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=== Physics ===
=== Physics ===
At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the [[superfluid]]ity of supercooled liquid [[helium]], where helium seems to display a complete lack of [[viscosity]] when flowing. Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist [[Lev Landau]]'s theory of superfluidity.{{sfn|Gleick|1992|pp=299–303}} Applying the Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of [[superconductivity]], but the solution eluded Feynman.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Pines|first1=David|title=Richard Feynman and Condensed Matter Physics|journal=Physics Today|volume=42|page=61|year=1989|doi=10.1063/1.881194|bibcode = 1989PhT....42b..61P|issue=2 }}</ref> It was solved with the [[BCS theory]] of superconductivity, proposed by [[John Bardeen]], [[Leon Neil Cooper]], and [[John Robert Schrieffer]].{{sfn|Gleick|1992|pp=299–303}}
At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the [[superfluid]]ity of supercooled liquid [[helium]], where helium seems to display a complete lack of [[viscosity]] when flowing. Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist [[Lev Landau]]'s theory of superfluidity.{{sfn|Gleick|1992|pp=299–303}} In 1941, Feynman indicated that amplitudes in [[Quantum field theory|quantum theory]] could be worked out by using path integrals that sum with appropriate weight contributions from all possible histories of a system.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wolfram|first1=Stephen|title=A New Kind of Science|date=2002|publisher=Wolfram Media, Inc.|location=Champaign, Illinois|isbn=1579550088|page=1056|url=http://www.wolframscience.com/nks/|accessdate=15 March 2018}}</ref> Applying the Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of [[superconductivity]], but the solution eluded Feynman.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Pines|first1=David|title=Richard Feynman and Condensed Matter Physics|journal=Physics Today|volume=42|page=61|year=1989|doi=10.1063/1.881194|bibcode = 1989PhT....42b..61P|issue=2 }}</ref> It was solved with the [[BCS theory]] of superconductivity, proposed by [[John Bardeen]], [[Leon Neil Cooper]], and [[John Robert Schrieffer]].{{sfn|Gleick|1992|pp=299–303}}


[[File:RichardFeynman-PaineMansionWoods1984 copyrightTamikoThiel bw.jpg|thumb|left|Richard Feynman at the [[Robert Treat Paine Estate]] in [[Waltham, Massachusetts]], in 1984]]
[[File:RichardFeynman-PaineMansionWoods1984 copyrightTamikoThiel bw.jpg|thumb|left|Richard Feynman at the [[Robert Treat Paine Estate]] in [[Waltham, Massachusetts]], in 1984]]

Revision as of 19:36, 15 March 2018

"Feynman" redirects here. For other uses, see Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Feynman
Born
Richard Phillips Feynman

(1918-05-11)May 11, 1918
Queens, New York, U.S.
DiedFebruary 15, 1988(1988-02-15) (aged 69)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting placeMountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum, Altadena, California, U.S.
NationalityUnited States
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (S.B 1939)
Princeton University (Ph.D.1943)
Known for
 
Spouse(s)
Arline Greenbaum
​
​
(m. 1941; died 1945)​

Mary Louise Bell
​
​
(m. 1952⁠–⁠1956)​

Gweneth Howarth
​
(m. 1960)​
ChildrenCarl Feynman
Michelle Feynman
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsTheoretical physics
InstitutionsCornell University
California Institute of Technology
ThesisThe Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics (1942)
Doctoral advisorJohn Archibald Wheeler
Doctoral students
Other notable students
Signature

Richard Phillips Feynman (

theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics
in 1965.

Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World he was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.[1]

He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard C. Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? and books written about him such as Tuva or Bust! by Ralph Leighton and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

Early life

Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in

Lithuanian Jews.[5] They were not religious, and by his youth, Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist".[6] Many years later, in a letter to Tina Levitan, declining a request for information for her book on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory", adding, "at thirteen I was not only converted to other religious views, but I also stopped believing that the Jewish people are in any way 'the chosen people'".[7] Later in his life, during a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary, he encountered the Talmud for the first time and remarked that it contained a medieval kind of reasoning and was a wonderful book.[8]

Like

Brooklyn accent as an adult.[9][10] That accent was thick enough to be perceived as an affectation or exaggeration[11][12] – so much so that his good friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe once commented that Feynman spoke like a "bum".[11] The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother, he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he had a talent for engineering, maintained an experimental laboratory in his home, and delighted in repairing radios. When he was in grade school, he created a home burglar alarm system while his parents were out for the day running errands.[13]

When Richard was five years old, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, Henry Philips, who died at four weeks of age on February 25, 1924.

