[1][2] He was educated at the University of London and obtained a post teaching mathematics and science at a grammar school in Antigua in 1912.
[2] In 1919, Wheeler authored Desert Musings, a collection of poems which has been cited as a rare example of a British West Indies Regiment Officer's poetic take on life at the Front.
[2] After the war he worked in Trinidad as a science teacher at Queen's Royal College until he was transferred to British Malaya in 1921.
[4] In 1939, Wheeler authored the book Vitalism: Its History and Validity which was submitted for his PhD thesis at the University of London.
He defined vitalism as "all the various doctrines which, from the time of Aristotle, have described things as actuated by some power or principle additional to mechanics and chemistry."