Encyclopedia
Richard Phillips Feynman was an influential
American physicist known for expanding greatly on the theory of
quantum electrodynamics,
particle theory, and the physics of the
superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium. For his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was one of the recipients of the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, along with
Julian Schwinger and Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga; in this work, he developed a way to understand the behavior of subatomic particles using pictorial tools now called
Feynman diagrams.
He helped in the development of the
atomic bomb and was later a member of the panel that investigated the
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. For all his prolific contributions, Feynman wrote only 37 research papers in his career. Apart from pure physics, Feynman is also credited with the revolutionary concept and early exploration of
quantum computing, and publicly envisioning
nanotechnology, the ability to create devices at the molecular scale. He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at
Caltech.
Feynman was a keen and influential popularizer of physics in both his books and lectures, notably a seminal 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called
There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a three-volume set which has become a classic text. In his lifetime as well as in the years after his death, he became one of the most publicly known scientists of the century. Known for his insatiable curiosity, gentle wit, brilliant mind and playful temperament , 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!. As well as being an inspiring lecturer,
bongo player, notorious practical joker, and decipherer of Mayan hieroglyphics, Richard Feynman was, in many respects, an eccentric and a free spirit. He liked to pursue many independent paths, such as biology, art, percussion, and lockbreaking.
Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but later changed this to "all-genius, all-buffoon".
Biography
Feynman was born in
Far Rockaway, Queens, New York; his parents were
Jewish and attended synagogue every Friday, although they were unritualistic in their practice of
Judaism as a religion. The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, Melville Feynman, who encouraged him to ask questions in order to challenge orthodox thinking. His mother instilled in him a powerful sense of humor which he kept all his life. As a child, he delighted in repairing radios and had a talent for engineering. At school he was bright, but his measured
IQ was merely above average at 124, which he would scoff at later. By age 15, he had mastered differential and
integral calculus. He kept experimenting on and re-creating mathematical topics, such as the
half-derivative , utilizing his own notation, before entering college. Thus, even while in high school, he was developing the mathematical intuition behind his
Taylor series of mathematical operators. His habit of direct characterization would sometimes disconcert more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions when learning feline anatomy was: "Do you have a map of the cat?" . When he spoke, it was with clarity.
Education
- 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 . 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. — Genius : The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
In his last year at Far Rockaway High School, Feynman won the New York University Math Championship. He applied to Columbia College but was rejected because of its Jewish quota. Instead, he attended the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1939, and was named Putnam Fellow that same year. While there, Feynman had taken every physics course offered, and had taken a graduate course on theoretical physics while only in his second year. He obtained a perfect score on the entrance exams to
Princeton University in mathematics and physics — an unprecedented feat — but did rather poorly on the history and English portions. Attendees at Feynman's first seminar included the luminaries Albert Einstein,
Wolfgang Pauli, and
John von Neumann. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1942; his thesis advisor was
John Archibald Wheeler. Feynman's thesis applied the principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, laying the ground work for the "path integral" approach and Feynman diagrams.
While researching his PhD, Feynman married his first wife, Arline Greenbaum. . Arline was diagnosed with
tuberculosis, a terminal illness at that time, but she and Feynman were careful, and he never contracted the disease.
The Manhattan Project
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. Feynman said he was persuaded to join this effort to help make sure that
Nazi Germany did not build them first. On weekends, he visited his wife in a sanatorium in
Albuquerque, right up until her death on June 16, 1945. He immersed himself in work on the project, and was present at the
Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses provided, reasoning that it was safe to ignore instructions and look through a truck windshield as it would screen out the harmful
ultraviolet radiation.
As a junior physicist, his work on the project was relatively remote from the major action, consisting mostly of administering the computation group of
human computers in the Theoretical division, and then, with Nicholas Metropolis, setting up the system for using IBM
punch cards for computation. John G. Kemeny, later president of
Dartmouth College, worked for Feynman at this time. Feynman actually succeeded in solving one of the equations for the project which were posted on the blackboards. However, they did not "do the physics right" and Feynman's solution was not used in the project.
Feynman's other work at Los Alamos included calculating
neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small
nuclear reactor at the desert lab, in order to measure how close a particular assembly of fissile material was to becoming critical. After this work he was transferred to the
Oak Ridge facility, where he aided engineers in calculating safety procedures for material storage . He also did crucial theoretical and calculation work on the proposed uranium-hydride bomb, which was later proven to be infeasible.