Far Rockaway, Queens.[3] Though separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, as they both shared a natural curiosity about the world. Their mother thought that women did not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend such things. Despite their mother's disapproval of Joan's desire to study astronomy, Richard encouraged his sister to explore the universe. Joan eventually became an astrophysicist specializing in interactions between the Earth and the solar wind.[15]

Education

Feynman attended

Steve Hsu stated of the test:

I suspect that this test emphasized verbal, as opposed to mathematical, ability. Feynman received the highest score in the United States by a large margin on the notoriously difficult Putnam mathematics competition exam... He also had the highest scores on record on the math/physics graduate admission exams at Princeton... Feynman's cognitive abilities might have been a bit lopsided... I recall looking at excerpts from a notebook Feynman kept while an undergraduate... [it] contained a number of misspellings and grammatical errors. I doubt Feynman cared very much about such things.[20]

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself

feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart).[26]

Feynman applied to

Manuel Vallarta, was on "The Scattering of Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy".[29]

Vallarta let his student in on a secret of mentor-protégé publishing: the senior scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a few years later, when Heisenberg concluded an entire book in cosmic rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not to be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman." When they next met, Feynman asked gleefully whether Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's book. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in cosmic rays."[30]

The other was his senior thesis, on "The Forces in Molecules",[31] based on an idea by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by the paper to have it published. Today, it is known as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.[32]

In 1939, Feynman received a

Henry D. Smyth, had another concern, writing to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no definite rule against Jews but like to keep their proportion in our department reasonably small".[35] Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and manner, however, show no trace of this characteristic".[35]

Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was on the classical version of the

principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, laying the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams,[40] and was titled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics".[41] A key insight was that positrons behaved like electrons moving backwards in time.[40]
James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three ... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others.[39]

One of the conditions of Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not be married; but he continued to see his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum, and was determined to marry her once he had been awarded his Ph.D. despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tuberculosis. This was an incurable disease at the time, and she was not expected to live more than two years. On June 29, 1942, they took the Staten Island Ferry to Staten Island, where they were married in the city office. The ceremony was attended by neither family nor friends and was witnessed by a pair of strangers. Feynman could only kiss Arline on the cheek. After the ceremony he took her to Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.[42][43]

Manhattan Project

Feynman's Los Alamos ID badge

In 1941, with

Radiation Laboratory of the University of California. On paper, the isotron was many times more efficient than the calutron, but Feynman and Paul Olum struggled to determine whether or not it was practical. Ultimately, on Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron project was abandoned.[48]

At this juncture, in early 1943,

Los Alamos Laboratory, a secret laboratory on a remote mesa in New Mexico where atomic bombs would be designed and built. An offer was made to the Princeton team to be redeployed there. "Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we signed up, en masse, to go to Los Alamos."[49] Like many other young physicists, Feynman soon fell under the spell of the charismatic Oppenheimer, who telephoned Feynman long distance from Chicago to inform him that he had found a sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Arline. They were among the first to depart for New Mexico, leaving on a train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline with a wheelchair, and Feynman paid extra for a private room for her.[50]

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division,

Stanley Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis, he assisted in establishing a system for using IBM punched cards for computation.[54] He invented a new method of computing logarithms that he later used on the Connection Machine.[55][56] Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality.[57]

On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the

uranium enrichment facilities. He aided the engineers there in devising safety procedures for material storage so that criticality accidents could be avoided, especially when enriched uranium came into contact with water, which acted as a neutron moderator. He insisted on giving the rank and file a lecture on nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers.[58] He explained that while any amount of unenriched uranium could be safely stored, the enriched uranium had to be carefully handled. He developed a series of safety recommendations for the various grades of enrichments.[59] He was told that if the people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his proposals, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could not be responsible for their safety otherwise".[60]

Los Alamos Laboratory
. Feynman is in the second row, fourth from the left, next to Robert Oppenheimer

