James Wheeler's Homepage | jcwheel@umich.edu
I am...
an academic focused on physics and mathematics,
I am a postdoctoral Assistant Professor in the math department at the University of Michigan working with Dr. Lydia Bieri; I completed my PhD in Physics under Dr. Hubert Bray at Duke University in 2023. I am currently seeking an academic position to transition into following the completion of my appointment this Spring. Having a PhD in physics with an appointment in math, I am deeply interested in the utility of rigorous mathematics in precisely describing the fundamentals of physics. My research focus is classical general relativity, broadly construed: I am interested in the fundamentals of the theory, singularities, black holes, dark matter, gravitational waves and memory effects, and cosmology. Generally, I am passionate about understanding the role mathematics plays in physics and the rigor of our most basic theories of the universe at all scales.​
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Publications & Preprints
Asymptotically Euclidean Solutions of the Constraint Equations with Prescribed Asymptotics (2025)
an inquisitive researcher,
Understanding Singularities
I'm interested in the weak cosmic censorship conjecture and have done some work toward formulating it and informing its status. Along the way, I took a stab at formulating a novel means of defining black holes in a general spacetime.
Constructing Initial Data
I have recently worked on the construction of general relativistic initial data sets with prescribed structure, allowing the numerical assessment of physical features of interest.
Modeling the Big Bang
I investigated impacts of a geometric scalar field model of dark matter on CMB anisotropies and BBN in my dissertation. More recently, I've explored possible spacetime structures avoiding an initial singularity (Image credit).
a dedicated instructor.
While I still continue to learn myself, I take great joy in imparting knowledge and helping others to see the order inherent in our descriptions of physics and its various associated mathematical tools. I have taught calculus, ODE's, and PDE's at the University of Michigan so far, receiving the math department's Juha Heinonen Outstanding Postdoctoral Assistant Professor Teaching Award in Mathematics in 2025. I taught in a myriad of roles for both the physics and math departments at Duke as graduate student, receiving the physics department's Outstanding Physics Teaching Assistant Award in both 2021 and 2022 as well as the math department's L.P. and Barbara Smith Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023.
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See my CV for a complete record of my teaching history.
You may also find my math/physics stackexchange profiles here.
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Below are complete sets of daily lecture notes I composed while teaching Math 216 (introductory ODE's) and Math 454 (BVP's in PDE's). These include a number of interactive Desmos demos (e.g. see this illustration of resonance and this demo of standing waves on a circular drumhead).​
These are a few collections of lecture notes associated to talk series I gave at the Duke physics and math departments' Dirac talks, a weekly chalk talk club comprised of graduate students and faculty oriented towards the intersection of mathematics and physics, which demonstrate some of my interests (be forewarned: only the first set is TeXed).