John Wheeler

Coined the term "black hole" for the astronomical object also known as a collapsed star, either in 1967 at a conference in New York City, in a 1968 lecture to the American Astronomical Society, or in 1969, depending where you research. It is said that his former student, Richard Feynman, objected against this terminology because he thought it was "obscene."

Wheeler was superb at explaining hard ideas in a simple language. His textbooks on relativity include Spacetime Physics (with Edwin Taylor, 1963 and 1992), Gravitation (with Charles W. Misner and Kip Thorne, 1973), Exploring Black Holes (with Taylor, 2000), and A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (1999).