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge of the group responsible for the theoretical work and calculations on the proposed uranium hydride bomb, which ultimately proved to be infeasible.[52][61] He was sought out by physicist Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He later discovered the reason: most of the other physicists were too much in awe of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, vigorously pointing out anything he considered to be flawed in Bohr's thinking. He said he felt as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but once anyone got him talking about physics, he would become so focused he forgot about social niceties. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.[62][63]

Due to the top secret nature of the work, the Los Alamos Laboratory was isolated. Feynman indulged his curiosity by discovering the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. He found that people tended to leave their safes unlocked, or leave them on the factory settings, or write the combinations down, or use easily guessable combinations like dates.

e = 2.71828...), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept a set of atomic bomb research notes all had the same combination. He left a series of notes in the cabinets as a prank, which initially spooked his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a spy or saboteur had gained access to atomic bomb secrets.[65]

Feynman's salary was $380 a month, about half what he needed to cover his modest living expenses and Arline's medical bills. The rest came from her $3,300 in savings.

FBI would compile a bulky file on Feynman.[70]

Los Alamos Laboratory social function during the Manhattan Project

Feynman was working in the computing room when he was informed that Arline was dying. He borrowed Fuchs' car and drove to Albuquerque where he sat with her for hours until she died on June 16, 1945.

Trinity nuclear test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful ultraviolet radiation. On witnessing the blast, Feynman ducked towards the floor of his truck because of the immense brightness of the explosion, where he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage of the event.[72]

Cornell

Feynman nominally held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of physics, but was on unpaid leave during his involvement in the Manhattan project.[73] In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Science requesting his return to the university to teach in the coming academic year. His appointment was not extended when he did not commit to returning. In a talk given there several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at the only university that ever had the good sense to fire me."[74]

As early as October 30, 1943, Bethe had written to the chairman of the physics department of his university,

Raymond T. Birge was reluctant. Eventually, he made Feynman an offer in May 1945, but Feynman turned it down. Cornell did, however, match its salary offer of $3,900 per annum.[75] Feynman became one of the first of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leader to depart, leaving for Ithaca, New York, in October 1945.[78]

Since Feynman was no longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was no longer exempt from

the draft and was called up by the Army in the fall of 1946. He avoided this by faking mental illness, and the Army gave him a 4-F exemption on mental grounds.[79][80] This may not have been an incorrect assessment; his father died suddenly on October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression.[81] On October 17, 1946, he wrote a letter to Arline, expressing his deep love and heartbreak. This letter was sealed and only opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but I don't know your new address."[82]

Unable to focus on research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, but for self-satisfaction.

quaternions, and attempted unsuccessfully to use them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His work during this period, which used equations of rotation to express various spinning speeds, ultimately proved important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he felt burned out and had turned his attention to less immediately practical problems, he was surprised by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, including the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley.[81]

Feynman diagram of electron/positron annihilation

Feynman was not the only frustrated theoretical physicist in the early post-war years.

two-meson hypothesis.[87]

Bethe took the lead from the work of

Feynman diagrams, used for the first time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his point across, and Paul Dirac, Edward Teller and Niels Bohr all raised objections.[91][92]

To

Feynman propagator.[97] Finally, in papers on the "Mathematical Formulation of the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical basis of his ideas, derived familiar formulae and advanced new ones.[98]

While papers by others initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared in 1950, and soon became prevalent.

Marc Kac provided the formal proofs of the summation under history, showing that the parabolic partial differential equation can be re-expressed as a sum under different histories (that is, an expectation operator), what is now known as the Feynman–Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics to many applications of stochastic processes.[100] To Schwinger, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics." [101]

By 1949, Feynman was becoming restless at Cornell. He never settled into a particular house or apartment, living in guest houses or student residences, or with married friends "until these arrangements became sexually volatile." [102] He liked to date undergraduates, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of friends.[103] He was not fond of Ithaca's cold winter weather, and pined for a warmer climate.[104] Above all, at Cornell, he was always in the shadow of Hans Bethe.[102] Feynman did, however, look back favorably on the Telluride House, where he resided for a large period of his Cornell career. In an interview, he described the House as "a group of boys that have been specially selected because of their scholarship, because of their cleverness or whatever it is, to be given free board and lodging and so on, because of their brains." He enjoyed the house's convenience and said that "it's there that I did the fundamental work" for which he won the Nobel Prize.[105][106]

