Pick up any popular account of "sexy" physics and flick to the index: there you'll find the name John A(rchibald) Wheeler. Often they'll be dozens of references to him, but he's always mentioned at least once; and the same is true in serious physics textbooks, too. He was one of the Manhattan giants who took the physics of Einstein & co, and trasnformed it into its modern state, and his contributions can be seen in dozens of equations and theories, which will carry his name into the future far more indelibly than any headstone. But Wheeler was also a vivid, poetic physicist, as sexy as a black hole or a wormhole (both terms he coined), who inspired generations. He was the PhD supervisor who encouraged Hugh Everett to develop the "Many Worlds" view of Quantum Mechanics – without which science fiction writers would be rather short of plots. So his passing, aged 96, is as significant as a supernova inside the Milky Way; and, much like the death of Arthur C. Clarke, closes an era.