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Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
An illuminating portrayal of Richard Feynman—a giant of twentieth century physics—from his childhood tinkering with radios, to his vital work on the Manhattan Project and beyond
Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project under J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the giddy young man held his own among the nation’s greatest minds. There, Feynman turned theory into practice, culminating in the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945, when the Atomic Age was born. He was only twenty-seven. And he was just getting started.
In this sweeping biography, James Gleick captures the forceful personality of a great man, integrating Feynman’s work and life in a way that is accessible to laymen and fascinating for the scientists who follow in his footsteps.
Raised in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of scientist in a field that was in its infancy. His quick mastery of quantum mechanics earned him a place at Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project under J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the giddy young man held his own among the nation’s greatest minds. There, Feynman turned theory into practice, culminating in the Trinity test, on July 16, 1945, when the Atomic Age was born. He was only twenty-seven. And he was just getting started.
In this sweeping biography, James Gleick captures the forceful personality of a great man, integrating Feynman’s work and life in a way that is accessible to laymen and fascinating for the scientists who follow in his footsteps.
531 pages, Paperback
Published November 2, 1993
About the author
James Gleick
39 books1,850 followersJames Gleick (born August 1, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology. Three of these books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists, and they have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in English and linguistics. Having worked for the Harvard Crimson and freelanced in Boston, he moved to Minneapolis, where he helped found a short-lived weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise, he returned to New York and joined as staff of the New York Times, where he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter.
He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University in 1989-90. Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. In 1993, he founded The Pipeline, an early Internet service. Gleick is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a household phrase.
Among the scientists Gleick profiled were Mitchell Feigenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Feynman and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft anticipated the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Gleick's essays charting the growth of the Internet included the "Fast Forward" column on technology in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999 and formed the basis of his book What Just Happened. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Washington Post.
Bibliography:
1987 Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0140092501)
1990 (with Eliot Porter) Nature's Chaos, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0316609420)
1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Pantheon. (ISBN 0679747044)
1999 Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Pantheon. (ISBN 067977548X)
2000 (editor) The Best American Science Writing 2000, HarperCollins. (ISBN 0060957360)
2002 What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, Pantheon. (ISBN 0375713913)
2003 Isaac Newton, Pantheon. (ISBN 1400032954)
2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. (ISBN 9780375423727 )
Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in English and linguistics. Having worked for the Harvard Crimson and freelanced in Boston, he moved to Minneapolis, where he helped found a short-lived weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise, he returned to New York and joined as staff of the New York Times, where he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter.
He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University in 1989-90. Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. In 1993, he founded The Pipeline, an early Internet service. Gleick is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a household phrase.
Among the scientists Gleick profiled were Mitchell Feigenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Feynman and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft anticipated the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Gleick's essays charting the growth of the Internet included the "Fast Forward" column on technology in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999 and formed the basis of his book What Just Happened. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Washington Post.
Bibliography:
1987 Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0140092501)
1990 (with Eliot Porter) Nature's Chaos, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0316609420)
1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Pantheon. (ISBN 0679747044)
1999 Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Pantheon. (ISBN 067977548X)
2000 (editor) The Best American Science Writing 2000, HarperCollins. (ISBN 0060957360)
2002 What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, Pantheon. (ISBN 0375713913)
2003 Isaac Newton, Pantheon. (ISBN 1400032954)
2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. (ISBN 9780375423727 )
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March 3, 2016
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
- Richard Feynman
"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
- Richard Feynman
Feynman was lucky in three ways. First, the guy was born with a brain that somehow gave him access to problems with a speed and a dexterity that seemed magical to his peers, and his peers are people that already often stretched the capacity for knowledge and intelligence. Second, Feynman was lucky to be born at the right time. He came into his abilities at the right moment for Physics. He was there when physicists (post Einstein's relativity) seemed to grab a larger piece of global attention. Third, Feynman was lucky to have participated in WWII's war of the magicians (Los Alamos and the Atomic Bomb). All of these things combined with Feynman's iconoclastic nature, his perseverance and single-mindedness, his capacity to get to the root of problems, put Feynman second to Einstein in 20th century minds.
The book itself is a very good example of scientific biography. Gleick doesn't stray, however, too far from the anecdotal autobiography of Feynman in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character. Gleick elaborates, provides more detail, adds interesting vignettes on other Physicists that fell into Feynman's orbit (Wilson, Oppenheimer, Dyson, Dirac, Bohr, Schwinger, Gell-Mann, etc). Those diversions and Gleick's occasional riffs on the idea of genius keep this from being just an average scientific biography. It also was a bit stronger and more robust than Gleick's earlier work: Chaos: Making a New Science.
All that said, it still wasn't an AMAZING biography. I appreciated the time spent on the details. The accuracy and notes associated with this book, but a lot of the magic of the book existed in Feynman himself and not in the telling of it.
- Richard Feynman
"Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
- Richard Feynman
Feynman was lucky in three ways. First, the guy was born with a brain that somehow gave him access to problems with a speed and a dexterity that seemed magical to his peers, and his peers are people that already often stretched the capacity for knowledge and intelligence. Second, Feynman was lucky to be born at the right time. He came into his abilities at the right moment for Physics. He was there when physicists (post Einstein's relativity) seemed to grab a larger piece of global attention. Third, Feynman was lucky to have participated in WWII's war of the magicians (Los Alamos and the Atomic Bomb). All of these things combined with Feynman's iconoclastic nature, his perseverance and single-mindedness, his capacity to get to the root of problems, put Feynman second to Einstein in 20th century minds.
The book itself is a very good example of scientific biography. Gleick doesn't stray, however, too far from the anecdotal autobiography of Feynman in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character. Gleick elaborates, provides more detail, adds interesting vignettes on other Physicists that fell into Feynman's orbit (Wilson, Oppenheimer, Dyson, Dirac, Bohr, Schwinger, Gell-Mann, etc). Those diversions and Gleick's occasional riffs on the idea of genius keep this from being just an average scientific biography. It also was a bit stronger and more robust than Gleick's earlier work: Chaos: Making a New Science.
All that said, it still wasn't an AMAZING biography. I appreciated the time spent on the details. The accuracy and notes associated with this book, but a lot of the magic of the book existed in Feynman himself and not in the telling of it.
June 7, 2017
Gleick portrays Feynman as an irreverent spirit and productive scientist who deeply influenced his generation of physicists. A Nobel Prize winner, Feynman’s contribution to physics was more about developing original techniques that clarified complex problems than any singular discovery. As we follow Feynman’s life we learn how particle physics and its community evolved in the mid twentieth century from the formulation of quantum mechanics to the standard model. We witness developments in nuclear physics and quantum electrodynamics (QED). Gleick’s biography is as much a personal story as one of science. Feynman was different from other physicists, a non-conformist who stood out and stood up, and this was an essential part of his greatness.
Born in 1918, Feynman grew up in Far Rockaway on the ocean in Queens, NY. He loved math. As a child he was always playing with problems in his head. He kept a notebook that he filled with math exercises. By high school he was ahead of his teachers. Columbia rejected him because it had filled its Jewish quota, but MIT took him and he quickly distinguished himself. Realizing that there was little practical he could do with math he switched to electrical engineering and then physics. Physics was just getting established as a discipline in its own right. He graduated from MIT in 1939.
Feynman was enamored with quantum mechanics. For his graduate education he elected to go to Princeton which was becoming a leader in nuclear physics. He turned down a scholarship he won to Harvard. Princeton was taken back by his terrible grades in everything except physics and math, and concerned that he was Jewish. They took him anyway based on recommendations from his MIT professors and an unheard of perfect score on the physics entrance exam. He soon impressed everyone including department head Eugene Wigner, who would win a Nobel Prize and whose mathematics provided an important foundation for quantum mechanics. Wigner would later describe Feynman as a second Paul Dirac, only human. The extremely reticent Dirac had mathematically defined the electron predicting the positron. Wigner’s sister was married to Dirac, who was a hero to Feynman.
In 1939 John Wheeler, a distinguished theoretician who later would coin the term “black hole”, was a 28 year old Professor at Princeton. A disciple of Niels Bohr, Wheeler drew Feynman into collaboration on his work in quantum field theory. Wheeler postulated that there is only one electron that goes forward and backward in time. At any given time only isolated parts of its path are exposed which is the particle we recognize. Feynman didn’t quite buy this but did develop a theory showing the positron as an electron going back in time. In this work on electrodynamics Feynman explored new techniques. He used path integrals which summed all possible paths a particle could take generating the wave function using a measure called probability amplitude. These concepts would be fully developed later in his version of QED. By the time he was a 22 year old graduate student Feynman with Wheeler’s help was giving a presentation attended by Einstein, Pauli and mathematical genius John von Neumann.
Feynman had fallen in love with Arline Greenbaum, who he had known since high school. In 1941 she was diagnosed with lymphatic tuberculosis, an unusual form of the disease with a poor but uncertain prognosis. Also in 1941 WWII started. Wheeler left for Chicago to work with Fermi. Feynman engaged in isotope separation work at Princeton. Wigner told him it was time to write his thesis and move on. Feynman graduated and had planned to marry Arline. But what about the disease: Could he catch it, could they have children? He married her anyway, despite his mother’s objections, and even though Arline had to stay in a nearby hospital afterwards.
In early 1943 Feynman received a call from Robert Oppenheimer saying he had found a nice sanatorium for Arline near Albuquerque, New Mexico. He needed Feynman in Los Alamos. Feynman became a group leader and made significant contributions to the calculations critical to the bomb’s success. He streamlined the use of the simple calculation devices available. His unmatched speed at complex mental calculations often delivered answers more quickly. He served as a sounding board for the eminent Bohr who realized only Feynman was brazen enough to point out his mistakes. Feynman also inspected and made important recommendations that prevented disastrous explosions at Oak Ridge and Hannaford where uranium was purified.
In 1945 Arline died and it affected Feynman deeply for the rest of his life. Distraught he was given leave and just made it back in time to witness the Trinity explosion. He had impressed Oppenheimer who wanted him to come to Berkley after the war but he followed his Los Alamos department head and future Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe to Cornell.
At Cornell, Feynman formed a relationship with a young Freeman Dyson, the English mathematician. Both agreed on the importance of visualization. Quantum descriptions of the electron made this impossible. Bohr had given up on his original conceptualization of the atom as some kind of mini solar system. Describing electrons as particles with orbits, angular momentum and spin alluded to a physicality that did not exist in the quantum world. Yet visualization was important. Einstein’s greatest achievements were inspired by visualization such as traveling along with a beam of light. Just manipulating equations proved less productive. Even Dirac who eschewed experimentation, would visualize geometric shapes first then translate them into equations. Feynman tried to visualize the world he was describing mathematically. One can use lines to represent a magnetic field but are there really any such lines. Mathematically a field is just an array of values in space. Feynman said, “I have a terrible confusion between the symbols I use to describe the objects and the objects themselves.”
In 1948 Julian Schwinger presented his work on quantum electrodynamics at a meeting of the world’s top theorists who were duly impressed. Feynman followed presenting his version of QED including his soon to be famous Feynman diagrams but it was not well received. Afterwards Freeman Dyson put together a paper which refined the mathematics supporting Feynman’s ideas, and then Feynman published again. Gradually physicists began adopting Feynman’s techniques instead of Schwinger’s. Feynman’s approach incorporated the principle of least action applied to particle paths, the path integrals Feynman had worked on under Wheeler. Summing of the probability amplitudes of these paths yielded the wave function. Implicit was the electron going back and forth in time. As Feynman put it, “It may prove useful in physics to consider events in all of time at once and to imagine that we at each instant are only aware of those that lie behind us.”