Caltech years

Personal and political life

Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949,[107] and brought back a woman called Clotilde from Copacabana who lived with him in Ithaca for a time. As well as the cold weather, there was also the Cold War. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, generating anti-communist hysteria.[108] Fuchs was arrested as a Soviet spy in 1950, and the FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's loyalty.[109] Physicist David Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950,[110] and emigrated to Brazil in October 1951.[111] A girlfriend told Feynman that he should consider moving to South America.[108] He had a sabbatical coming for 1951–52,[112] and elected to spend it in Brazil, where he gave courses at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas. In Brazil, Feynman was particularly impressed with the Samba music, and learned to play a metal percussion instrument, the frigideira.[113] He was an enthusiastic amateur player of bongo drums and often played them in the pit orchestra in musicals.[114] He spent time in Rio with his good friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman to take up investigating Bohm's ideas on physics.[115]

Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the

Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.[117][118]

He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night.

Mary Louise Bell, divorce complaint[119]

In the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S. government's interest in science rose for a time. Feynman was considered for a seat on the President's Science Advisory Committee, but was not appointed. At this time the FBI interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly Mary Lou, who sent a written statement to J. Edgar Hoover on August 8, 1958:

I do not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist or very strongly pro-Communist—and as such as [sic] a very definite security risk. This man is, in my opinion, an extremely complex and dangerous person, a very dangerous person to have in a position of public trust ... In matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, I further believe, completely ruthless, unhampered by morals, ethics, or religion—and will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his ends.[118]

The government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference. On the beach on Lake Geneva, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, Yorkshire, and working in Switzerland as an au pair. Feynman's love life had been turbulent since his divorce; his previous girlfriend had walked off with his Albert Einstein Award medal and, on the advice of an earlier girlfriend, had feigned pregnancy and blackmailed him into paying for an abortion, then used the money to buy furniture. When Feynman found that Howarth was being paid only $25 a month, he offered her $20 a week to be his live-in maid. That this sort of behavior was illegal was not overlooked; Feynman had a friend, Matthew Sands, act as her sponsor. Howarth pointed out that she already had two boyfriends, but eventually decided to take Feynman up on his offer, and arrived in Altadena, California, in June 1959. She made a point of dating other men but Feynman proposed in the spring of 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968.[120][121] Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach house in Baja California, purchased with the money from Feynman's Nobel Prize.[122]

Feynman tried marijuana and ketamine experiences at John Lilly's famed sensory deprivation tanks, as a way of studying consciousness.[123][124] He gave up alcohol when he began to show vague, early signs of alcoholism, as he did not want to do anything that could damage his brain.[125] Despite his curiosity about hallucinations, he was reluctant to experiment with LSD.[125]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the

Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer.[126]

Richard Feynman at the Robert Treat Paine Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1984

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of

antineutrino). Although E. C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because the weak interaction was neatly described by the vector and axial currents. It thus combined the 1933 beta decay theory of Enrico Fermi with an explanation of parity violation.[129]

From his diagrams of a few particles interacting in spacetime, Feynman could then

Omega-minus particle, if it were interpreted as three identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible if quarks were real.[130][131]

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory deep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that scattered electrons. It was natural to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret the experimental data in a way that did not introduce additional hypotheses. For example, the data showed that some 45% of the energy momentum was carried by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are now seen to be the gluons that carry the forces between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves the Omega-minus problem. Feynman did not dispute the quark model; for example, when the fifth quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to his students that the discovery implied the existence of a sixth quark, which was discovered in the decade after his death.[130][132]

After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to

strong force and gravity. John and Mary Gribbin say in their book on Feynman: "Nobody else has made such influential contributions to the investigation of all four of the interactions".[134]

Partly as a way to bring publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for two of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by

quantum computers.[136][137] In 1984–86, he developed a variational method for the approximate calculation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful method of converting divergent perturbation expansions into convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as a consequence, to the most accurate determination[138] of critical exponents measured in satellite experiments.[139]

