of a bus to illustrate Everett's thesis
Duration: 56s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 209 | Not yet rated
117
Niels Bohr: his idea of the open world concept
Duration: 2m 20s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 156 | Not yet rated
118
Thoughts on ballistic missile defense; NATO
Duration: 2m 51s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 107 | Not yet rated
119
Thomas Jefferson and Europe
Duration: 1m 3s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 96 | Not yet rated
120
1944: meeting with Niels Bohr after Bohr's talk with Roosevelt
Duration: 1m 24s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 117 | Not yet rated
121
John von Neumann (Part 1): Martin Kruskal
Duration: 3m 39s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 358 | Not yet rated
122
John Mauchly
Duration: 1m 26s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 140 | Not yet rated
123
John von Neumann (Part 2)
Duration: 1m 8s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 272 | Not yet rated
124
Eugene Wigner, Michael Polanyi
Duration: 1m 52s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 165 | Not yet rated
125
Report with Kissinger on the doctrine of limited war (Part 1): Marvin Stern
Duration: 2m 51s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 125 | Not yet rated
126
Report with Kissinger on the doctrine of limited war (Part 2)
Duration: 1m 50s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 102 | Not yet rated
127
President's General Advisory Committee of the US Arms Control and Disarmament and world peace; Nixon and Ford
Duration: 3m 36s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 91 | Not yet rated
128
At 85, John Wheeler's goals for the future
Duration: 46s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 469 | Not yet rated
129
Current involvement with students
Duration: 59s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 293 | Not yet rated
130
Acknowledgments
Duration: 40s | Filmed: December 1996 | Views: 250 | Not yet rated

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