John Gribbin - Richard Feynman: A Life in Science

Does the world really need another book about Richard Feynman? We think so, or we wouldnt have written it. And this is why. Richard Feynman was the best-loved scientist of modern times, perhaps of all times, and that is something that simply does not come across in any of the other books about the man and his work. There have been books about Feynman the character, a wise-cracking entertainer who imparted not a little worldly wisdom along with his anecdotes; there have been books about Feynman the scientist, putting his work in the perspective of physics in the second half of the twentieth century; there has even been a picture book, combining the illustrations with reminiscences about Feynman by his family and friends. But nobody has captured the essence of Feynmans science and the essence of Feynmans persona in one book. This is especially odd because, of all the scientists of modern times, Feynman seems to have been the one who had the best feel for science, who understood physics not simply in terms of lines of equations written on a blackboard, but in some deep, inner sense which enabled him to see to the heart of the subject.

This doesnt mean that Feynman lived his life like a scientist, in the stereotypical sense of being a cold-blooded logician in everyday life. Far from it. The point is that he did physics like a human being, carrying into the world of science his inbuilt sense of fun, his irreverence, and his liking of adventure and the unexpected. The way Feynman did his physics depended on the kind of person he was, far more than in the case of any other physicist we know. It is impossible to understand Feynmans science properly without understanding what kind of a person he was, and nobody put more life into science than he did.

Equally, it is impossible to understand what kind of man Feynman was without understanding at least something of the science that was so important to him. A fun-loving, adventurous character like Feynman was attracted to physics because physics is fun, and offers opportunity for adventure. You may find that hard to believe. But whats wrong with the public image of physics is not so much the science itself as the way that the science is taught and portrayed. Perhaps Feynmans greatest achievement was as a teacher, conveying the fun of science, and entertainer, providing an image of science that cut right across the stereotypes. Ralph Leighton describes Feynman as a shaman of physics. Feynman talked of nature as She or Her, and seemed to have a contact with the way the world works that few people have. When he gave lectures, he brought his audience into contact with nature in ways that they could not achieve on their own, allowing them to see nature differently, in a transforming experience, so much so that often when he explained some subtle point in a way that they could understand the audience would break out into spontaneous applause, even laughter. The physicist Freeman Dyson has commented, I never saw him give a lecture that did not make the audience laugh, but the laughter stemmed as much from the pleasure of finding things out as from the jokes that Feynman cracked.

After this experience, people would often have a memory of understanding something, but couldnt always quite reconstruct how it was they had understood Feynman would raise people to a level of understanding that they had never before achieved, but then they couldnt quite remember how he had done it. Even fellow scientists sometimes felt this way about a Feynman lecture Leighton recalls his own father, one of Feynmans colleagues at Caltech, remarking on this almost transcendental experience. People who attended Feynmans lectures say that they seemed like magic, almost literally spellbinding, while people who met him report the same sort of feeling, an awareness of being in the presence of something special, even when they cant quite put their finger on why. They just felt changed by the experience. And people who never met Feynman still write to Leighton to say that they have been inspired by Feynmans example. It may well be that he will be remembered more in this way, as a wise man, rather than for the specific aspects of the science that he was involved with.

This would be appropriate, and perhaps what Feynman himself would have wanted. To Feynman, love was more important than science; but it just happened that, as well as loving people, he loved physics.

And people, including physicists, loved him. In an obituary published in Nature on 14 April 1988 (volume 332, page 588), Hans Bethe, who had been Feynmans boss both at Los Alamos and at Cornell, said more than other scientists, he was loved by his colleagues and his students. The day Feynman died, the students at Caltech hung a banner across the eleven-storey library building on the campus. The message on the banner read: WE LOVE YOU DICK. Around the world, many people who hadnt even met Feynman felt a sense of personal loss when he died. Neither of us ever met him; but the physicist half of the partnership (JG) was exactly the right age to be among the first undergraduates to benefit from Feynmans Lectures on Physics while at university. The clarity of those lectures helped to shape his career, and reinforced his own feeling that science, even at research level, could still be fun. Reading books and papers by Feynman over the years, and seeing him on TV, reinforced that belief, and made Feynman seem like an old friend.

But to many people who felt the same way, Feynman was, more than any other great scientist of modern times, famous for being famous. The name of Stephen Hawking is inextricably linked with black holes; Albert Einsteins with relativity theory; Charles Darwins with evolution. But Feynman? To many non-scientists, he was just a scientist. This is ironic, because Feynmans greatest work was actually in the area of quantum theory, a subject of enormous fascination to non-scientists today. We want to explain why this work was so important, and how it lies at the heart of investigations of the quantum mysteries today; but we also want to share with you our understanding of the kind of man who carried out that work.