Pedagogy

Caltech
bookstore

In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded to a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates at Caltech. After three years devoted to the task, he produced a series of lectures that eventually became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. He wanted a picture of a drumhead sprinkled with powder to show the modes of vibration at the beginning of the book. Concerned over the connections to drugs and rock and roll that could be made from the image, the publishers changed the cover to plain red, though they included a picture of him playing drums in the foreword. The Feynman Lectures on Physics occupied two physicists, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, as part-time co-authors for several years. Even though the books were not adopted by universities as textbooks, they continue to sell well because they provide a deep understanding of physics.[140] Many of his lectures and miscellaneous talks were turned into other books, including The Character of Physical Law, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Gravitation, and the Feynman Lectures on Computation.[141]

Feynman wrote about his experiences teaching physics undergraduates in Brazil. The students' study habits and the Portuguese language textbooks were so bad that they were not, in his opinion, learning physics at all. At the end of the year, he was invited to give a lecture on his teaching experiences, and he agreed to do so, provided he could speak frankly and didn't pull any punches.[142][143]

Feynman opposed rote learning or unthinking memorization and other teaching methods that emphasized form over function. Clear thinking and clear presentation were fundamental prerequisites for his attention. It could be perilous even to approach him when unprepared, and he did not forget the fools or pretenders.[144] In 1964, he served on the California State Curriculum Commission, which was responsible for approving textbooks to be used by schools in California. He was not impressed with what he found.[145] Many of the mathematics texts covered subjects of use only to pure mathematicians as part of the "New Math". Elementary students were taught about sets, but:

It will perhaps surprise most people who have studied these textbooks to discover that the symbol ∪ or ∩ representing union and intersection of sets and the special use of the brackets { } and so forth, all the elaborate notation for sets that is given in these books, almost never appear in any writings in theoretical physics, in engineering, in business arithmetic, computer design, or other places where mathematics is being used. I see no need or reason for this all to be explained or to be taught in school. It is not a useful way to express one's self. It is not a cogent and simple way. It is claimed to be precise, but precise for what purpose?[146]

In April 1966, Feynman delivered an address to the

Galileo and others started doubting the truth of what was passed down and to investigate ab initio, from experience, what the true situation was—this was science.[147]

In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of

cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He instructed the graduating class that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that."[148]

Feynman served as doctoral advisor to 31 students.[149]

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman

In the 1960s, Feynman began thinking of writing an autobiography, and he began granting interviews to historians. In the 1980s, working with Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), he recorded chapters on audio tape that Robert transcribed. The book was published in 1985 as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and became a best-seller. The publication of the book brought a new wave of protest about Feynman's attitude toward women. There had been protests over his alleged sexism in 1968, and again in 1972. It did not help that Jenijoy La Belle, who had been hired as Caltech's first female professor in 1969, was refused tenure in 1974. She filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which ruled against Caltech in 1977, adding that she had been paid less than male colleagues. La Belle finally received tenure in 1979. Many of Feynman's colleagues were surprised that he took her side. He had gotten to know La Belle and both liked and admired her.[150][151]

Gell-Mann was upset by Feynman's account in the book of the weak interaction work, and threatened to sue, resulting in a correction being inserted in later editions.[152] This incident was just the latest provocation in a decades-long bad feeling between the two scientists. Gell-Mann often expressed frustration at the attention Feynman received;[153] he remarked: "[Feynman] was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his effort generating anecdotes about himself."[154] He noted that Feynman's eccentricities included a refusal to brush his teeth, which he advised others not to do on national television, despite dentists showing him scientific studies that supported the practice.[154]

Challenger disaster

Main article: Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
The 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

Feynman played an

Rogers Commission, which investigated the Challenger disaster. During a televised hearing, Feynman demonstrated that the material used in the shuttle's O-rings became less resilient in cold weather by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice-cold water.[155] The commission ultimately determined that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not properly sealing in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.[156]

Feynman devoted the latter half of his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience on the Rogers Commission, straying from his usual convention of brief, light-hearted anecdotes to deliver an extended and sober narrative. Feynman's account reveals a disconnect between NASA's engineers and executives that was far more striking than he expected. His interviews of NASA's high-ranking managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. For instance, NASA managers claimed that there was a 1 in 100,000 chance of a catastrophic failure aboard the shuttle, but Feynman discovered that NASA's own engineers estimated the chance of a catastrophe at closer to 1 in 200. He concluded that NASA management's estimate of the reliability of the space shuttle was unrealistic, and he was particularly angered that NASA used it to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned in his appendix to the commission's report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."[157]