In 1949 Feynman decided it was time to move on from Cornell. His personal life was unsettled and disorganized. He had numerous short term relationships with women and never established a permanent residence. He left for Brazil where he lived it up and accepted an offer at Caltech which gave him a first year sabbatical he could enjoy. In 1952 he married one of his many romantic interests. The marriage lasted four unhappy years and ended bitterly. In 1960 he married an English woman he met in Switzerland. This one was happy and lasted the rest of his life. They had a son and adopted a daughter. Feynman settled down.
At Caltech Feynman turned to the study of superfluidity, but he would return to QED. In the 1950’s the accelerator age of particle physics was beginning. Caltech recruited Murray Gell-Mann who would lead mainstream particle physics in the sixties and seventies and open up the world of quarks. He also brought out Feynman’s competitive instincts. But in 1957 under pressure from their department head they collaborated on an important paper proposing a theory of the weak interaction. While Gell-Mann respected Feynman’s ability, he had little respect for Feynman’s lack of decorum and sketchy documentation. Asked by a student about copies of some of Feynman’s notes that he found, Gell-Mann replied that Feynman’s methods are not used at Caltech. The student asked what Feynman’s methods were. Gell-Mann replied “You write down the problem. You think very hard. Then you write down the answer.”
Feynman’s genius came in broad leaps often not explaining the intermediate details which were all computed or visualized in his head. Other physicists made their contributions methodically addressing the next unanswered question. But genius is more than excellence, something that could be expected of someone brilliant. Genius delivers the unexpected. It is brilliance combined with originality. Feynman didn’t research all the available knowledge then proceed to the next step. Thus he would take on problems others might dismiss as already solved or unsolvable. He focused intently only on those parts that interested him and wrestled with problems in his head often using visual pictures that he would later turn into equations in some ways similar to Dirac, his hero.
In the 1960’s Feynman was asked to help with the undergraduate program at Caltech. The result was a series of lectures for freshmen that were published, widely acclaimed and used by many universities. He began with the atom and looked at physics in his own unique if disjointed way. These lectures and many others have been packaged up in books for different levels of readers and are still popular today. In 1965 Feynman along with Schwinger and Tomonaga from Japan were awarded the Nobel Prize for their “fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics with deep ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.”
At a 1967 conference James Watson gave Feynman a copy of what would be his popular Double Helix. Feynman was impressed and immediately shared it with a friend who commented, “It’s amazing that Watson made this great discovery even though he was so out of touch with what everyone in his field was doing.” Feynman retorted, “That’s what I’ve forgotten.” He recognized that his best work had resulted from defining problems in ways others hadn’t considered or proposing new solutions to problems considered already solved.
In 1977 Feynman was diagnosed with a rare cancer perhaps due to his work on the Manhattan Project. Another rare cancer would strike in the 1980’s. But he had one last hurrah following the Challenger disaster in 1986. The only non-political appointee to the president's investigating commission he sought out his own set of facts as he always had. The disaster had been caused by an O ring that lost resilience at the cold temperature at the time of launch. When the commission was dancing around the responsibility for the O ring failure, Feynman was simple and clear. At a hearing he took a C clamp, pressured a sample of the material after putting it in a glass of ice water and showed everyone in the room that the material would not bounce back. This way of cutting to the chase was so typically Feynman and a fitting end to a remarkable career.
Richard Feynman died in 1988. Fellow physicist Paul Olum summed it up. “How could someone like Dick Feynman be dead? This great and wonderful mind. This extraordinary feeling for things and ability is in the ground and there’s nothing there anymore… He was such an extraordinary special person in the universe.”
Born in 1918, Feynman grew up in Far Rockaway on the ocean in Queens, NY. He loved math. As a child he was always playing with problems in his head. He kept a notebook that he filled with math exercises. By high school he was ahead of his teachers. Columbia rejected him because it had filled its Jewish quota, but MIT took him and he quickly distinguished himself. Realizing that there was little practical he could do with math he switched to electrical engineering and then physics. Physics was just getting established as a discipline in its own right. He graduated from MIT in 1939.
Feynman was enamored with quantum mechanics. For his graduate education he elected to go to Princeton which was becoming a leader in nuclear physics. He turned down a scholarship he won to Harvard. Princeton was taken back by his terrible grades in everything except physics and math, and concerned that he was Jewish. They took him anyway based on recommendations from his MIT professors and an unheard of perfect score on the physics entrance exam. He soon impressed everyone including department head Eugene Wigner, who would win a Nobel Prize and whose mathematics provided an important foundation for quantum mechanics. Wigner would later describe Feynman as a second Paul Dirac, only human. The extremely reticent Dirac had mathematically defined the electron predicting the positron. Wigner’s sister was married to Dirac, who was a hero to Feynman.
In 1939 John Wheeler, a distinguished theoretician who later would coin the term “black hole”, was a 28 year old Professor at Princeton. A disciple of Niels Bohr, Wheeler drew Feynman into collaboration on his work in quantum field theory. Wheeler postulated that there is only one electron that goes forward and backward in time. At any given time only isolated parts of its path are exposed which is the particle we recognize. Feynman didn’t quite buy this but did develop a theory showing the positron as an electron going back in time. In this work on electrodynamics Feynman explored new techniques. He used path integrals which summed all possible paths a particle could take generating the wave function using a measure called probability amplitude. These concepts would be fully developed later in his version of QED. By the time he was a 22 year old graduate student Feynman with Wheeler’s help was giving a presentation attended by Einstein, Pauli and mathematical genius John von Neumann.
Feynman had fallen in love with Arline Greenbaum, who he had known since high school. In 1941 she was diagnosed with lymphatic tuberculosis, an unusual form of the disease with a poor but uncertain prognosis. Also in 1941 WWII started. Wheeler left for Chicago to work with Fermi. Feynman engaged in isotope separation work at Princeton. Wigner told him it was time to write his thesis and move on. Feynman graduated and had planned to marry Arline. But what about the disease: Could he catch it, could they have children? He married her anyway, despite his mother’s objections, and even though Arline had to stay in a nearby hospital afterwards.
In early 1943 Feynman received a call from Robert Oppenheimer saying he had found a nice sanatorium for Arline near Albuquerque, New Mexico. He needed Feynman in Los Alamos. Feynman became a group leader and made significant contributions to the calculations critical to the bomb’s success. He streamlined the use of the simple calculation devices available. His unmatched speed at complex mental calculations often delivered answers more quickly. He served as a sounding board for the eminent Bohr who realized only Feynman was brazen enough to point out his mistakes. Feynman also inspected and made important recommendations that prevented disastrous explosions at Oak Ridge and Hannaford where uranium was purified.
In 1945 Arline died and it affected Feynman deeply for the rest of his life. Distraught he was given leave and just made it back in time to witness the Trinity explosion. He had impressed Oppenheimer who wanted him to come to Berkley after the war but he followed his Los Alamos department head and future Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe to Cornell.
At Cornell, Feynman formed a relationship with a young Freeman Dyson, the English mathematician. Both agreed on the importance of visualization. Quantum descriptions of the electron made this impossible. Bohr had given up on his original conceptualization of the atom as some kind of mini solar system. Describing electrons as particles with orbits, angular momentum and spin alluded to a physicality that did not exist in the quantum world. Yet visualization was important. Einstein’s greatest achievements were inspired by visualization such as traveling along with a beam of light. Just manipulating equations proved less productive. Even Dirac who eschewed experimentation, would visualize geometric shapes first then translate them into equations. Feynman tried to visualize the world he was describing mathematically. One can use lines to represent a magnetic field but are there really any such lines. Mathematically a field is just an array of values in space. Feynman said, “I have a terrible confusion between the symbols I use to describe the objects and the objects themselves.”
In 1948 Julian Schwinger presented his work on quantum electrodynamics at a meeting of the world’s top theorists who were duly impressed. Feynman followed presenting his version of QED including his soon to be famous Feynman diagrams but it was not well received. Afterwards Freeman Dyson put together a paper which refined the mathematics supporting Feynman’s ideas, and then Feynman published again. Gradually physicists began adopting Feynman’s techniques instead of Schwinger’s. Feynman’s approach incorporated the principle of least action applied to particle paths, the path integrals Feynman had worked on under Wheeler. Summing of the probability amplitudes of these paths yielded the wave function. Implicit was the electron going back and forth in time. As Feynman put it, “It may prove useful in physics to consider events in all of time at once and to imagine that we at each instant are only aware of those that lie behind us.”
In 1949 Feynman decided it was time to move on from Cornell. His personal life was unsettled and disorganized. He had numerous short term relationships with women and never established a permanent residence. He left for Brazil where he lived it up and accepted an offer at Caltech which gave him a first year sabbatical he could enjoy. In 1952 he married one of his many romantic interests. The marriage lasted four unhappy years and ended bitterly. In 1960 he married an English woman he met in Switzerland. This one was happy and lasted the rest of his life. They had a son and adopted a daughter. Feynman settled down.
At Caltech Feynman turned to the study of superfluidity, but he would return to QED. In the 1950’s the accelerator age of particle physics was beginning. Caltech recruited Murray Gell-Mann who would lead mainstream particle physics in the sixties and seventies and open up the world of quarks. He also brought out Feynman’s competitive instincts. But in 1957 under pressure from their department head they collaborated on an important paper proposing a theory of the weak interaction. While Gell-Mann respected Feynman’s ability, he had little respect for Feynman’s lack of decorum and sketchy documentation. Asked by a student about copies of some of Feynman’s notes that he found, Gell-Mann replied that Feynman’s methods are not used at Caltech. The student asked what Feynman’s methods were. Gell-Mann replied “You write down the problem. You think very hard. Then you write down the answer.”
Feynman’s genius came in broad leaps often not explaining the intermediate details which were all computed or visualized in his head. Other physicists made their contributions methodically addressing the next unanswered question. But genius is more than excellence, something that could be expected of someone brilliant. Genius delivers the unexpected. It is brilliance combined with originality. Feynman didn’t research all the available knowledge then proceed to the next step. Thus he would take on problems others might dismiss as already solved or unsolvable. He focused intently only on those parts that interested him and wrestled with problems in his head often using visual pictures that he would later turn into equations in some ways similar to Dirac, his hero.
In the 1960’s Feynman was asked to help with the undergraduate program at Caltech. The result was a series of lectures for freshmen that were published, widely acclaimed and used by many universities. He began with the atom and looked at physics in his own unique if disjointed way. These lectures and many others have been packaged up in books for different levels of readers and are still popular today. In 1965 Feynman along with Schwinger and Tomonaga from Japan were awarded the Nobel Prize for their “fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics with deep ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.”
At a 1967 conference James Watson gave Feynman a copy of what would be his popular Double Helix. Feynman was impressed and immediately shared it with a friend who commented, “It’s amazing that Watson made this great discovery even though he was so out of touch with what everyone in his field was doing.” Feynman retorted, “That’s what I’ve forgotten.” He recognized that his best work had resulted from defining problems in ways others hadn’t considered or proposing new solutions to problems considered already solved.
In 1977 Feynman was diagnosed with a rare cancer perhaps due to his work on the Manhattan Project. Another rare cancer would strike in the 1980’s. But he had one last hurrah following the Challenger disaster in 1986. The only non-political appointee to the president's investigating commission he sought out his own set of facts as he always had. The disaster had been caused by an O ring that lost resilience at the cold temperature at the time of launch. When the commission was dancing around the responsibility for the O ring failure, Feynman was simple and clear. At a hearing he took a C clamp, pressured a sample of the material after putting it in a glass of ice water and showed everyone in the room that the material would not bounce back. This way of cutting to the chase was so typically Feynman and a fitting end to a remarkable career.
Richard Feynman died in 1988. Fellow physicist Paul Olum summed it up. “How could someone like Dick Feynman be dead? This great and wonderful mind. This extraordinary feeling for things and ability is in the ground and there’s nothing there anymore… He was such an extraordinary special person in the universe.”
