John Wheatley (physicist)

John C. Wheatley (born February 17, 1927 in Tucson , † May 10, 1986 in Los Angeles ) was an American low-temperature physicist.

Wheatley studied electrical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and received his PhD in physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1952 . 1952 to 1966 he was an instructor and later professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and from 1966 professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego . 1981 to 1985 he conducted research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a permanent member of the laboratory. From 1985 he was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He died of a heart attack while riding a bicycle.

He is known for research on liquid helium-3 , a Fermi liquid. He worked with theorists such as John Bardeen , Gordon Baym , Christopher Pethick .

In 1954/55 and 1980/81 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the University of Leiden . He was a Sloan Research Fellow from 1958 . In 1961 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1965/66 he was visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and he was visiting scholar in Argentina. At the time of his death, he was nominated for UCLA's first Presidential Chair.

In 1975 he received the Fritz London Memorial Prize and in 1966 the Simon Memorial Prize. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1975) and he was a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences. In 1980 he received the Finnish Academic Award .

He was married and had two sons.

Web links

• Biography at the AIP
• Obituary at the LA Times