The Los Angeles Times reports the passing of John Wheeler, a physicist whose ideas about black holes, wormholes and other novelties of the cosmos added infinitely to the science fiction genre. He has died of pneumonia at the age of 96.

The Times article points out how many important moments in scientific history Wheeler was present at: for example, he accompanied Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein’s office at Princeton on the day the Danish physicist declared that it was possible to make an atomic bomb.

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