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Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) (surname pronounced "fine-man") was one of the most influential
American physicists of
the 20th century, expanding greatly the theory of quantum electrodynamics. As well as being an inspiring
lecturer and musician, he helped in the development of the atomic bomb and was later a member of the panel which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. For his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was one of the recipients of
the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1965.
He is also famous for his many adventures, detailed in the books Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!, What Do You
Care What Other People Think? and Tuva Or Bust!. Richard Feynman was, in many respects, an eccentric person and was not ashamed of it.
Biography
Feynman was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York; his parents were Jewish,
although they did not practice Judaism as a religion. The young Feynman was heavily
influenced by his father who encouraged him to ask questions in order to challenge orthodox thinking. His mother instilled in him
a powerful sense of humour which he kept all his life.
Feynman received a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1939, and a PhD from Princeton University in 1942.
While researching his Ph.D, he married his first wife, Arline Greenbaum, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, a terminal illness at that time.
At Princeton, the physicist Robert R. Wilson encouraged Feynman
to participate in the Manhattan Project--the wartime U.S. Army project at Los
Alamos developing the atomic bomb. He visited his wife in hospital on weekends, right up until her death in July 1945. Immersing himself in work on the project, he was present at the Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the dark glasses
provided, looking through a truck windshield to screen out harmful ultraviolet frequencies. Despite his relatively removed work on the project (consisting mostly on administering
IBM punch-card computers and, in his own admission, picking locks), he
became a friend of laboratory head J. Robert Oppenheimer, who
unsuccessfully tried to court him away from his other committments to work at the University of California, Berkeley
after the war.
After the project, Feynman started working as a professor at Cornell University. However he was unhappy there, feeling uninspired.
He was therefore surprised to be offered professorships from competing universities, eventually choosing to work at the California Institute of Technology at
Pasadena, California, despite being offered a position at
the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton, which included, at that time, such distinguished
faculty as Albert Einstein.
Feynman rejected the Institute on the grounds that there were no teaching duties. Feynman found his students to be a source of
inspiration and also, during uncreative times, comforting. He felt that if he could not be creative, at least he could teach.
Feynman is sometimes called, rarely derogatorily, the 'Great Explainer', or some other similar variant.
Feynman did much of his best work while at Caltech, including research in:
- Quantum electrodynamics. The problem for which
Feynman won his Nobel Prize involved the probability of quantum states
changing. He helped develop a functional integral formulation
of quantum mechanics, in which every possible path from one state to the next is considered, the final path being a sum
over the possibilities.
- Physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems to display a lack of viscosity when
flowing. Applying the Schrödinger equation to the
question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behaviour which displayed itself on a macroscopic scale.
This helped enormously with the problem of superconductivity.
He also developed Feynman diagrams, which helped in
conceptualising and calculating of interactions between particles.
While at Caltech Feynman was asked to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates. After three years devoted to the task, a
series of lectures was produced, eventually becoming the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman later won the
Oersted medal for teaching, which he seemed especially proud of.
Feynman was a keen and influential popularizer of physics in both his books and lectures, notably a talk on nanotechnology called Plenty of Room at the Bottom. He was also one of the first scientists to realise the
possibility of quantum computers. Though he never actually wrote
any books many of his lectures and other miscellaneous talks were turned into books such as The Character of Physical
Law and QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.
Feynman married twice more, first to Mary Louise Bell of Neodesha, Kansas in June, 1952, which was unsuccessful and brief, and
second to British Gweneth Howarth, who shared his enthusiasm for life. They remained married for life, and had a child of their
own, Carl, and adopted a daughter, Michelle.
Feynman travelled a lot at this time, notably to Brazil, and schemed to visit the
obscure Russian land of Tuva, a dream that, due
to Cold War bureaucratic problems, never succeeded. During this period he
discovered that he had a form of cancer, but, thanks to surgery, he managed to hold it
off.
