John C. Wheatley
Los Alamos National Laboratory
July 26, 1916 - February 1, 2009
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Scientific Discipline: Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1975)
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Biosketch of John Charles Wheatley (1927–1986)
John Wheatley was known for fundamental and original measurements that led to major advances in the understanding of quantum fluids and solids. In particular, during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, he and his research teams performed many of the pioneering experiments in normal liquid 3He, in dilute solutions of 3He in liquid 4He , in solid 3He, and in superfluid 3He. Throughout these decades, Wheatley practiced a coordinated synthesis of scientific research and technological development at ever lower temperatures. The resulting scientific advances formed the foundation for new methods of refrigeration, thermometry, and measurement techniques, while the technological innovations enabled yet further advances in scientific experimentation.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, Wheatley received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1947 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1952. He was then hired as an instructor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but after several years abroad under a Guggenheim fellowship and a Fulbright research fellowship—spent at the Kamerlingh Onnes Low Temperature Laboratory in Leiden (The Netherlands) and also at Oxford University—he was rehired at Illinois as a tenure-track assistant professor. The Leiden experience had a profound effect on him, steering his interests toward liquid 3He research, and back at Illinois he started the vigorous low-temperature research program for which he became famous. Wheatley spent a second Fulbright fellowship in Bariloche, Argentina, where he headed the low-temperature laboratory at the Instituto de Física of the Centro Atómico Bariloche. Under the subsequent leadership of students that he helped train, the laboratory became one of the premier experimental research centers in South America.
In late 1966, Wheatley transitioned to the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where he began an all-out effort to search for superfluidity in 3He. Two other projects, on radio-frequency superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) and Pomeranchuk refrigeration, were also started. In parallel with his work at UCSD, he cofounded the SHE Corporation (for superconductivity, helium, and electronics), which sold dilution refrigerators as well as other products, such as magnetoencephelography equipment for medical diagnoses, based on SQUIDs. In 1981 Wheatley moved to the Low Temperature Group of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he continued his R&D. In 1985, having missed classroom teaching and working with graduate students, he arranged a schedule of alternating six-month periods at UCLA and Los Alamos. But near the end of the first six months in Los Angeles, Wheatley suffered a heart attack during one of his daily bicycle commutes, tragically ending his life at the age of 59.
