John Wheeler (1911−2008), besides being a key figure in twentieth-century physics in his own right, was also an exceptional mentor and a key witness to historical events. Little known is that his first PhD student was a woman, Katharine Way (1902−1995), who notably played an important role in the postwar organization and dissemination of nuclear data. In the 1990s, Wheeler further made the surprising claim that Way’s work while she was his student came very close to anticipating the discovery of nuclear fission. In addition to gathering the few pieces of information about Way’s early work, this chapter provides a contextualization and evaluation of Wheeler’s words by analyzing his peculiar communicative style, which often subtly mixed history, personal experience, and theoretical insights or guiding ideas. To illustrate this, Wheeler’s pages about personalities such as Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Maria Goeppert Mayer, and Way herself are considered. It emerges how Wheeler’s original viewpoint has to be properly discussed when evaluating his claim about his former student’s work.