March 30, 2008
I recently finished reading Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick. I’m a big fan of Gleick’s. His book on Isaac Newton was brilliant. And in this bio of Feynman, who was one of the midwives of the atomic bomb, Gleick illustrates just how important Feynman’s thinking has been to our modern understanding of physics, and therefore, of energy. Feynman grappled with the big questions about matter, science, and the quest for human knowledge and understanding. One of my favorite parts of Gleick’s book comes early on, when he talks about Feynman’s effort to distill human understanding of science into as short a passage as possible. Feynman posed himself this question: what if all scientific knowledge were lost in a cataclysm? What statement would convey the most knowledge in the fewest words to the next generations? Feynman proposed this: “All things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another….In that one little sentence , you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”
Gleick is brilliant. For me, he’s a little like Mark Twain in that when I read his stuff, it whispers to me that I should perhaps quit what I’m doing because I’ll just never be that good.
Gleick is brilliant. For me, he’s a little like Mark Twain in that when I read his stuff, it whispers to me that I should perhaps quit what I’m doing because I’ll just never be that good.
March 8, 2020
For those who know of Richard Feynman, I salute you.
This biography by Gleik, the writer that made Chaos: Making a New Science a household name, tries, mostly successfully, to give us the same treatment about Feynman.
I was fascinated throughout. I've only heard a few funny anecdotes about the man and everyone seems to concur that he's one hell of a genius, but it's better to get into ALL the aspects. Humor, the heartwarming bits, the slightly frustrating but mostly amazing rise of his career as a physicist... all of these things pop out on the page.
An iconoclast? Possibly. But I see him more like a man who, from near-first principles, derived a new way of looking at the universe without bothering to read the majority of the works that came before. He was always shaking things up, keeping his mind agile, and never letting himself succumb to that most horrible of states: rigidity. He was well aware of the tendency of scientists with their pet theories to become ossified the longer they protected their positions.
Feynman always rode the high wave of creativity and originality. He may not have always been successful, but he never took himself too seriously despite being an integral part of quantum physics. Strong, Weak, and EM forces? Oh, yeah.
This book truly humanizes him but also rises above normal biographies in that it postulates, rightly so, a wide and specific theory of what makes Genius. It also comes to some conclusions that shed a bit of light on our own world, too.
For one: where are all the geniuses? :) The answer? They're all around us. And it's often hard to pick certain creative geniuses out of a crowd because the market might be saturated with tons of people who stand on the backs of giants.
One could argue that Richard Feynman was very lucky to have come around at exactly the right time, work on the first atomic bomb, and be surrounded by so many other brilliant minds. His bouts of isolation and creativity were bolstered by others.
Who knows? Without biographies like this, he might have disappeared into footnotes, too.
No one ever really sees the worth of the people around them while they're living. ; ;
This biography by Gleik, the writer that made Chaos: Making a New Science a household name, tries, mostly successfully, to give us the same treatment about Feynman.
I was fascinated throughout. I've only heard a few funny anecdotes about the man and everyone seems to concur that he's one hell of a genius, but it's better to get into ALL the aspects. Humor, the heartwarming bits, the slightly frustrating but mostly amazing rise of his career as a physicist... all of these things pop out on the page.
An iconoclast? Possibly. But I see him more like a man who, from near-first principles, derived a new way of looking at the universe without bothering to read the majority of the works that came before. He was always shaking things up, keeping his mind agile, and never letting himself succumb to that most horrible of states: rigidity. He was well aware of the tendency of scientists with their pet theories to become ossified the longer they protected their positions.
Feynman always rode the high wave of creativity and originality. He may not have always been successful, but he never took himself too seriously despite being an integral part of quantum physics. Strong, Weak, and EM forces? Oh, yeah.
This book truly humanizes him but also rises above normal biographies in that it postulates, rightly so, a wide and specific theory of what makes Genius. It also comes to some conclusions that shed a bit of light on our own world, too.
For one: where are all the geniuses? :) The answer? They're all around us. And it's often hard to pick certain creative geniuses out of a crowd because the market might be saturated with tons of people who stand on the backs of giants.
One could argue that Richard Feynman was very lucky to have come around at exactly the right time, work on the first atomic bomb, and be surrounded by so many other brilliant minds. His bouts of isolation and creativity were bolstered by others.
Who knows? Without biographies like this, he might have disappeared into footnotes, too.
No one ever really sees the worth of the people around them while they're living. ; ;
July 17, 2018
I do not do well with audiobooks. I quickly drift away to thoughts about other things. When I come back to the audiobook, I usually have no idea what's going on. I recently launched into Genius, James Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman, and this experience has been surprisingly different. I have immensely enjoyed having his words poured into my ears. I suspect it has to do with the gorgeous style and structure of Gleick's writing here. He clearly has amassed a staggering amount of vivid detail from Feynman's life, but he's selected from this mountain carefully, rather than dumping it all on the reader's head. To tell Feynman's story, he has to guide us through the recent history of physics, which he manages to do with remarkable grace. It's the story of a remarkable person in a remarkable time. I look forward to hours more of listening.
August 5, 2015
Gleick is a thorough, intelligent science writer able to give over complex ideas without sacrificing too much depth. He still lost me with some of the particle physics stuff.
Feynman started his academic career as a precocious math undergrad at Princeton, and went to the pinnacle of modern science, first at the Manhattan Project and later designing a daunting freshman physics curriculum at CalTech later published as "Six Easy Pieces". His career neatly parallels the modern perception of science: theoretical physics was transformed from a discipline akin, in practical application, to "medieval French", to a near-religion, captivating the awed respect of the public, and leading to enormous increases in governmental research spending and the development of "Big Science". And later, as the pace of new developments dropped, and scientists, confronted with an ever-increasing list of particles, gradually gave up on finding a unified theory of the atom, more mystical and antiscientific thinking gradually re-emerged.
Notable personal aspects of Feynman were his pre-feminist attitudes toward women, culminating in protests at some of his public talks, and, related, his near-constant womanising. (He never recovered emotionally from the death of his beloved first wife.) Also worth noting is that his quips and stories, seemingly off-the-cuff, were carefully rehearsed in his notebooks.
All of which shouldn't take away from the scope of his genius. Gleick sees his subject as the genius par excellence, akin to Einstein and Newton (the latter a previous biographical subject). He devotes a chapter in the final section to a fascinating discussion of the nature and history of "genius". Feynman's thinking was, in speed and clarity, unlike that of normal people.
One final point: in an interview with the BBC retold by Gleick, Feynman becomes quite agitated when asked to explain in layman's terms how magnets work. He insists that they just work. This is quite out of the ordinary, as in every other regard Feynman seemed to consider the ability to explain something in simple terms as the hallmark of a clear understanding. This just adds to my conviction that the Insane Clown Posse was really onto something.
Feynman started his academic career as a precocious math undergrad at Princeton, and went to the pinnacle of modern science, first at the Manhattan Project and later designing a daunting freshman physics curriculum at CalTech later published as "Six Easy Pieces". His career neatly parallels the modern perception of science: theoretical physics was transformed from a discipline akin, in practical application, to "medieval French", to a near-religion, captivating the awed respect of the public, and leading to enormous increases in governmental research spending and the development of "Big Science". And later, as the pace of new developments dropped, and scientists, confronted with an ever-increasing list of particles, gradually gave up on finding a unified theory of the atom, more mystical and antiscientific thinking gradually re-emerged.
Notable personal aspects of Feynman were his pre-feminist attitudes toward women, culminating in protests at some of his public talks, and, related, his near-constant womanising. (He never recovered emotionally from the death of his beloved first wife.) Also worth noting is that his quips and stories, seemingly off-the-cuff, were carefully rehearsed in his notebooks.
All of which shouldn't take away from the scope of his genius. Gleick sees his subject as the genius par excellence, akin to Einstein and Newton (the latter a previous biographical subject). He devotes a chapter in the final section to a fascinating discussion of the nature and history of "genius". Feynman's thinking was, in speed and clarity, unlike that of normal people.
One final point: in an interview with the BBC retold by Gleick, Feynman becomes quite agitated when asked to explain in layman's terms how magnets work. He insists that they just work. This is quite out of the ordinary, as in every other regard Feynman seemed to consider the ability to explain something in simple terms as the hallmark of a clear understanding. This just adds to my conviction that the Insane Clown Posse was really onto something.
November 26, 2023
I am told that Murray Gell-Mann remarked of this book that "Gleick wrote a book about Feynman's genius in order to illustrate his own." I can't top that as a review. Superb.
September 26, 2015
This book made me cry. Weird, maybe, but true. In Gleick's portrayal of the true genius of Feynman, as well as some of his other contemporary genius physicists.
What made me cry? Reading it was a fundamentally humbling experience. These people are SMART! And not smart like most smart folks--not at all. Growing up, I always had the feeling that, given the time and effort to study something, that I was capable of learning anything. Obviously, one cannot learn everything, but I never, until this book, felt that avenues were not open to me, intellectually. In reading the stories in this book, it became clear to me that these people weren't just more educated than me in their academic specialties, but on an entire (much) higher plane--in some place I could NEVER achieve, no matter how hard I ever could work on it.
In the physical world, skills and capabilities are obvious. No matter how hard any of us train, we will never sprint faster that Usain Bolt. That's more tangible than intellectual barriers, which always felt more approachable to me. Well, this book slammed the door on that idea for me in a very enjoyable, yet humbling way. It was fun to read this book for me because it portray genius in a way that is entertaining to me, much like watching great athletes in the arena plying their trade. What do great physicists talk about and do to advance their field? A great read.
What made me cry? Reading it was a fundamentally humbling experience. These people are SMART! And not smart like most smart folks--not at all. Growing up, I always had the feeling that, given the time and effort to study something, that I was capable of learning anything. Obviously, one cannot learn everything, but I never, until this book, felt that avenues were not open to me, intellectually. In reading the stories in this book, it became clear to me that these people weren't just more educated than me in their academic specialties, but on an entire (much) higher plane--in some place I could NEVER achieve, no matter how hard I ever could work on it.
In the physical world, skills and capabilities are obvious. No matter how hard any of us train, we will never sprint faster that Usain Bolt. That's more tangible than intellectual barriers, which always felt more approachable to me. Well, this book slammed the door on that idea for me in a very enjoyable, yet humbling way. It was fun to read this book for me because it portray genius in a way that is entertaining to me, much like watching great athletes in the arena plying their trade. What do great physicists talk about and do to advance their field? A great read.
October 20, 2014
Fantastic bio of Feynman, and likely the best (in the same vein as Isaacson's takes on Einstein or Jobs) that we'll see.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the nature of science during Feynman's rise — a period where quantum mechanics was very much developing and characters like Feynman were radically unorthodox.
Hearing Feynman's story is truly inspirational and makes you want to go out and discover things.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the nature of science during Feynman's rise — a period where quantum mechanics was very much developing and characters like Feynman were radically unorthodox.
Hearing Feynman's story is truly inspirational and makes you want to go out and discover things.
December 6, 2012
I went into this book idolizing Feynman. But I finished it thinking that he was an asshole who got excused for his behavior by possessing high intelligence. I used to think that Feynman was a fun, eccentric, bongo-playing scientist who wooed women. Now I know that he was one of the original douchebag Pick Up artists and gave no regard for the feelings of others.
He also wasn't a very good scientist. This revelation, not expressly said in the book, was a bit upsetting to me. He was an awful scientist. He was a great fan of science and of using science to solve problems, but a terrible, awful, horrible scientist. Scientists, above all, publish and share their knowledge so that they might further their field. Scientists teach others. Scientists publish and subject their work to review. Scientists stay current with new research. Feynman apparently solved practically every physics problem of his generation but neglected to tell anyone. It is apparent that very few of his contributions were unique: He was so reluctant to participate in the scientific community that much of his work was duplicated by others.
