WHEELER, (John) Harvey 1918-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born October 17, 1918, in Waco, TX; died of cancer September 6, 2004, in Carpinteria, CA. Political scientist, educator, and author. A former professor of political science, Wheeler was most often remembered as the coauthor of the 1962 nuclear disaster novel, Fail-Safe. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. in 1946 and an M.A. in 1947; he then completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1950. Wheeler taught political science at Johns Hopkins University for four years, and from 1954 to 1960 was on the faculty at Washington and Lee University. In 1960, he became senior fellow-in-residence at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California, where he was also program director in the early 1970s. After leaving the university, Wheeler was the founding president of an academic research center in Carpinteria, California, called the Institute for Higher Studies, where he would remain until his 1985 retirement. He continued to write after this, however, and remained joint chief editor of the Journal of Social and Biological Structures, a magazine he had founded, until 1995. With a keen interest in intellectual pursuits other than political science, Wheeler was also a scholar of William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, the U.S. Constitution, and semiotics. In 1993, his interest in education led to the creation of the computer-mediated "Freshman Academy." As an intellectual, Wheeler was highly distressed about the direction mankind was taking in the modern era, especially with regard to the effects of technological advancement. His early concern was with the potential for the nuclear arms race to destroy the planet, and this led to his novel Fail-Safe, which he wrote with Eugene Burdick. The book became a bestseller and was adapted as a 1964 movie and again for television in 2000. More recently, Wheeler looked upon advances in modern medicine with anxiety. Improved medical care and other factors have led to dramatic increases in people's lifespans, and Wheeler worried that this would have a negative impact on all aspects of life on Earth, from world politics to the environment. Among his other books are The Conservative Crisis (1956), Democracy in aRevolutionary Era (1968), Science out of Law (1985), The Virtual Library (1987), The Virtual Society (1988; second edition, 1992), and Atlantoz 2005 (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2004, p. B12.

New York Times, September 17, 2004, p. C11.

Times (London, England), October 11, 2004, p. 50.

Washington Post, September 21, 2004, p. B4.