John A. Wheeler / 'It from Bit'

John A. Wheeler was one of the 20th century's most important physicists at Princeton University who coined the concept 'it from bit,' proposing that information serves as the foundational substrate of physical reality prior to matter and energy. His landmark 1989 paper has accumulated approximately 2,670 citations, reflecting the profound influence of this concept on philosophy of physics and information-theoretic approaches to fundamental reality.