I had such realizations only far into the book, like an epiphany. There was a passage about how Feynman wrote to James Watson about the latter's book, The Double Helix. Feynman thought it was a great book and told Watson to ignore the haters. He wrote this after it was apparent to most in the scientific community that Watson had villainized Rosalind Franklin and treated several others unfairly. It's one thing to be ignorant of the drama surrounding the book, it's another to be aware of it and still say, to paraphrase, "Fuck that bitch. Women are subhuman. I'm glad you showed that dead whore up, stole her research, and robbed her of a Nobel Prize. That'll sure teach women about taking men's jobs in science! This book is an accurate portrayal of the scientific process and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Okay I'm really stretching the interpretation there, but damn that letter was really a linchpin in completely reversing my opinion on Feynman.
The book is great, but the subject is not. Honestly, I dislike Feynman now. I went from thinking of him as a hero of science to thinking very lowly of him. This despite the book doing its best to describe Feynman in positive terms. I don't see how any sensible person who reads this could come away thinking better of Feynman.
A one sentence summary of the book would be: You too can get away with being an immense jerk if you are a genius.
He also wasn't a very good scientist. This revelation, not expressly said in the book, was a bit upsetting to me. He was an awful scientist. He was a great fan of science and of using science to solve problems, but a terrible, awful, horrible scientist. Scientists, above all, publish and share their knowledge so that they might further their field. Scientists teach others. Scientists publish and subject their work to review. Scientists stay current with new research. Feynman apparently solved practically every physics problem of his generation but neglected to tell anyone. It is apparent that very few of his contributions were unique: He was so reluctant to participate in the scientific community that much of his work was duplicated by others.
I had such realizations only far into the book, like an epiphany. There was a passage about how Feynman wrote to James Watson about the latter's book, The Double Helix. Feynman thought it was a great book and told Watson to ignore the haters. He wrote this after it was apparent to most in the scientific community that Watson had villainized Rosalind Franklin and treated several others unfairly. It's one thing to be ignorant of the drama surrounding the book, it's another to be aware of it and still say, to paraphrase, "Fuck that bitch. Women are subhuman. I'm glad you showed that dead whore up, stole her research, and robbed her of a Nobel Prize. That'll sure teach women about taking men's jobs in science! This book is an accurate portrayal of the scientific process and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
Okay I'm really stretching the interpretation there, but damn that letter was really a linchpin in completely reversing my opinion on Feynman.
The book is great, but the subject is not. Honestly, I dislike Feynman now. I went from thinking of him as a hero of science to thinking very lowly of him. This despite the book doing its best to describe Feynman in positive terms. I don't see how any sensible person who reads this could come away thinking better of Feynman.
A one sentence summary of the book would be: You too can get away with being an immense jerk if you are a genius.
January 6, 2015
I heard Feynman speak a number of times at conferences in the 1970’s. He was a good speaker. I chose this biography as I wanted to know more about this famous professor. Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was a genius in mathematical physics. He was called “the most original mind of his generation.” Quantum electrodynamics (QED) was developed into an effective theory in 1948 independently by Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomona Ga. In 1965 the three shared the Nobel Prize for the theory.
The author reveals that Feynman’s road to QED began as a graduate student at Princeton University. He started with a theory in which an electron that emits a light particle (photon) must interact with a distant electron that absorbs the particle. Feynman next work was a reformulation of Quantum Mechanics in a new way. The work was included in his doctoral thesis.
The author tells of Feynman’s work at Los Alamos, N.M. working on the Manhattan Project. Gleick also goes into Feynman’s personal life including his love of Arline Greenbaum. They were married in 1941 after she became seriously ill. She entered a sanitarium near Las Alamos to be near him. She was diagnosed with lymphatic tuberculosis. She died just after their fourth anniversary. Years later he married Gweneth Howarth, an English woman he met at a conference in Switzerland.
Feynman along with Sally Ride and Alan Shepherd served on the Presidential commission that investigated the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger.
Gleick was a science reporter and does a good job in his portrayal of scientific people and dramatizing the emergencies of new ideas. The author did in-depth research to write this book. Feynman was a complex brilliant man. Gleick’s book provides a good introduction into his physics and his life. Gleick also reveals that Feynman was an inspired teacher. The author demonstrates in the book that Feynman was a man of absolute integrity in his scientific work. Gleick kept the biography balanced presenting all the sides of Feynman. People without a science background may have a problem following some of the science presented in the book. The book is 489 pages long. The book has lots of pictures. I read it using the Kindle app my iPad.
The author reveals that Feynman’s road to QED began as a graduate student at Princeton University. He started with a theory in which an electron that emits a light particle (photon) must interact with a distant electron that absorbs the particle. Feynman next work was a reformulation of Quantum Mechanics in a new way. The work was included in his doctoral thesis.
The author tells of Feynman’s work at Los Alamos, N.M. working on the Manhattan Project. Gleick also goes into Feynman’s personal life including his love of Arline Greenbaum. They were married in 1941 after she became seriously ill. She entered a sanitarium near Las Alamos to be near him. She was diagnosed with lymphatic tuberculosis. She died just after their fourth anniversary. Years later he married Gweneth Howarth, an English woman he met at a conference in Switzerland.
Feynman along with Sally Ride and Alan Shepherd served on the Presidential commission that investigated the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger.
Gleick was a science reporter and does a good job in his portrayal of scientific people and dramatizing the emergencies of new ideas. The author did in-depth research to write this book. Feynman was a complex brilliant man. Gleick’s book provides a good introduction into his physics and his life. Gleick also reveals that Feynman was an inspired teacher. The author demonstrates in the book that Feynman was a man of absolute integrity in his scientific work. Gleick kept the biography balanced presenting all the sides of Feynman. People without a science background may have a problem following some of the science presented in the book. The book is 489 pages long. The book has lots of pictures. I read it using the Kindle app my iPad.
December 11, 2021
Вдале поєднання біографії конкретної людини та опису загальної атмосфери наукового процесу у фізиці США тих часів. Написано дуже докладно, багатослівно і "ніхто нікуди не біжить".
На відміну від веселої книжки самого героя – «Та ви жартуєте, містере Фейнман!», у Гліка дуже-дуже багато фізики. Іронічно, що у книзі великого фізика практично нема власне фізики, натомість купа анекдотів, які Фейнман постійно вигадував сам про себе. А от Глік найдокладнішим чином розбирає не тільки різні анекдоти цього блискучого життя, а й те, чому саме ця людина відома як один з найвидатніших вчених у галузі фізики 20 століття.
Автор пояснює, чим саме займався Фейнман у Прінстоні, Лос-Аламосі, Корнеллі і так далі – тобто на всіх етапах свого наукового шляху. Так, тут також багато і особистих моментів, але Джеймс Глік у цих уривках дуже делікатний і обережний, жодної скандальності та «жовтухи».
Помітно, що саме науковий пошук, наукові якості та відкриття, блискуче оточення, коллеги, начальники та ідеї, сама атмосфера, що панувала у науковій системі того часу автора цікавить найбільше. Він не шкодує слів, або розжувати якомога зрозуміліше для пересічного читача, чим саме тоді займалися у Штатах і не тільки найкращі фізики світу, чому це було важливо, і яку саме роль грав Річард Фейнман у процесі.
Якщо коротко, то тут спостерігаєш не тільки за життєвим шляхом генія, а так само за блискучою та несамовитою епохою Sturm und Drang у науці, яка давно вже пішла у небуття разом зі своїми героями. Наприкінці мені аж сумно стало, наскільки зараз науковий процес змінився...
На відміну від веселої книжки самого героя – «Та ви жартуєте, містере Фейнман!», у Гліка дуже-дуже багато фізики. Іронічно, що у книзі великого фізика практично нема власне фізики, натомість купа анекдотів, які Фейнман постійно вигадував сам про себе. А от Глік найдокладнішим чином розбирає не тільки різні анекдоти цього блискучого життя, а й те, чому саме ця людина відома як один з найвидатніших вчених у галузі фізики 20 століття.
Автор пояснює, чим саме займався Фейнман у Прінстоні, Лос-Аламосі, Корнеллі і так далі – тобто на всіх етапах свого наукового шляху. Так, тут також багато і особистих моментів, але Джеймс Глік у цих уривках дуже делікатний і обережний, жодної скандальності та «жовтухи».
Помітно, що саме науковий пошук, наукові якості та відкриття, блискуче оточення, коллеги, начальники та ідеї, сама атмосфера, що панувала у науковій системі того часу автора цікавить найбільше. Він не шкодує слів, або розжувати якомога зрозуміліше для пересічного читача, чим саме тоді займалися у Штатах і не тільки найкращі фізики світу, чому це було важливо, і яку саме роль грав Річард Фейнман у процесі.
Якщо коротко, то тут спостерігаєш не тільки за життєвим шляхом генія, а так само за блискучою та несамовитою епохою Sturm und Drang у науці, яка давно вже пішла у небуття разом зі своїми героями. Наприкінці мені аж сумно стало, наскільки зараз науковий процес змінився...
September 27, 2014
I doubt I've ever read a longer book. The text was only 440 pages, but I found that I re-read (and re-re and re-re-re-read) a number of sections because the physics described was very deep and complex, especially for a layperson. But I feel I have a better understanding of the significant advances in physics in the 20th century as seen through the lens of Feynmman's intellect, methods and, as the title so ably states, genius. Although I still don't have a deep knowledge of concepts like quantum theory, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics or quantum chromodynamics, I do feel as thought I understand why they are important in physics and other sciences.
I found the human stories of Feynman's first love (and marriage), his time at Los Alamos and his essential contributions to understanding the causes of the Challenger disaster to be great history and human interest. Also, his views on the math and science textbooks used in grade schools was a refreshing episode that humanized him even more for me.
And I learned that this book is really about two geniuses, Feynman and the author of the book, James Gleick. Gleick's narrative demonstrates an amazing gift of writing and synthesis that few could ever hope to achieve.
I found the human stories of Feynman's first love (and marriage), his time at Los Alamos and his essential contributions to understanding the causes of the Challenger disaster to be great history and human interest. Also, his views on the math and science textbooks used in grade schools was a refreshing episode that humanized him even more for me.
And I learned that this book is really about two geniuses, Feynman and the author of the book, James Gleick. Gleick's narrative demonstrates an amazing gift of writing and synthesis that few could ever hope to achieve.
May 26, 2008
doesn't really add anything to "surely you're joking" and "what do you care what other people think?" that we couldn't live without. it was interesting, but most of the same information is available in more-engaging form elsewhere.
January 3, 2018
I really wanted to like this book. I have liked other books by the author, and after reading "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" I consider Richard Feynman a personal hero.
But ultimately I don't feel that this book did him justice, at least to my eyes as a non-physicist lay reader.
This quote, about Feynman, appears near the end of the book: "They knew they had a remarkable central figure, a scientist who prided himself not on his achievements in science—these remained deep in the background—but on his ability to see through fraud and pretense and to master everyday life."
Yes. This is the Feynman I want to read about. Not about his scientific achievements in all their technical detail, but about his method and approach to science and life. Unfortunately, though, the book is bogged down in long sections of technical abstraction. No doubt these sections are interesting to physicists or physics graduate students, but I'm not one of them.
Perhaps this is a great book that simply did not meet my unrealistic expectations for it. But for me, I'd recommend "Surely You're Joking" absolutely without reservation, but this book only to technical readers. "Surely You're Joking" is a book about an interesting character where you learn a bit of science along the way. "Genius" is a book about science where you learn about an interesting man along the way.
But ultimately I don't feel that this book did him justice, at least to my eyes as a non-physicist lay reader.
This quote, about Feynman, appears near the end of the book: "They knew they had a remarkable central figure, a scientist who prided himself not on his achievements in science—these remained deep in the background—but on his ability to see through fraud and pretense and to master everyday life."
Yes. This is the Feynman I want to read about. Not about his scientific achievements in all their technical detail, but about his method and approach to science and life. Unfortunately, though, the book is bogged down in long sections of technical abstraction. No doubt these sections are interesting to physicists or physics graduate students, but I'm not one of them.
