Oppenheimer, Wheeler, and the Golden Age of General Relativity

On September 1, 1939, the same day as the start of World War II, two remarkable papers appeared in Physical Review. The first, “The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission,” by Bohr and Wheeler, offered a theoretical blueprint for uranium fission processes that would help guide the Manhattan Project. The second, “On Continued Gravitational Contraction,” by Oppenheimer and Snyder, described the mechanisms for the catastrophic collapse of the cores of massive stars into what would be called black holes. Ironically, given those topics, it is Wheeler who is now known for black holes and Oppenheimer for atomic bombs. This talk will explain how events in the 1940s through the 1960s led to that twist of fate. While the Oppenheimer-Snyder paper anticipated the future direction of general relativity, it would be Wheeler who switched fields and helped establish what became known as its “golden age.”