Val Logsdon Fitch, (1923-2015)was born on March 10, 1923, in Merriman, Nebraska, in the remote Sandhills region in the north of the state. During WWII, he was drafted and sent to Los Alamos, N.M., to work as a technician on the Manhattan Project. While there, he helped design the detonator for the atomic bomb that was tested at Alamogordo and later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. He shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics with James Cronin for work that revealed a surprising imbalance in the laws of nature and helped explain why the collision of matter and antimatter has not destroyed everything in the universe. Their discovery of CP (charge parity invariance) violation was the result of experiments that included four objectives: to test the anomalous results of Adair, et al, to study the regeneration phenomena under a variety of conditions in different materials, to set new limits on the decay of the long-lived neutral K to two pions, and to check for the presence of neutral currents in strangeness changing decays. The Val Logsdon Fitch Papers include his research of K mesons, the innovation of the velocity-selecting Cherenkov counter that separated K+ from protons and pions in the beam, neutral kaons, CP violation in proton-antiproton interactions, the 'gap' method invented by Fitch to take measurements of KL - KS mass difference, a search for short-distance gravitational forces and finally, strange dibaryons. Dr. Fitch used particle accelerators to perform his experiments including the Bevatron, the Cosmotron, the accelerator at the Fermilab and the superconducting super collider at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. The collection is divided into XV Series.

John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) was a leading theoretical physicist of the twentieth century, contributing particularly to the fields of general relativity, gravitation, and quantum mechanics. Wheeler was a pioneer in the study of black holes, celestial phenomena which he named. (He had a penchant for creating new terms in physics, and is credited with naming other phenomena such as geons, wormholes, and quantum foam.) Wheeler is also known for his work in atomic and nuclear physics. In 1939, he and Niels Bohr co-authored a paper that gave the basis for recognizing that Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239 are highly fissile, a milestone in the understanding of atomic energy. Wheeler believed in the importance of public service, assisting in the U.S. war effort to develop the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and served as a scientific advisor to numerous government agencies. During a prolific academic career that spanned seventy years, Wheeler taught physics to thousands of undergraduate students at Princeton University and the University of Texas, and mentored more than fifty Ph.D. students. The Wheeler Papers provide an extensive look into the expansive career of John Archibald Wheeler, the pioneering and award-winning theoretical physicist. Comprised of 150 linear feet, this large collection contains a wide array of materials including correspondence, subject files, manuscripts by Wheeler, papers by colleagues and students, research notes and notebooks, photographs, awards, and audiovisual materials. The collection provides much insight in to Wheeler's lengthy career as a scientist, scholar, and teacher. The bulk of the material is from the 1950s to the 1990s and covers the wide scope of his professional endeavors, from his teaching at Princeton University and the University of Texas, to his many publications, to his consultation work with government agencies, industry, and atomic energy projects, to his numerous public talks and lectures.