Perhaps this is a great book that simply did not meet my unrealistic expectations for it. But for me, I'd recommend "Surely You're Joking" absolutely without reservation, but this book only to technical readers. "Surely You're Joking" is a book about an interesting character where you learn a bit of science along the way. "Genius" is a book about science where you learn about an interesting man along the way.
June 12, 2008
A book that really re-awakened my inner science and math geek. In addition it introduced me to Feynman. I'm sure his name came up back in classes I took, but there is so much here that you'd never get from a one-liner in a textbook. A very interesting character.
By funny happenstance, I read this right before reading Cosmic Banditos by Weisbecker. Cosmic coincidence?
-Jeremy
By funny happenstance, I read this right before reading Cosmic Banditos by Weisbecker. Cosmic coincidence?
-Jeremy
August 26, 2007
Big disappointment. Coming off of American Prometheus, the fantastic biography of Robert Oppenheimer, and having read a book or two of Gleick's earlier stuff, I was surprised that I couldn't even finish the damned thing. Tossed it into my donation pile a hundred pages in.
November 12, 2020
Moved to gwern.net.
November 2, 2020
Missing a bit of the magic of Feynman's own "autobiography", but fills in a lot of the factual information missing from those books and Feynman's interviews and lectures. It's best read as a companion to all the other material available on Feynman. Gleick does an impressive job presenting the science and philosophy of Feynman.
I'm also listening to Isaacson's book 'Einstein' now and I see so many similarities between the two characters: their skepticism of the scientific establishment; their desire to understand how things "really" works; a distrust of mathematical formalism without intuitive understanding, yet an advanced faculty with mathematical tools and tricks; their attitude towards women; their ambivalence for publicity; somewhat contradictory political views...
But there are some differences between the two: Einstein was deeply cultured and philosophical, while Feynman dispised pretension; Feynman didn't like music except of the percussive variety, while Einstein was a pretty decent violin player; Einstein loved to socialize with everyone, while Feynman had no patience for those he considered unintelligent; Feynman was an atheist and completely ignored his Jewish identity, while Einstein believed in "Spinoza's God" and embraced his Jewishness.
By and by, it's interesting to be reading the two in parallel. The author's styles are also somewhat comparable, though I find Isaacson is more presumptuous about reading into his subject's minds, and Gleick revels more in esoteric topics.
I'm also listening to Isaacson's book 'Einstein' now and I see so many similarities between the two characters: their skepticism of the scientific establishment; their desire to understand how things "really" works; a distrust of mathematical formalism without intuitive understanding, yet an advanced faculty with mathematical tools and tricks; their attitude towards women; their ambivalence for publicity; somewhat contradictory political views...
But there are some differences between the two: Einstein was deeply cultured and philosophical, while Feynman dispised pretension; Feynman didn't like music except of the percussive variety, while Einstein was a pretty decent violin player; Einstein loved to socialize with everyone, while Feynman had no patience for those he considered unintelligent; Feynman was an atheist and completely ignored his Jewish identity, while Einstein believed in "Spinoza's God" and embraced his Jewishness.
By and by, it's interesting to be reading the two in parallel. The author's styles are also somewhat comparable, though I find Isaacson is more presumptuous about reading into his subject's minds, and Gleick revels more in esoteric topics.
May 15, 2020
I have been fascinated by Richard Feynman since I was a child. I admired his brilliance, I loved his pranks and escapades, I loved reading about his approach to problems, and I was astounded by the sheer range of topics upon which he exerted a powerful influence. Later when I was in college, I referred extensively to his lectures on physics during my own physics courses and found them to be invaluable. I’ve read all three of his autobiographical works multiple times and have been excited to read this book ever since I learned about it a few months ago.
Gleick offers external, more objective insight into Feynman’s life. Feynman, like anyone, was not without his flaws, perhaps most notably his notorious womanizing, and it seems after reading Gleick’s book that Feynman was perhaps a bit prone to over-exaggeration when describing his own life as well. This served to humanize Feynman a bit and helped me to appreciate him as a person more deeply.
I greatly enjoyed this work and highly recommend it to anyone who knows of Richard Feynman or wants to get to know a brilliant, quirky, eccentric, highly influential character from the 20th century.
Gleick offers external, more objective insight into Feynman’s life. Feynman, like anyone, was not without his flaws, perhaps most notably his notorious womanizing, and it seems after reading Gleick’s book that Feynman was perhaps a bit prone to over-exaggeration when describing his own life as well. This served to humanize Feynman a bit and helped me to appreciate him as a person more deeply.
I greatly enjoyed this work and highly recommend it to anyone who knows of Richard Feynman or wants to get to know a brilliant, quirky, eccentric, highly influential character from the 20th century.
January 17, 2008
I learned about Feynman as a teen, when I happened across an interview with him on tv. His character and intellect fascinated me, and years later I decided to learn more about him.
Gleick covers Feynman's entire life in this biography. His prose is good, and he maintains a pleasing balance of anecdote and historical fact. Feynman had a large, vital personality, and Gleick is able to convey this without parroting the tone and content that Feynman uses in his autobiographical work. I've always been able to appreciate Feynman based on his own words; thanks to Gleick, I had the chance to see him from another perspective, and appreciate him all the more.
Gleick covers Feynman's entire life in this biography. His prose is good, and he maintains a pleasing balance of anecdote and historical fact. Feynman had a large, vital personality, and Gleick is able to convey this without parroting the tone and content that Feynman uses in his autobiographical work. I've always been able to appreciate Feynman based on his own words; thanks to Gleick, I had the chance to see him from another perspective, and appreciate him all the more.
July 31, 2011
Feynman: A Nobel-prize-winning particle physicist with a performer personality. And Gleick is the perfect guide. If you like this and want to get to know Feynman more, you MUST listen to his "Feynman Lectures on Physics" from his days at Cal-Tech (see "Six Easy Pieces").
May 1, 2018
Anodino. Imposible de acabar. De los pocos que he tenido que dejar a medias.
January 21, 2018
I remember hearing about Feynman during the aftermath of the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion. I finally got around to reading about him and what a Brainiac this guy was. A certifiable genius. Gleick makes science and quatum mechancis readable, kind of. There is no way I could follow the discussion when he got deep in the math but, thankfully, much of the book is written so my poor brain could follow. I liked his description of how young Feynman played around as a kid, luckily he had tolerant parents:
Feynman was born at just the right time for a genius in physics. A revolution was occurring and discoveries followed one on the other. The rise of quantum mechanics was strange and yet necessary to understand reality. A simple explanation courtesy of Mr Gleick:
Scientific questions lay around like potatoes in a field. Need something to study, just dig one up and dive in:
Feynman was picked to join the Manhattan Project. Security is paramount in the Manhattan Project. The people running the operation at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee plant refining uranium don't know what the material is going to be used for. Feynman is sent from Los Alamos to inspect the plants and probably saved us from an inadvertent nuclear event in the US:
If you are good at math and physics you will definitely enjoy all of this book. If, like me, you not quite up to the latest in quantum electrodynamics, you will still enjoy it but might have to skip over some parts. 4 Stars One question posed in the book: "Where are all the genius's?" Where are the Shakespeares, da Vincis, Newtons? With populations now approaching 7 billion, shouldn't we have many more?
Feynman was born at just the right time for a genius in physics. A revolution was occurring and discoveries followed one on the other. The rise of quantum mechanics was strange and yet necessary to understand reality. A simple explanation courtesy of Mr Gleick:
Scientific questions lay around like potatoes in a field. Need something to study, just dig one up and dive in:
Feynman was picked to join the Manhattan Project. Security is paramount in the Manhattan Project. The people running the operation at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee plant refining uranium don't know what the material is going to be used for. Feynman is sent from Los Alamos to inspect the plants and probably saved us from an inadvertent nuclear event in the US:
If you are good at math and physics you will definitely enjoy all of this book. If, like me, you not quite up to the latest in quantum electrodynamics, you will still enjoy it but might have to skip over some parts. 4 Stars One question posed in the book: "Where are all the genius's?" Where are the Shakespeares, da Vincis, Newtons? With populations now approaching 7 billion, shouldn't we have many more?
October 7, 2017
After reading Chaos, also by James Gleick, (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) I was curious whether Genius was better written than what I thought of Chaos. Sadly it wasn't.
Like in Chaos, I didn't like the way Gleick writes. It's simply too unfocused on the main topic. In Chaos, it seemed more like a collection of stories and biographies and in Genius, it seems like Gleick wasn't interested at all in Feynmann. The book starts off with the events straight after the conclusion of the Manhattan project in which Feynmann contributed. And then moving to Feynmann himself in a chronological order of his life.
Throughout the book a few themes are touched upon. How Feynmann is always in the search of mental shortcuts, especially in calculation (this was a time before calculators!), how Feynmann has a more physical intuition towards physics rather than his sometimes more mathematically-driven colleagues, how Feynmann was a genius who doesn't accept the solutions of others but have to work through the problems himself and how he left a lot of groundbreaking works behind because he wasn't interested enough in trying to publish it.
Other themes that are less mentioned but still prominent enough are the his love to his first wife Arline and her early death and how that continued to some degree to affect him throughout this life, rivalries and adoration of other scientists and the influence of his father on his special way of thinking.
At first glance the book is very thorough but it quickly becomes clear that Gleick perhaps tries to do too much. In his coverage of Feynmann, he really gets into the thinking, the way of working of Feynmann, and his life. Until you realize that it's an external look into his achievements and very little on the person himself. Arline, his first love, must have played a major influence in his life, but Gleick doesn't drill into their relationship enough and try to infer how that could have influenced Feynmann.
Gleick doesn't give Feynmann a personality other than that of a man who is searching for the ultimate truth and wanted to see the laws of the universe. Gleick mentions Feynmann being accused of sexism, then uses one recommendation that Feynmann did for a woman, and then excusing it with the fact that at that time it was a boy's club. And then spends an entire subchapter on describing his love life and how he could easily pick up women using so-called tricks.
Another point that annoyed me was how Gleick always tried to make Feynmann better than anyone else. Sure, Feynmann was probably more intelligent than most people, but even amongst peers? Gleick takes all of the older generation (Dirac, Bohr, Heisenberg and even Einstein) and depicts them as dinosaurs who did well, but not as well as Feynmann who found even more fundamental truths about the universe. Which is a bit strange, because a scientist should be judged on the time that they lived in and not what came after. Feynmann did after all build on top of the discoveries made by this older generation which Gleick likes to compare to Feynmann. Gleick then tries to make every one of Feynmann's contemporaries either a fan (like Dyson) or a rival who disliked Feynmann because he was smarter than them (Schwinger, Gell-Mann). Which is strange since many of these contemporaries also won Nobel Prizes and did significant work that sometimes was the same as Feynmann's even if Feynmann's work won out in the end because of widespread adoption.
Lastly Gleick spends a lot of time trying to explain some of the groundbreaking discoveries but it quickly fails for me since he never explained any of the basics needed to understand this.
I would not recommend this biography. Gleick doesn't look into Feynmann as a person but seems content to spend half of the biography discussing physics and the other half on Feynmann's achievements. An unbalanced biography which seems to build into the cult of Feynmann (even the title doesn't really shy away from this). I've read that "Surely you're joking Mr Feynmann" which is written by Feynmann himself as a collection of anecdotes is a worthwhile read. And compared to this book, you might as well read a biased account about Feynmann written by Feynmann himself.
Like in Chaos, I didn't like the way Gleick writes. It's simply too unfocused on the main topic. In Chaos, it seemed more like a collection of stories and biographies and in Genius, it seems like Gleick wasn't interested at all in Feynmann. The book starts off with the events straight after the conclusion of the Manhattan project in which Feynmann contributed. And then moving to Feynmann himself in a chronological order of his life.
