J. Craig Wheeler has had a life-long fascination with airplanes. As a boy, he built many plastic model airplanes and collected airplane trading cards. He has spent many enjoyable hours at the Air and Space Museum.

Craig cultivated his interest in science by engaging in science projects in high school in Idaho. In his senior year, he was one of the top forty winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and met President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House on his trip to Washington. He received a B.S in Physics from MIT in 1965 and a PhD in Physics from the University of Colorado in 1969. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech and an assistant professor at Harvard before moving to Austin where he spent the rest of his career.

Craig is currently the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy Emeritus and Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was past Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He has published nearly 400 refereed scientific papers and co-authored a professional-level book on supernovae (Supernova Explosions) that won the 2018 Chambliss Writing Award of the American Astronomical Society. He has also written a popular book on supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and related topics (Cosmic Catastrophes), and two novels (The Krone Experiment and Krone Ascending). He has received many awards for his teaching and is a popular science lecturer.

He was a visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, and a Fulbright Fellow in Italy. He has served on a number of agency advisory committees, including those for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Research Council. He held many positions in the American Astronomical Society and was President of the Society from 2006 to 2008.

Craig's research interests include supernovae, black holes, astrobiology, and the technological future of humanity.