Feynman Richard Phillips - Surely youre joking, Mr Feynman!: adventures of a curious character

Contents

Richard Feynman was the most famous physicist in the world. Only an infinitesimal part of the general population could properly understand his mathematical physics, but his outgoing and sunny personality, his gift for exposition, his habit of playing the bongo drums, and his testimony to the Presidential Commission on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster turned him into a celebrity. Richard Feynman died in 1988 after a long illness. In its obituary the New York Times described him as arguably the most brilliant, iconoclastic and influential of the post-war generation of theoretical physicists.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the worlds greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynmans life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism. Over a period of years, Feynmans conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.

I HOPE THESE wont be the only memoirs of Richard Feynman. Certainly the reminiscences here give a true picture of much of his characterhis almost compulsive need to solve puzzles, his provocative mischievousness, his indignant impatience with pretension and hypocrisy, and his talent for one-upping anybody who tries to one-up him! This book is great reading: outrageous, shocking, still warm and very human.

For all that, it only skirts the keystone of his life: science. We see it here and there, as background material in one sketch or another, but never as the focus of his existence, which generations of his students and colleagues know it to be. Perhaps nothing else is possible. There may be no way to construct such a series of delightful stories about himself and his work: the challenge and frustration, the excitement that caps insight, the deep pleasure of scientific understanding that has been the wellspring of happiness in his life.

I remember when I was his student how it was when you walked into one of his lectures. He would be standing in front of the hall smiling at us all as we came in, his fingers tapping out a complicated rhythm on the black top of the demonstration bench that crossed the front of the lecture hall. As latecomers took their seats, he picked up the chalk and began spinning it rapidly through his fingers in a manner of a professional gambler playing with a poker chip, still smiling happily as if at some secret joke. And thenstill smilinghe talked to us about physics, his diagrams and equations helping us to share his understanding. It was no secret joke that brought the smile and the sparkle in his eye, it was physics. The joy of physics! The joy was contagious. We are fortunate who caught that infection. Now here is your opportunity to be exposed to the joy of life in the style of Feynman.

A LBERT R. H IBBS

Senior Member of the Technical Staff,

Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

California Institute of Technology

The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

Addison-Wesley Company, 318

Adrian, Edgar, 72

Advanced Calculus (Woods), 86

Arabian Nights, 172, 173

Aristophanes, 307

Baade, Walter, 234

Bacher, Robert, 105, 132, 220, 233, 254

Bader (physics teacher), 86

Bausch and Lomb Company, 53

Be Here Now (Ram Das), 332

Bell, Alexander Graham, 18

Bell Labs, 53, 99100

Bernays, Peter, 3940, 130

Bethe, Hans, 112, 113, 132, 156, 162, 166, 174, 19394

Block, Martin, 24748

Boehm, Felix, 250, 252

Bohr, Aage (Jim Baker), 13233

Bohr, Niels (Nicholas Baker), 13233

Brazilian Academy of Sciences, 203

Bronk, Detlev, 72

Bullocks, 268

Byers, Nina, 31314, 315, 316

Cabibbo, Nicola, 253

Calculus for the Practical Man, 86

California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 72, 95, 105, 211, 23336, 250, 262, 275, 316, 323

California State Board of Education, 290302

Calvin, Professor, 232

Case, Ken, 249

Center for Physical Research, Rio de Janeiro, 200202, 21119, 312

CERN, 311

Christy, Robert, 112, 121, 12829, 143, 252, 253

Compton, Arthur Holly, 1089

Cornell University, 6263, 136, 16674, 175, 199, 23233, 234, 235, 313n, 344

Crick, Francis H. C., 72

Curie, Marie, 276

de Hoffman, Frederic, 5758, 14752

Delbrck, Max, 72

Del Sasso, Professor, 65

Demitriades, Steve, 266

Dirac, Paul, 251

Dresden Codex, 314, 316, 317

Dreyfuss, Henry, 276

Edgar, Robert, 73. 75

Einstein, Albert, 37, 79, 80, 100, 172, 279, 280

Eisenhart, Dean, 60, 6667

Eisenhart, Mrs., 6061

Electrical Testing Labs, 53

Erhard, Werner, 328

Esalen, 33839

Faust (Goethe), 46

Feller, Professor, 232

Fermi, Enrico, 132, 236

Feynman, Arlene, 1045, 110, 113, 11518, 12931

Feynman, Gweneth, 270, 272, 312

Feynman, Lucille, 162

Feynman, Mary Lou, 205, 236, 244, 314

Feynman, Mel, 8890, 162, 314

Feynman Lectures, 318

Frankel, Stanley, 12527

Frankfort Arsenal, Philadelphia. Pa., 100103

Frogs, The (Aristophanes), 307

Fuchs, Klaus, 129

Geller, Uri, 339

Gell-Mann, Murray, 225, 248, 250, 25354, 317

General Atomics, 57

General Electric Company, 156

Gianonni (restaurant owner), 271, 272, 27375

Gibbs, Professor, 168, 169

Griffin, Dr., 232

Guys and Dolls, 32325

Harvard University, 75, 76, 332

Harvey, E. Newton, 71

Harvey, Thomas, 290

Heisenberg, Werner, 279

Hughes Aircraft Company, 330

Huxley, Thomas, 45

Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University, 165, 17273

Institute of Parapsychology, 346

International Correspondence Schools, 262

Irwin, Robert, 277

Jefferson, Thomas, 279

Jensen, Hans, 250, 252

Jewish Theological Seminary, 284

Kac, Professor, 232

Kellogg Laboratory, 211

Kemeny, John, 119

Kerst, Donald, 15152

Kislinger, Mark, 255

Lamfrom, Hildegarde, 7475

Lattes, Cesar, 2012

Laurence, William, 135

Lavatelli, Leo, 137

Lee (physicist), 248, 249

Leighton, Ralph, 32223, 324, 32529

Leighton, Robert, 322

Life of Leonardo, The, 27

Lilly, John, 33032, 335, 337

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 160

Lollobrigida, Gina, 312

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 276

Madrix codex, 317

Manhattan Project, 57, 10736, 13839, 14255, 166

Marcuso (taxi driver), 17576

Marshall, Leona, 236

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 21, 30, 45, 53, 59, 6162, 63

Meselson, Matthew, 74, 234

Messenger Lectures, 313n

Metaplast Corporation, 58

Meyer, Maurice, 32, 99

Mill, John Stuart, 45

Millikan, Robert, 342

Modern Plastics, 56, 58

Munger, Professor, 328

My Later Years (Einstein), 280

National Accelerator Laboratory, 344

Neugebauer, Otto, 31314

Neumann, John von, 7879, 132

New York Times, 31617

Nick the Greek, 231

Nishina (physicist), 237

Nobel Prize, 174, 30312

Norris (lawyer), 290, 291, 300301