Throughout the book a few themes are touched upon. How Feynmann is always in the search of mental shortcuts, especially in calculation (this was a time before calculators!), how Feynmann has a more physical intuition towards physics rather than his sometimes more mathematically-driven colleagues, how Feynmann was a genius who doesn't accept the solutions of others but have to work through the problems himself and how he left a lot of groundbreaking works behind because he wasn't interested enough in trying to publish it.
Other themes that are less mentioned but still prominent enough are the his love to his first wife Arline and her early death and how that continued to some degree to affect him throughout this life, rivalries and adoration of other scientists and the influence of his father on his special way of thinking.
At first glance the book is very thorough but it quickly becomes clear that Gleick perhaps tries to do too much. In his coverage of Feynmann, he really gets into the thinking, the way of working of Feynmann, and his life. Until you realize that it's an external look into his achievements and very little on the person himself. Arline, his first love, must have played a major influence in his life, but Gleick doesn't drill into their relationship enough and try to infer how that could have influenced Feynmann.
Gleick doesn't give Feynmann a personality other than that of a man who is searching for the ultimate truth and wanted to see the laws of the universe. Gleick mentions Feynmann being accused of sexism, then uses one recommendation that Feynmann did for a woman, and then excusing it with the fact that at that time it was a boy's club. And then spends an entire subchapter on describing his love life and how he could easily pick up women using so-called tricks.
Another point that annoyed me was how Gleick always tried to make Feynmann better than anyone else. Sure, Feynmann was probably more intelligent than most people, but even amongst peers? Gleick takes all of the older generation (Dirac, Bohr, Heisenberg and even Einstein) and depicts them as dinosaurs who did well, but not as well as Feynmann who found even more fundamental truths about the universe. Which is a bit strange, because a scientist should be judged on the time that they lived in and not what came after. Feynmann did after all build on top of the discoveries made by this older generation which Gleick likes to compare to Feynmann. Gleick then tries to make every one of Feynmann's contemporaries either a fan (like Dyson) or a rival who disliked Feynmann because he was smarter than them (Schwinger, Gell-Mann). Which is strange since many of these contemporaries also won Nobel Prizes and did significant work that sometimes was the same as Feynmann's even if Feynmann's work won out in the end because of widespread adoption.
Lastly Gleick spends a lot of time trying to explain some of the groundbreaking discoveries but it quickly fails for me since he never explained any of the basics needed to understand this.
I would not recommend this biography. Gleick doesn't look into Feynmann as a person but seems content to spend half of the biography discussing physics and the other half on Feynmann's achievements. An unbalanced biography which seems to build into the cult of Feynmann (even the title doesn't really shy away from this). I've read that "Surely you're joking Mr Feynmann" which is written by Feynmann himself as a collection of anecdotes is a worthwhile read. And compared to this book, you might as well read a biased account about Feynmann written by Feynmann himself.
December 17, 2014
The book was a technical tour de force in the way it attempted to bring extremely esoteric and non intuitive concepts of small scale physics into a popular biography in such detail that it becomes possible to glimpse the nature of Feynman's genius rather than just be told about it. That the physical explanations are dense and complex, and probably only partially grasped by the average reader, including your humble correspondent, is hardly The author's fault.
A well written and ultimately humbling book for those of us with any intellectual pretensions. Didn't make me particularly like Mr Feynman, but hard not to respect his accomplishments.
A well written and ultimately humbling book for those of us with any intellectual pretensions. Didn't make me particularly like Mr Feynman, but hard not to respect his accomplishments.
September 26, 2019
The greatest mind of the 20th century!
Fascinating account of the life and times of Richard Feynman. From earliest childhood and throughout his entire life driven by boundless curiosity about the natural world. Always seeking to spot patterns, uncover mysteries, solve the inexplicable.
Fascinating account of the life and times of Richard Feynman. From earliest childhood and throughout his entire life driven by boundless curiosity about the natural world. Always seeking to spot patterns, uncover mysteries, solve the inexplicable.
August 14, 2007
I thought this biography sucked. Though he may have had his facts exactly right, he missed the whole spirit of what made Feynman cool. I don't recommend it. I was very disappointed, too, because he did such a great job with the Chaos book.
July 24, 2013
Five stars if you like Feynman, four stars for everyone else :)
“Half genius and half buffoon,” Freeman Dyson, himself a rising prodigy, wrote his parents back in England. - 55
Some of them, though never Feynman, put their faith in Werner Heisenberg’s wistful dictum, “The equation knows best.” - 80
(when published, Schwinger’s work would violate the Physical Review’s guidelines limiting the sprawl of equations across the width of the page) - 92
“It was a unifying principle that would either explain everything or explain nothing.” - 123
Their systems of equations represented a submicroscopic world defying the logic of everyday objects like baseballs and water waves, ordinary objects with, “thank God,” as W. H. Auden put it (in a poem Feynman detested): sufficient mass To be altogether there, Not an indeterminate gruel Which is partly somewhere else. - 129
Although he never actually wrote a book, books bearing his name began to appear in the sixties—Theory of Fundamental Processes and Quantum Electrodynamics, lightly edited versions of lectures transcribed by students and colleagues. - 216
The result was published and became famous as “the red books”—The Feynman Lectures on Physics. They reconceived the subject from the bottom up. Colleges that adopted the red books dropped them a few years later: the texts proved too difficult for their intended readers. Instead, professors and working physicists found Feynman’s three volumes reshaping their own conception of their subject. They were more than just authoritative. A physicist, citing one of many celebrated passages, would dryly pay homage to “Book II, Chapter 41, Verse 6.” - 221
With the claim that particle physics was the most fundamental science, they scorned even subdisciplines like solid-state physics—“squalid-state” was Gell-Mann’s contemptuous phrase. - 257
He made islands of practical knowledge in the oceans of personal ignorance that remained: - 276
Later it was said that physicists could be divided into two groups, those who had played with chemistry sets and those who had played with radios. Chemistry sets had their appeal, but a boy like Richard Feynman, loving diagrams and maps, could see that the radio was its own map, a diagram of itself. - 302
His father declared—something he had heard—that electrochemistry was an important new field, and Ritty tried in vain to figure out what electrochemistry was: he made piles of dry chemicals and set live wires in them. A jury-rigged motor rocked his baby sister’s crib. When his parents came home late one night, they opened the door to a sudden clang-clang-clang and Ritty’s shout: “It works!” They now had a burglar alarm. - 482
The adult Richard Feynman became an adept teller of stories about himself, and through these stories came a picture of his father as a man transmitting a set of lessons about science. The lessons were both naïve and wise. Melville Feynman placed a high value on curiosity and a low value on outward appearances. He wanted Richard to mistrust jargon and uniforms; as a salesman, he said, he saw the uniforms empty. - 497
atomos—uncuttable. - 654
We are told when we are young that the earth is round, that it circles the sun, that it spins on a tilted axis. We may accept the knowledge on faith, the frail teaching of a modern secular religion. - 662
Heat had seemed to flow from one place to another as an invisible fluid—“phlogiston” or “caloric.” But a succession of natural philosophers hit on a less intuitive idea—that heat was motion. It was a brave thought, because no one could see the things in motion. - 693
There will never be another Einstein—just as there will never be another Edison, another Heifetz, another Babe Ruth, figures towering so far above their contemporaries that they stood out as legends, heroes, half-gods in the culture’s imagination. There will be, and almost certainly have already been, scientists, inventors, violinists, and baseball players with the same raw genius. But the world has grown too large for such singular heroes. When there are a dozen Babe Ruths, there are none. - 773
Dirac’s end of the dialogue was suitably monosyllabic. (The Journal’s readers must have assumed he was an ancient eminence; actually he was just twenty-seven years old.) “Now doctor will you give me in a few words the low-down on all your investigations?” “No.” “Good. Will it be all right if I put it this way—‘Professor Dirac solves all the problems of mathematical physics, but is unable to find a better way of figuring out Babe Ruth’s batting average’?” “Yes.” ... “Do you go to the movies?” “Yes.” “When?” “In 1920—perhaps also 1930.” - 785
Richard still had some tinkering and probing to do. The Depression broadened the market for inexpensive radio repair, and Richard found himself in demand. In just over a decade of full-scale commercial production, the radio had penetrated nearly half of American households. By 1932 the average price of a new set had fallen to $48, barely a third of the price just three years before. “Midget” - 834
“Our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is ‘There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.’” - 1027
No wonder Descartes appended a blanket disclaimer: “At the same time, recalling my insignificance, I affirm nothing, but submit all these opinions to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to the judgment of the more sage; and I wish no one to believe anything I have written, unless he is personally persuaded by the evidence of reason.” - 1042
Although MIT continued to require humanities courses, it took a relaxed view of what might constitute humanities. Feynman’s sophomore humanities course, for example, was Descriptive Astronomy. “Descriptive” meant “no equations.” - 1182
Richard stopped reading, though, long before giving himself the pleasure of rejecting Descartes’s final, equally unsyllogistic argument for the existence of God: that a perfect being would certainly have, among other excellent features, the attribute of existence. - 1207
When an electron absorbed a light quantum, it meant that in that instant it jumped to a higher orbit: the soon-to-be-proverbial quantum jump. When the electron jumped to a lower orbit, it emitted a light quantum at a certain frequency. Everything else was simply forbidden. What happened to the electron “between” orbits? One learned not to ask. - 1282
classically the negatively charged electrons should seek their state of lowest energy and spiral in toward the positively charged nuclei. Substance itself would vanish. Matter would crumple in on itself. Only in terms of quantum mechanics was that impossible, because it would give the electron a definite pointlike position. - 1607
How was anyone to visualize this bloated [uranium] nucleus? …. It was this last image, the liquid drop, that enabled Wheeler and Bohr to produce one of those unreasonably powerful oversimplifications of science, an effective theory of the phenomenon that had been named, only in the past year, fission. (The word was not theirs, and they spent a late night trying to find a better one. They thought about splitting or mitosis and then gave up.) - 1677
Even the kindly genius who became the town’s most famous resident on arriving in 1933 could not resist a gibe: “A quaint ceremonious village,” Einstein wrote, “of puny demigods on stilts.” - 1724
he cultivated his brashness. Not long after he arrived, he had his neighbors at the Graduate College convinced that he and Einstein (whom he had not met) were on regular speaking terms. They listened with awe to these supposed conversations with the great man on the pay phone in the hallway: “Yeah, I tried that ... yeah, I did ... oh, okay, I’ll try that.” Most of the time he was actually speaking with Wheeler. - 1743
Even the physicist has his memories of the past and his aspirations for the future, and no space-time diagram quite obliterates the difference between them. Philosophers, in whose province such speculations had usually belonged, were left with a muddy and senescent set of concepts. The distress of the philosophers of time spilled into their adverbs: sempiternally, hypostatically, tenselessly, retrodictably. - 1944
He did not see why two intelligent people, in love with each other, willing to converse openly, should get caught in arguments. He worked out a plan. Before revealing it to Arline, however, he decided to lay it out for a physicist friend over a hamburger at a diner on the Route 1 traffic circle. The plan was this. When Dick and Arline disagreed intensely about a matter of consequence, they would set aside a fixed time for discussion, perhaps one hour. If at the end of that time they had not found a resolution, rather than continue fighting they would agree to let one of them decide. Because Feynman was older and more experienced (he explained), he would be the one. - 2058
The positron, the antiparticle twin of the electron, had been discovered (in cosmic-ray showers) and named (another modern -tron, short for positive electron) within the past decade. It was the first antiparticle, vindicating a prediction of Dirac’s, based on little more than a faith in the loveliness of his equations. - 2176
Wheeler quoted the White Queen’s remark to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” - 2223
Few medical researchers understood the rudiments of controlled statistical experimentation. Authorities argued for or against particular therapies roughly the way theologians argued for or against their theories, by employing a combination of personal experience, abstract reason, and aesthetic judgment. - 2365