Feynman had very liberal views on sexuality and was not ashamed of admitting
it. In Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!, he explains that he enjoyed hostess bars and topless dancing, and drew
decoration for a massage
parlor. He also explains how, when working at the top-secret facility at
Los Alamos, he learnt how to pick the locks of his fellow workers' filing
cabinets, and how he played drums in a samba
school in Brasil. Such actions got him a reputation of eccentricity.
Feynman was requested to serve on the presidential commission which investigated the Challenger disaster of 1986. Tactfully fed clues from
a source with inside information, Feynman famously showed on television the crucial role in the disaster played by the booster's o-ring seals with a simple demonstration using a glass of ice water
and a sample of o-ring material. His opinion of the cause of the accident differed from the official findings, and were
considerably more critical of the role of management in sidelining the concerns of engineers. After much petitioning, Feynman's
minority report was included as an appendix to the official document.
The cancer returned in 1987, with Feynman entering hospital a year later. Complications
with surgery worsened his condition, whereupon Feynman decided to die with dignity and not accept any more treatment. He died on
February 15, 1988.
Works by Feynman
Books on physics
- Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics : The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures
- Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
- Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics (with Leighton and Sands)
- The Character of Physical Law
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
- Statistical Mechanics
- Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals (with Hibbs)
- Lectures on Gravitation
- Lectures on Computation
- Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun
Popular works by and about Feynman
- Feynman, Richard Phillips. (1999). The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist. Perseus Publishing.
(Paperback Edition ISBN
0738201669)
- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
- What Do You Care What Other People Think?
- Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (by James Gleick)
- No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (by Christopher Sykes (Editor))
- Tuva Or Bust! (by Ralph Leighton)
- QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton Series in Physics) (by Silvan S.
Schweber)
- Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics (Fermi, Jordan, Heisenberg, Dyson, Weisskopf, Lamb, Dirac, Oppenheimer,
Retherford, Pauli, Bethe, Bloch, Klein, Schwinger, Tomonaga, Feynman, Wigner, and many others) (by Julian Schwinger
(Editor))
- Richard Feynman: A Life in Science (by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin)
- The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (by Jagdish Mehra)
- Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life (by Leonard Mlodinow)
Audio recordings
- "Six Easy Pieces" (original lectures upon which the book is based)
- "Six Not So Easy Pieces" (original lectures upon which the book is based)
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection
- Quantum Mechanics, Volume 1
- Advanced Quantum Mechanics, Volume 2
- From Crystal Structure to Magnetism, Volume 3
- Electrical and Magnetic Behavior, Volume 4
- Feynman on Fundamentals: Energy and Motion, Volume 5
- Feynman on Fundamentals: Kinetics and Heat, Volume 6
- Feynman on Science and Vision, Volume 7
- Feynman on Gravity, Relativity and Electromagnetism, Volume 8
- Basic Concepts in Classical Physics, Volume 9
- Basic Concepts in Quantum Physics, Volume 10
Works about Feynman
There are several documentaries with and about Feynman, all made in Britain for the BBC's Horizon program, and shown in the United states by PBS's Nova:
- 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out';
- 'The Quest for Tannu Tuva' (re-titled 'Last Journey of a Genius' on Nova);
- 'No Ordinary Genius', Parts 1 and 2 (one-hour version re-titled 'The Best Mind Since Einstein' on Nova)
A movie was made about Feynman's life in 1996. Called Infinity and starring
Matthew Broderick, the movie focused on Feynman's relationship
with his first wife, Arlene, with his work on the Manhattan
Project serving as a backdrop for what was essentially a love story. The film received mixed reviews, however, and did poorly
at the box office.
Finally, the character of Feynman was portrayed by Alan Alda in a play called
QED in 2001. The play was essentially a one-man show, with only brief appearances
by other characters, portraying Feynman in his office at Caltech and covering many of the stories and anecdotes included in
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
See also: Physics, Tuva
Quotes
- "Dear Mrs. Chown, Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. Best
wishes, Richard Feynman."
- "Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation."
More Richard Feynman quotes at Wikiquote
External links
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