Feynman was also sought out by the famous physicist
Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He later found out why. Most physicists were too much in awe of Bohr to argue with him, but Feynman had no such inhibitions, vigorously pointing out anything he considered to be flawed in his thinking. Feynman said he felt just as much respect for Bohr's reputation as anyone else, but that once anyone got him talking about physics, he couldn't help but forget about anything else.
Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated; in his own words, "There wasn't anything to
do there". Bored, Feynman claims he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. Feynman played many jokes on colleagues; in one case he found the combination to a locked filing cabinet by trying the numbers a physicist would use , and found that the three filing cabinets in which a colleague kept a comprehensive set of
atomic bomb research notes all had the same combination. He left a series of mischievous notes as a prank, which initially spooked his colleague into thinking a spy or saboteur had actually gained access to atomic bomb secrets. On another occasion, he noted that a captain in his building at Los Alamos had a massive safe, better than anything the bomb scientists had, installed with much ado in his office. Some time after the captain left Los Alamos, Feynman discovered that the captain with the massive safe had never bothered to change the combination from the single generic factory setting, so that even an amateur safecracker could open it, and there was nothing important being kept in the safe anyway, whereas all the secrets of the bomb scientists were mostly kept in relatively insecure locked cabinets. These anecdotes are related by him in the book
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!On occasion, Feynman would find an isolated section of the
mesa to drum Indian-style; "and maybe I would dance and chant, a little". These antics did not go unnoticed, and rumors spread about a mysterious Indian drummer called "Injun Joe". He also became a friend of laboratory head
J. Robert Oppenheimer, who unsuccessfully tried to court him away from his other commitments to work at the
University of California, Berkeley after the war.
Early career: Cornell University
After the project, Feynman started working as a professor at
Cornell University, where
Hans Bethe worked. However he felt uninspired there; despairing that he had burned out, he turned to less useful, but fun problems, such as analyzing the physics of a twirling,
nutating dish, as it is being balanced by a juggler. 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 near
Princeton, at the
Institute for Advanced Study .
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, comfort. He felt that if he could not be creative, at least he could teach. Another major factor in his decision was just a desire to live in a mild climate, a goal he seized on while having to put snow chains on his car's wheels in the middle of a snowstorm in
Ithaca, New York.
Feynman is sometimes called the "Great Explainer"; he took great care when explaining topics to his students, making it a moral point
not to make a topic arcane, but accessible to others. His principle was that if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not fully understood yet. Feynman gained great pleasure from coming up with such a "freshman level" explanation of the connection between spin and statistics , a question he pondered in his own lectures and which he solved in the 1986 Dirac memorial lecture. He opposed rote learning and other teaching methods that emphasized form over function, everywhere from a conference on education in Brazil to a state commission on school textbook selection.
Clear thinking and
clear presentation were fundamental prerequisites for his attention. It could be perilous to even approach him when unprepared, and he did not forget who the fools or pretenders were.
On one sabbatical year, he returned to
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to study it anew; what he learned from Newton, he also passed along to his students, such as Newton's attempted explanation of
diffraction.
The Caltech years
Feynman did much of his best work while at
Caltech, including research in:
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...
, 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 behavior observable on a macroscopic scale. This helped enormously with the problem of
superconductivity.
- A model of weak decay, which showed that the current coupling in the process is a combination of vector and axial. Although E.C. George Sudharsan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann was seen as the seminal one, the theory was of massive importance, and the weak interaction was neatly described.
He also developed Feynman diagrams, a
bookkeeping device which helps in conceptualizing and calculating interactions between particles in spacetime, notably the interactions between electrons and their antimatter counterparts,
positrons. This device allowed him, and now others, to work with concepts which would have been less approachable without it, such as time reversibility and other fundamental processes. Feynman famously painted Feynman diagrams on the exterior of his van.
Feynman diagrams are now fundamental for
string theory and
M-theory, and have even been extended topologically. Feynman's mental picture for these diagrams started with the
hard sphere approximation, and the interactions could be thought of as
collisions at first. It was not until decades later that physicists thought of analyzing the nodes of the Feynman diagrams more closely. The
world-lines of the diagrams have become
tubes to better model the more complicated objects such as
strings and
M-branes.