Recognition and awards

The first public recognition of Feynman's work came in 1954, when

Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1965,[2][161] received the Oersted Medal in 1972,[162] and the National Medal of Science in 1979.[163] He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, but ultimately resigned and is no longer listed by them.[164]

Death

In 1978, Feynman sought medical treatment for abdominal pains and was diagnosed with

duodenal ulcer caused kidney failure, and he declined to undergo the dialysis that might have prolonged his life for a few months. Watched over by his wife Gweneth, sister Joan, and cousin Frances Lewine, he died on February 15, 1988.[166]

When Feynman was nearing death, he asked Danny Hillis why he was so sad. Hillis replied that he thought Feynman was going to die soon. Feynman said that this sometimes bothered him, too, adding, when you get to be as old as he was, and have told so many stories to so many people, even when he was dead he would not be completely gone.[167]

Near the end of his life, Feynman attempted to visit the Russian land of Tuva, a dream thwarted by Cold War bureaucratic issues – the letter from the Soviet government authorizing the trip was not received until the day after he died. His daughter Michelle later undertook the journey.[168] His burial was at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena.[169] His last words were: "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."[168]

Popular legacy

Aspects of Feynman's life have been portrayed in various media. Feynman was portrayed by Matthew Broderick in the 1996 biopic Infinity.[170] Actor Alan Alda commissioned playwright Peter Parnell to write a two-character play about a fictional day in the life of Feynman set two years before Feynman's death. The play, QED, premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2001 and was later presented at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway, with both presentations starring Alda as Richard Feynman.[171] Real Time Opera premiered its opera Feynman at the Norfolk (CT) Chamber Music Festival in June 2005.[172] In 2011, Feynman was the subject of a biographical graphic novel entitled simply Feynman, written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick.[173] In 2013, Feynman's role on the Rogers Commission was dramatised by the BBC in The Challenger (US title: The Challenger Disaster), with William Hurt playing Feynman.[174][175][176]

Feynman is commemorated in various ways. On May 4, 2005, the

Think Different" advertising campaign.[180] The Sheldon Cooper character in The Big Bang Theory is a Feynman fan who emulates him by playing the bongo drums.[181] On January 27, 2016, Bill Gates wrote an article "The Best Teacher I Never Had" describing Feynman's talents as a teacher which inspired Gates to create Project Tuva to place the filmed Feynman Messenger Lectures The Character of Physical Law videos on a website for public viewing. In 2015 Gates made a video on why he thought Feynman was special. The video was made for the 50th anniversary of Feynman's 1965 Nobel Prize, in response to Caltech's request for thoughts on Feynman.[182]

Bibliography

Selected scientific works

Textbooks and lecture notes

The Feynman Lectures on Physics including Feynman's Tips on Physics: The Definitive and Extended Edition (2nd edition, 2005)

Caltech undergraduates in 1961–1964. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, professional physicists and graduate students began to drop in to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, colleagues of Feynman, edited and illustrated them into book form. The work has endured and is useful to this day. They were edited and supplemented in 2005 with Feynman's Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics by Michael Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), with support from Kip Thorne
and other physicists.

Popular works

Audio and video recordings

Notes

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  115. ^ Peat 1997, pp. 125–127.
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  118. ^ a b Wellerstein, Alex (July 11, 2014). "Who smeared Richard Feynman?". Restricted Data. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
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  121. ^ Gribbin & Gribbin 1997, pp. 151–153.
  122. ^ "A Weekend at Richard Feynman's House". It's Just A Life Story. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
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  143. ^ Mehra 1994, pp. 336–341.
  144. ^ Bethe 1991, p. 241.
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  169. ^ Rasmussen, Cecilia (June 5, 2005). "History Exhumed Via Computer Chip". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
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  171. ^ ​QED​ at the Internet Broadway Database
  172. ^ "Real Time Opera productions". Real Time Opera. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
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References

Further reading

Articles

Books

Films and plays

External links

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