| Birth Date: | 17 October 1918 |
| Birth Place: | Waco, Texas |
| Death Place: | Carpinteria, California |
| Nationality: | American |
| Education: | Subiaco Academy |
| Alma Mater: | Indiana University (B.A., M.A.) Harvard University (Ph.D.) |
| Notable Works: | Fail-Safe (1962) |
| Spouse: | !-- Noreen Wheeler (Burleigh) --> |
| Children: | 3 |
John Harvey Wheeler (October 17, 1918 – September 6, 2004) was an American author, political scientist, and scholar. He was best known as co-author with Eugene Burdick of Fail-Safe (1962), an early Cold War novel that depicted what could easily go wrong in an age on the verge of nuclear war. The novel was made into a movie, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, in 1964. In later years, Wheeler was a founding editor of the Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 1982, and an early advocate of online education and the Internet as a democratizing tool. He taught a course in "OnLine Publishing" for Connected Education in the mid-to-late 1980s.
Wheeler was born on October 17, 1918, in Waco, Texas.[1] He attended Subiaco Academy, earned his bachelor's and master's degree from Indiana University, and his PhD from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University; became full professor of political science at Washington and Lee University, where he wrote Fail-Safe. In 1960, he became a longtime fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. While at CSDI he wrote, edited or contributed to a dozen books, including Democracy in a Revolutionary Era (1968) and The Virtual Library (1987). Wheeler was an authority on Francis Bacon (1561–1626). He died on September 6, 2004, in Carpinteria, California.