Marriage was not so simple. It had not occurred to universities like Princeton to leave such matters to their students’ discretion. The financial and emotional responsibilities were considered grave in the best of circumstances. He was supporting himself as a graduate student with fellowships—he was the Queen Junior Fellow and then the Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Fellow, entitling him to earn two hundred dollars a year as a research assistant. When he told a university dean that his fiancée was dying and that he wanted to marry her, the dean refused to permit it and warned him that his fellowship would be revoked. - 2415
While Feynman remained mostly oblivious, his senior professor Eugene Wigner had for two years been a part of “the Hungarian conspiracy,” with Leo Szilard and Edward Teller, conniving to alert Einstein and through him President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the possibility of a bomb. (“I never thought of that!” Einstein had told Wigner and Szilard.) - 2438
From their windows the Bell researchers could see the George Washington Bridge going up across the Hudson River, and they had traced the curve of the first cable on the glass. As the bridge was hung from it, they were marking off the slight changes that transformed the curve from a catenary to a parabola. Feynman thought it was just the sort of clever thing he might have done. - 2457
They found they were able to bear the pressure of working on the nation’s most fateful secret research project. The senior theoretician crumpled a piece of paper one day, passed it to his assistant, and ordered him to throw it in the wastebasket. “Why don’t you?” the assistant replied. “My time is more valuable than yours,” said Feynman. “I’m getting paid more than you.” They measured the distances from scientist to wastebasket; multiplied by the wages; bantered about their relative value to nuclear science. The number-two man, Paul Olum, threw away the paper. - 2531
Feynman, a cheerful, boyish presence spinning across the campus on his bicycle, scornful of the formalisms of modern advanced mathematics, was running mental circles around him. It wasn’t that he was a brilliant calculator; Olum knew the tricks of that game. It was as if he were a man from Mars. Olum could not track his thinking. He had never known anyone so intuitively at ease with nature—and with nature’s seemingly least accessible manifestations. He suspected that when Feynman wanted to know what an electron would do under given circumstances he merely asked himself, “If I were an electron, what would I do?” - 2538
The light rose and fell across the bowl of desert in silence, no sound heard until the expanding shell of shocked air finally arrived one hundred seconds after the detonation. Then came a crack like a rifle shot, startling a New York Times correspondent at Feynman’s left. “What was that?” the correspondent cried, to the amusement of the physicists who heard him. “That’s the thing,” Feynman yelled back. - 2732
Almost everyone was working in a new field, the theory of explosions, for example, or the theory of matter at extremely high temperatures. The practicality both sobered and thrilled them. The purest mathematicians had to soil their hands. Stanislaw Ulam lamented that until now he had always worked exclusively with symbols. Now he had been driven so low as to use actual numbers, and, even more humbling, they were numbers with decimal points. - 2744
In the minute that the new light spread across that sky, humans became fantastically powerful and fantastically vulnerable. - 2764
work. He had no feeling for experimentation, and his style was unphysical; so, when he made mistakes, they were notoriously silly ones: “Oppenheimer’s formula ... is remarkably correct for him, apparently only the numerical factor is wrong,” a theoretician once wrote acidly. In later physicist lingo a calculation’s Oppenheimer factors were the missing π’s, i’s, and minus signs. - 2810
Richard and Arline went with the first wave, on Sunday, March 28. Instructions were to buy tickets for any destination but New Mexico. Feynman’s contrariety warred for a moment with his common sense, and contrariety won out. He decided that, if no one else was buying a New Mexico ticket, he would. The ticket seller said, Aha—all these crates are for you? - 2839
The recruiters had warned scientists that the army wanted isolation, but no one quite realized what isolation would mean. At first the only telephone link was a single line laid down by the Forest Service. To make a call one had to turn a crank on the side of the box. - 2858
Not all the procedures devised in the name of security helped allay the suspicions of the local population. Any local policeman who pulled over Richard Feynman on the road north of Santa Fe would see the driver’s license of a nameless Engineer identified only as Number 185, residing at Special List B, whose signature was, for some reason, Not required. - 2876
A request for osmium, a dense nonradioactive metal, had to be denied when it became clear that the metallurgists had asked for more than the world’s total supply. - 2911
Challenges and fresh insights came easily from Feynman. He did not wait, as Bethe did, to double-check every intuitive leap. His first idea did not always work. His cannier colleagues developed a rule of thumb: If Feynman says it three times, it’s right. - 2939
Bethe had not just organized the existing knowledge of the subject but had calculated or recalculated every line of theory himself. He had worked on probability theory, on the theory of shock waves, on the penetration of armor by artillery shells (this last paper, born of his eagerness in 1940 to make some contribution to the looming war, was immediately classified by the army so that Bethe himself, not yet an American citizen, could not see it again). - 2943
His Los Alamos colleagues were sometimes amused to hear him, when thinking out loud, howl a sort of whooping glissando when he meant, this rises exponentially; a different sound signified arithmetically. - 3127
The ENIAC had too many tubes to survive. Von Neumann estimated: “Each time it is turned on, it blows two tubes.” The army stationed soldiers carrying spare tubes in grocery baskets. The operators borrowed mean free path terminology from the ricocheting particles of diffusion theory; the computer’s mean free path was its average time between failures. - 3249
Wigner of Princeton had made what was, for a physicist’s physicist in the 1940s, perhaps the ultimate tribute. “He is a second Dirac,” Wigner said, “only this time human.” - 3285
square dances (the same Oxonian, bemused amid the clash of cultures, asked, “What exactly is square about it—the people, the room, or the music?”), - 3310
The censors trod carefully. They tried to turn mail around the day they received it, and they agreed to allow correspondence in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. They felt entitled at least to ask Feynman for the key to the codes. He said he did not have a key or want a key. Finally they agreed that if Arline would enclose a key for their benefit they would remove it before the envelope got to Feynman. - 3322
Inevitably, he then ran afoul of regulation 8(l), a delightfully (to Feynman) self-referential law requiring the censorship of any information concerning these censorship regulations or any discourse on the subject of censorship. He got the message to Arline nonetheless, and her acid sense of fun took over. She started sending letters with holes cut in them or blotches of ink covering words: “It’s very difficult writing because I feel that the —— is looking over my shoulder.” He would respond with numerical fancies, pointing out how peculiarly the decimal expansion of 1/243 repeats itself: .004 115 226 337 448 ... and his increasingly frustrated official audience would have to ensure that the string of digits was neither a cipher nor a technical secret. Feynman explained with subtle glee that this fact had the empty, tautological, zero-information-content quality of all mathematical truths. In one of her mail-order catalogs Arline found a kit for do-it-yourself jigsaw puzzles; the next letter from the Albuquerque sanatorium to Box 1663 came disassembled in a little sack. From another the censors deleted a suspicious-sounding shopping list. Richard and Arline talked about a booby-trapped letter that would begin, “I hope you remembered to open this letter carefully because I have included the Pepto Bismol powder ...” Their letters were a lifeline. No wonder, under watchful eyes, the lovers found ways to make them private. - 3325
This device replaced an older container, the most ancient prototype of the soda machine: customers would open the lid, take a bottle, and honorably drop their coin in a box. The new dispenser struck Feynman as a withdrawal of trust; thus he felt entitled to accept the technological challenge and finesse the mechanism. - 3347
One man, Harry Daghlian, working alone at night, let slip one cube too many, frantically grabbed at the mound to halt the chain reaction, saw the shimmering blue aura of ionization in the air, and died two weeks later of radiation poisoning. Later Louis Slotin used a screwdriver to prop up a radioactive block and lost his life when the screwdriver slipped. Like so many of these worldly scientists he had performed a faulty kind of risk assessment, unconsciously mis-multiplying a low probability of accident (one in a hundred? one in twenty?) by a high cost (nearly infinite). - 3513
There's way more, but it won't fit here :(
“Half genius and half buffoon,” Freeman Dyson, himself a rising prodigy, wrote his parents back in England. - 55
Some of them, though never Feynman, put their faith in Werner Heisenberg’s wistful dictum, “The equation knows best.” - 80
(when published, Schwinger’s work would violate the Physical Review’s guidelines limiting the sprawl of equations across the width of the page) - 92
“It was a unifying principle that would either explain everything or explain nothing.” - 123
Their systems of equations represented a submicroscopic world defying the logic of everyday objects like baseballs and water waves, ordinary objects with, “thank God,” as W. H. Auden put it (in a poem Feynman detested): sufficient mass To be altogether there, Not an indeterminate gruel Which is partly somewhere else. - 129
Although he never actually wrote a book, books bearing his name began to appear in the sixties—Theory of Fundamental Processes and Quantum Electrodynamics, lightly edited versions of lectures transcribed by students and colleagues. - 216
The result was published and became famous as “the red books”—The Feynman Lectures on Physics. They reconceived the subject from the bottom up. Colleges that adopted the red books dropped them a few years later: the texts proved too difficult for their intended readers. Instead, professors and working physicists found Feynman’s three volumes reshaping their own conception of their subject. They were more than just authoritative. A physicist, citing one of many celebrated passages, would dryly pay homage to “Book II, Chapter 41, Verse 6.” - 221
With the claim that particle physics was the most fundamental science, they scorned even subdisciplines like solid-state physics—“squalid-state” was Gell-Mann’s contemptuous phrase. - 257
He made islands of practical knowledge in the oceans of personal ignorance that remained: - 276
Later it was said that physicists could be divided into two groups, those who had played with chemistry sets and those who had played with radios. Chemistry sets had their appeal, but a boy like Richard Feynman, loving diagrams and maps, could see that the radio was its own map, a diagram of itself. - 302
His father declared—something he had heard—that electrochemistry was an important new field, and Ritty tried in vain to figure out what electrochemistry was: he made piles of dry chemicals and set live wires in them. A jury-rigged motor rocked his baby sister’s crib. When his parents came home late one night, they opened the door to a sudden clang-clang-clang and Ritty’s shout: “It works!” They now had a burglar alarm. - 482
The adult Richard Feynman became an adept teller of stories about himself, and through these stories came a picture of his father as a man transmitting a set of lessons about science. The lessons were both naïve and wise. Melville Feynman placed a high value on curiosity and a low value on outward appearances. He wanted Richard to mistrust jargon and uniforms; as a salesman, he said, he saw the uniforms empty. - 497
atomos—uncuttable. - 654
We are told when we are young that the earth is round, that it circles the sun, that it spins on a tilted axis. We may accept the knowledge on faith, the frail teaching of a modern secular religion. - 662
Heat had seemed to flow from one place to another as an invisible fluid—“phlogiston” or “caloric.” But a succession of natural philosophers hit on a less intuitive idea—that heat was motion. It was a brave thought, because no one could see the things in motion. - 693
There will never be another Einstein—just as there will never be another Edison, another Heifetz, another Babe Ruth, figures towering so far above their contemporaries that they stood out as legends, heroes, half-gods in the culture’s imagination. There will be, and almost certainly have already been, scientists, inventors, violinists, and baseball players with the same raw genius. But the world has grown too large for such singular heroes. When there are a dozen Babe Ruths, there are none. - 773
Dirac’s end of the dialogue was suitably monosyllabic. (The Journal’s readers must have assumed he was an ancient eminence; actually he was just twenty-seven years old.) “Now doctor will you give me in a few words the low-down on all your investigations?” “No.” “Good. Will it be all right if I put it this way—‘Professor Dirac solves all the problems of mathematical physics, but is unable to find a better way of figuring out Babe Ruth’s batting average’?” “Yes.” ... “Do you go to the movies?” “Yes.” “When?” “In 1920—perhaps also 1930.” - 785
Richard still had some tinkering and probing to do. The Depression broadened the market for inexpensive radio repair, and Richard found himself in demand. In just over a decade of full-scale commercial production, the radio had penetrated nearly half of American households. By 1932 the average price of a new set had fallen to $48, barely a third of the price just three years before. “Midget” - 834