From his diagrams of a small number of particles interacting in spacetime, Feynman could then model
all of physics in terms of those particles' spins and the range of coupling of the fundamental forces. Feynman attempted an explanation of the strong interactions governing nucleons scattering called the partonmodel. The parton model emerged as a rival to the
quark model developed by his Caltech colleague
Murray Gell-Mann. The relationship between the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". Feynman did not dispute the quark model; for example, when the 5th quark was discovered, Feynman immediately pointed out to his students that the discovery implied the existence of a 6th quark, which was duly discovered in the decade after his death.
After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field, and was able to derive the Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. However, a calculational technique that Feynman developed for gravity in 1962 — "ghosts" — later proved invaluable. In 1967 Fadeev and Popov quantized the particle behaviour of the spin 1 theories of Yang-Mills -Shaw -Pauli, that are now seen to describe the weak and strong interactions, using Feynman's path integral technique. A "ghost" is a field which is spin 0 and so should be a boson, but which is a fermion — disobeying the spin-statistics theorem. Because it does not propagate externally no effects of this are seen. Unfortunately, at this time he became exhausted by working on multiple major projects at the same time, including his
Lectures in Physics.
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, which are a major reason that Feynman is still regarded by most physicists as one of the greatest
teachers of physics ever. He wanted a picture of a drumhead sprinkled with powder to show the modes of vibration at the beginning of the book; the publishers misunderstood him, and the books carry a picture of him playing drums. Feynman later won the Oersted Medal for teaching, of which he seemed especially proud. His students competed keenly for his attention; once he was awakened when a student solved a problem and dropped it in his mailbox at home; glimpsing the student sneaking across his lawn, he could not go back to sleep, and he read the student's solution. That morning his breakfast was interrupted by another triumphant student, but Feynman informed this student that he was too late.
Partly as a way to bring publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1000 prizes for two of his challenges in nanotechnology. He was also one of the first scientists to conceive the possibility of
quantum computers. 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. He gave lectures which his students annotated into books, such as
Statistical Mechanics and
Lectures on Gravity.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics required two physicists, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands as full-time editors for several years. Even though they were not adopted by the universities as textbooks, the books continue to be bestsellers because they provide a deep understanding of physics. As of 2005,
The Feynman Lectures on Physics have sold over 1.5 million copies in English, an estimated 1 million copies in Russian, and an estimated half million copies in other languages.
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 integrity 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."
In the late 1970's, according to "Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine" , Richard Feynman played a critical role in developing the first parallel-processing computer and finding innovative uses for it in numerical computing and building
neural networks as well as physical simulation with
cellular automata , working with Stephen Wolfram at Caltech.
Shortly before his death, Feynman criticized
string theory in an interview. These words have been much-quoted by opponents of the string-theoretic direction for particle physics ever since.
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything," he said. "I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation -- a fix-up to say, 'Well, it still might be true.'"
Personal life
Feynman's relationship with his first wife Arlene, who died during the Manhattan Project, is portrayed in the 1996 movie
Infinity. He married a second time, to Mary Louise Bell of
Neodesha, Kansas in June 1952; this marriage was brief and unsuccessful. He later married Gweneth Howarth from the United Kingdom, who shared his enthusiasm for life and spirited adventure. Besides their home in
Altadena, California, they had a beach house in
Baja California. They remained married for life, had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968.
Feynman had a great deal of success teaching Carl using discussions about
ants and
Martians as a device for gaining perspective on problems and issues; he was surprised to learn that the same teaching devices did not apply for Michelle. Mathematics was a common interest for father and son; they both entered the computer field as consultants and were involved in advancing a new method of using multiple computers to solve complex problems - later known as parallel computing. The
Jet Propulsion Laboratory retained Feynman as a computational consultant during critical missions. One coworker characterized Feynman as akin to
Don Quixote at his desk, rather than at a computer workstation, ready to do battle with the windmills.
According to his colleague, Professor Steven Frautschi, Feynman was the only person in the Altadena region to buy flood insurance after the massive 1978 fire, predicting correctly that the fire's destruction would lead to land erosion, causing mudslides and flooding. The flood occurred in 1979 after winter rains and destroyed multiple houses in the neighborhood.
