On searching about him I was amazed to learn that in 1969, at the request of Margaret Mead, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) admitted the Parapsychological Association as a member. In 1979, John Wheeler, quite rightly pointed out that parapsychology, which includes such things as “extrasensory perception”, “psychokinesis”, “divination” and “mediumship”, all of which have been thoroughly debunked, was a pseudoscience and asked them to expell the association. The AAAS refused and the Parapsychological Association remains a member of the AAAS till today!

We could excuse some creationist institution for trying to pass off pseudoscience as science, but if the AAAS cannot distinguish between the two that does not bode well for science.

Perhaps as a tribute to John Archibald Wheeler, eminent scientists should take up this matter with AAAS and have them expelled forthwith.

Willis and John Wheeler were among a select group of about 30 scientists who attended a conference at Shelter Island Inn on Long Island, N.Y. in June 1947. Some of these participants had already won Nobel Prizes before this meeting and others won it afterwards, including my brother Willis in 1955.

After years of uninformed reviews of physics happenings since this meeting it has always been obvious to me that all of the attendees at this meeting could and probably should have won the big prize, including John Wheeler.

Prior to April of this year, Wheeler and Lamb were the only Shelter Island attendees who were still living. Then, in May, John Wheeler died and then in June Willis passed away.

John Wheeler’s summer (or retirement) residence in Maine and I often thought I would liked to have visited him and asked him to explain the Lamb Shift to me. But, alas! Tempus fugit (sp?)

My belated sympathies to the Wheeler heirs.

Perry Lamb palamb@gwi.net

All the good times we had there, brothers in arms half a lifetime ago, and yet I never really got into your head about how it was, working with Johnny. Now I know, from this evocative remembrance.

Sad to say that my chief recollection of your thesis work is that your tome was the very last submitted, the day after my second-to-last submission, both well past the department “deadline”. Slacker pride.

But here I read of an earnest young scholar, chumming around campus with a living legend of physics, working diligently at the feet of the master in close collaboration. I had no idea at all. What a blessing to have that experience as you were getting started on your career path. To say I am envious, having walked by that same door many a time but having chosen a different one, is gross understatement.

I never got to know Johnny, but I’d like to think I got to know *you* pretty well over those four years. I’m glad for Johnny that *you* walked through his door that day. Sounds to me like you both enriched each other’s lives greatly in the years to follow. That’s a rare and special thing, for a relatively clueless 20-year old.

Very glad that you could be with him near the end.
I’m deeply sorry for your loss, old friend.

could you please fill me in about the VELOCITY of GRAVITY? We all know that time flies, but what about the speed of gravity? For example: if a couple of suns dissapear in a black hole. how fast would it influence its surroundings? I know gravity is a field. But how fasr does it travel the universe?

Yours sincerelly,

Guido Brandt Corstius, theacher of social science.

Soest, The Nethetrlands

GET TO WORK! This would be pleasing to him…

You are blessed, lucky, and fortunate; be glad for what you have been given in the gift of a mentor, and much more in the gift of friendship.

His response was that his students never learned a thing from him. Students do not learn from teachers. They learn by teaching.

I took that to mean that when we all turn to stand in front of a class and give a lecture there are many minds in our audience of students. The students’ viewpoints vary over a large spectrum with misinterpretations or new incites that we likely have not considered when we were students. Now, as teachers, we must consider them and be prepared to give a quantitative response if one is possible or an experiment that can realize the answer.