“Our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is ‘There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.’” - 1027
No wonder Descartes appended a blanket disclaimer: “At the same time, recalling my insignificance, I affirm nothing, but submit all these opinions to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to the judgment of the more sage; and I wish no one to believe anything I have written, unless he is personally persuaded by the evidence of reason.” - 1042
Although MIT continued to require humanities courses, it took a relaxed view of what might constitute humanities. Feynman’s sophomore humanities course, for example, was Descriptive Astronomy. “Descriptive” meant “no equations.” - 1182
Richard stopped reading, though, long before giving himself the pleasure of rejecting Descartes’s final, equally unsyllogistic argument for the existence of God: that a perfect being would certainly have, among other excellent features, the attribute of existence. - 1207
When an electron absorbed a light quantum, it meant that in that instant it jumped to a higher orbit: the soon-to-be-proverbial quantum jump. When the electron jumped to a lower orbit, it emitted a light quantum at a certain frequency. Everything else was simply forbidden. What happened to the electron “between” orbits? One learned not to ask. - 1282
classically the negatively charged electrons should seek their state of lowest energy and spiral in toward the positively charged nuclei. Substance itself would vanish. Matter would crumple in on itself. Only in terms of quantum mechanics was that impossible, because it would give the electron a definite pointlike position. - 1607
How was anyone to visualize this bloated [uranium] nucleus? …. It was this last image, the liquid drop, that enabled Wheeler and Bohr to produce one of those unreasonably powerful oversimplifications of science, an effective theory of the phenomenon that had been named, only in the past year, fission. (The word was not theirs, and they spent a late night trying to find a better one. They thought about splitting or mitosis and then gave up.) - 1677
Even the kindly genius who became the town’s most famous resident on arriving in 1933 could not resist a gibe: “A quaint ceremonious village,” Einstein wrote, “of puny demigods on stilts.” - 1724
he cultivated his brashness. Not long after he arrived, he had his neighbors at the Graduate College convinced that he and Einstein (whom he had not met) were on regular speaking terms. They listened with awe to these supposed conversations with the great man on the pay phone in the hallway: “Yeah, I tried that ... yeah, I did ... oh, okay, I’ll try that.” Most of the time he was actually speaking with Wheeler. - 1743
Even the physicist has his memories of the past and his aspirations for the future, and no space-time diagram quite obliterates the difference between them. Philosophers, in whose province such speculations had usually belonged, were left with a muddy and senescent set of concepts. The distress of the philosophers of time spilled into their adverbs: sempiternally, hypostatically, tenselessly, retrodictably. - 1944
He did not see why two intelligent people, in love with each other, willing to converse openly, should get caught in arguments. He worked out a plan. Before revealing it to Arline, however, he decided to lay it out for a physicist friend over a hamburger at a diner on the Route 1 traffic circle. The plan was this. When Dick and Arline disagreed intensely about a matter of consequence, they would set aside a fixed time for discussion, perhaps one hour. If at the end of that time they had not found a resolution, rather than continue fighting they would agree to let one of them decide. Because Feynman was older and more experienced (he explained), he would be the one. - 2058
The positron, the antiparticle twin of the electron, had been discovered (in cosmic-ray showers) and named (another modern -tron, short for positive electron) within the past decade. It was the first antiparticle, vindicating a prediction of Dirac’s, based on little more than a faith in the loveliness of his equations. - 2176
Wheeler quoted the White Queen’s remark to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” - 2223
Few medical researchers understood the rudiments of controlled statistical experimentation. Authorities argued for or against particular therapies roughly the way theologians argued for or against their theories, by employing a combination of personal experience, abstract reason, and aesthetic judgment. - 2365
Marriage was not so simple. It had not occurred to universities like Princeton to leave such matters to their students’ discretion. The financial and emotional responsibilities were considered grave in the best of circumstances. He was supporting himself as a graduate student with fellowships—he was the Queen Junior Fellow and then the Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Fellow, entitling him to earn two hundred dollars a year as a research assistant. When he told a university dean that his fiancée was dying and that he wanted to marry her, the dean refused to permit it and warned him that his fellowship would be revoked. - 2415
While Feynman remained mostly oblivious, his senior professor Eugene Wigner had for two years been a part of “the Hungarian conspiracy,” with Leo Szilard and Edward Teller, conniving to alert Einstein and through him President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the possibility of a bomb. (“I never thought of that!” Einstein had told Wigner and Szilard.) - 2438
From their windows the Bell researchers could see the George Washington Bridge going up across the Hudson River, and they had traced the curve of the first cable on the glass. As the bridge was hung from it, they were marking off the slight changes that transformed the curve from a catenary to a parabola. Feynman thought it was just the sort of clever thing he might have done. - 2457
They found they were able to bear the pressure of working on the nation’s most fateful secret research project. The senior theoretician crumpled a piece of paper one day, passed it to his assistant, and ordered him to throw it in the wastebasket. “Why don’t you?” the assistant replied. “My time is more valuable than yours,” said Feynman. “I’m getting paid more than you.” They measured the distances from scientist to wastebasket; multiplied by the wages; bantered about their relative value to nuclear science. The number-two man, Paul Olum, threw away the paper. - 2531
Feynman, a cheerful, boyish presence spinning across the campus on his bicycle, scornful of the formalisms of modern advanced mathematics, was running mental circles around him. It wasn’t that he was a brilliant calculator; Olum knew the tricks of that game. It was as if he were a man from Mars. Olum could not track his thinking. He had never known anyone so intuitively at ease with nature—and with nature’s seemingly least accessible manifestations. He suspected that when Feynman wanted to know what an electron would do under given circumstances he merely asked himself, “If I were an electron, what would I do?” - 2538
The light rose and fell across the bowl of desert in silence, no sound heard until the expanding shell of shocked air finally arrived one hundred seconds after the detonation. Then came a crack like a rifle shot, startling a New York Times correspondent at Feynman’s left. “What was that?” the correspondent cried, to the amusement of the physicists who heard him. “That’s the thing,” Feynman yelled back. - 2732
Almost everyone was working in a new field, the theory of explosions, for example, or the theory of matter at extremely high temperatures. The practicality both sobered and thrilled them. The purest mathematicians had to soil their hands. Stanislaw Ulam lamented that until now he had always worked exclusively with symbols. Now he had been driven so low as to use actual numbers, and, even more humbling, they were numbers with decimal points. - 2744
In the minute that the new light spread across that sky, humans became fantastically powerful and fantastically vulnerable. - 2764
work. He had no feeling for experimentation, and his style was unphysical; so, when he made mistakes, they were notoriously silly ones: “Oppenheimer’s formula ... is remarkably correct for him, apparently only the numerical factor is wrong,” a theoretician once wrote acidly. In later physicist lingo a calculation’s Oppenheimer factors were the missing π’s, i’s, and minus signs. - 2810
Richard and Arline went with the first wave, on Sunday, March 28. Instructions were to buy tickets for any destination but New Mexico. Feynman’s contrariety warred for a moment with his common sense, and contrariety won out. He decided that, if no one else was buying a New Mexico ticket, he would. The ticket seller said, Aha—all these crates are for you? - 2839
The recruiters had warned scientists that the army wanted isolation, but no one quite realized what isolation would mean. At first the only telephone link was a single line laid down by the Forest Service. To make a call one had to turn a crank on the side of the box. - 2858
Not all the procedures devised in the name of security helped allay the suspicions of the local population. Any local policeman who pulled over Richard Feynman on the road north of Santa Fe would see the driver’s license of a nameless Engineer identified only as Number 185, residing at Special List B, whose signature was, for some reason, Not required. - 2876
A request for osmium, a dense nonradioactive metal, had to be denied when it became clear that the metallurgists had asked for more than the world’s total supply. - 2911
Challenges and fresh insights came easily from Feynman. He did not wait, as Bethe did, to double-check every intuitive leap. His first idea did not always work. His cannier colleagues developed a rule of thumb: If Feynman says it three times, it’s right. - 2939
Bethe had not just organized the existing knowledge of the subject but had calculated or recalculated every line of theory himself. He had worked on probability theory, on the theory of shock waves, on the penetration of armor by artillery shells (this last paper, born of his eagerness in 1940 to make some contribution to the looming war, was immediately classified by the army so that Bethe himself, not yet an American citizen, could not see it again). - 2943
His Los Alamos colleagues were sometimes amused to hear him, when thinking out loud, howl a sort of whooping glissando when he meant, this rises exponentially; a different sound signified arithmetically. - 3127
The ENIAC had too many tubes to survive. Von Neumann estimated: “Each time it is turned on, it blows two tubes.” The army stationed soldiers carrying spare tubes in grocery baskets. The operators borrowed mean free path terminology from the ricocheting particles of diffusion theory; the computer’s mean free path was its average time between failures. - 3249
Wigner of Princeton had made what was, for a physicist’s physicist in the 1940s, perhaps the ultimate tribute. “He is a second Dirac,” Wigner said, “only this time human.” - 3285
square dances (the same Oxonian, bemused amid the clash of cultures, asked, “What exactly is square about it—the people, the room, or the music?”), - 3310
The censors trod carefully. They tried to turn mail around the day they received it, and they agreed to allow correspondence in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. They felt entitled at least to ask Feynman for the key to the codes. He said he did not have a key or want a key. Finally they agreed that if Arline would enclose a key for their benefit they would remove it before the envelope got to Feynman. - 3322
Inevitably, he then ran afoul of regulation 8(l), a delightfully (to Feynman) self-referential law requiring the censorship of any information concerning these censorship regulations or any discourse on the subject of censorship. He got the message to Arline nonetheless, and her acid sense of fun took over. She started sending letters with holes cut in them or blotches of ink covering words: “It’s very difficult writing because I feel that the —— is looking over my shoulder.” He would respond with numerical fancies, pointing out how peculiarly the decimal expansion of 1/243 repeats itself: .004 115 226 337 448 ... and his increasingly frustrated official audience would have to ensure that the string of digits was neither a cipher nor a technical secret. Feynman explained with subtle glee that this fact had the empty, tautological, zero-information-content quality of all mathematical truths. In one of her mail-order catalogs Arline found a kit for do-it-yourself jigsaw puzzles; the next letter from the Albuquerque sanatorium to Box 1663 came disassembled in a little sack. From another the censors deleted a suspicious-sounding shopping list. Richard and Arline talked about a booby-trapped letter that would begin, “I hope you remembered to open this letter carefully because I have included the Pepto Bismol powder ...” Their letters were a lifeline. No wonder, under watchful eyes, the lovers found ways to make them private. - 3325
This device replaced an older container, the most ancient prototype of the soda machine: customers would open the lid, take a bottle, and honorably drop their coin in a box. The new dispenser struck Feynman as a withdrawal of trust; thus he felt entitled to accept the technological challenge and finesse the mechanism. - 3347
One man, Harry Daghlian, working alone at night, let slip one cube too many, frantically grabbed at the mound to halt the chain reaction, saw the shimmering blue aura of ionization in the air, and died two weeks later of radiation poisoning. Later Louis Slotin used a screwdriver to prop up a radioactive block and lost his life when the screwdriver slipped. Like so many of these worldly scientists he had performed a faulty kind of risk assessment, unconsciously mis-multiplying a low probability of accident (one in a hundred? one in twenty?) by a high cost (nearly infinite). - 3513
There's way more, but it won't fit here :(
December 2, 2023
A serviceable biography. I did like the blending of physics theory with Feynman's life. And at a surprisingly high level for a popular work. Still, if you are genuinely interested in Feynman, nothing can surpass his pseudo-biographical collection of anecdotes in the two books published just before and after his death in 1988: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? In these you will truly discover Feynman's genius, humor, uniqueness and humanity.
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