Feynman traveled a great deal, notably to Brazil, and near the end of his life schemed to visit the 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. Out of his enthusiastic interest of reaching Tuva came the phrase "Tuva or Bust" , which was tossed about frequently amongst his circle of friends in hope that they, one day, could see it first-hand. The documentary movie
Genghis Blues mentions some of his attempts to communicate with Tuva and chronicles the journey when some of his friends did make it there. His attempts to write and send a letter using an English-Russian and Russian-Tuvan dictionary demonstrate his usual zest for life.
Feynman did not work only on physics, and had a large circle of friends from all walks of life, including the arts. He took up
painting at one time and enjoyed some success under the pseudonym "Ofey", culminating in an exhibition dedicated to his work. While at Los Alamos on the Top Secret Manhattan Project, he earned the notoriety of being a master safe-cracker. He learned to play
drums in acceptable samba style in Brazil by persistence and practice, and participated in a
samba school. Feynman even translated Mayan hieroglyphics. Such actions earned him a reputation of eccentricity.
According to
Genius, the James Gleick biography, Richard Feynman experimented with
LSD during his professorship at
Caltech. Somewhat embarrassed by his actions, Feynman sidestepped the issue when dictating his anecdotes; consequently, the "Altered States" chapter in
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! describes only
marijuana and
ketamine experiences at John Lilly's famed sensory deprivation tanks, as a way of studying consciousness. Feynman gave up alcohol when he began to show early signs of alcoholism, as he did not want to do anything that could damage his brain.
Feynman also had very liberal views on sexuality and was not ashamed of admitting it. In
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he gives advice on the best way to pick up a girl in a hostess bar. At Caltech, he used a nude/topless bar as an office away from his usual office, making sketches or writing physics equations on paper placemats. When the county officials tried to close the locale, all visitors except Feynman refused to testify in favor of the bar, fearing that their families would learn about their visiting this place. Only Feynman accepted, and in court, he affirmed that the bar was a public need, stating that craftsmen, technicians, engineers, common workers "and a physics professor" frequented the establishment. The bar was allowed to remain open.
In summary, Feynman's wives were: Arline Greenbaum, Mary Louise Bell, Gweneth Howarth. His children were Carl Richard , Michelle Catherine , with last wife Gweneth.
Feynman's later years
Feynman was requested to serve on the presidential Rogers Commission which investigated the
Challenger disaster of 1986. Drawing upon 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 flexible gas seals with a simple demonstration using a glass of ice water, a clamp, and a sample of o-ring material. His opinion of the cause of the accident differed from the official findings and was 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. Feynman's book,
What Do You Care What Other People Think?, includes a copy of that appendix and stories about his work on the commission. In the appendix, Feynman concluded that NASA management greatly over-estimated space shuttle reliability, offering a more realistic estimate of 98% reliability , in stark contrast against the NASA management estimate of one failure in 100,000 flights. Sadly, this estimate appears justified, with two failures in 115 flights as of July 4, 2006.
The cancer returned in 1987, with Feynman entering the 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. According to his sister, Dr. Joan Feynman, Richard Feynman's last words were "I'd hate to die twice, it's so boring." He and his wife Gweneth, who died in 1989, are buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, California.
Commemorations
On May 4, 2005 the
United States Postal Service issued the
American Scientists commemorative set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Richard Feynman,
John von Neumann,
Barbara McClintock and
Josiah Willard Gibbs. Feynman's stamp, sepia-toned, features a photograph of a 30-something Feynman and eight small Feynman diagrams.
A shuttlecraft named after Feynman appeared in two episodes of the science fiction television show
. An error in the art department, however, caused the shuttle name to be misspelled, "FEYMAN."
Feynman appears in the fiction book
The Diamond Age is postcyberpunk [i] novel [i] by Neal Stephenson [i] ...
as one of the heroes of the world where
nanotechnology is ubiquitous.
Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign featured photo portraits of Feynman that appeared in magazines and on posters and billboards.
Miscellany
References
- The Character of Physical Law, The 1964 Messenger Lectures, MIT Press, 1967, ISBN 0-262-56003-8
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Definitive and Extended Edition . Originally published as separate volumes in 1964 and 1966, and as a set since 1970. 3 volumes, Addison Wesley, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 0-8053-9045-6. Includes Feynman’s Tips on Physics, a set of four previously unreleased lectures on problem solving.
- Quantum Electrodynamics, Addison Wesley, 1985, ISBN 0-8053-2501-8
- Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-521-34000-4
- Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, Perseus Books, 1994, ISBN 0-201-40955-0
- Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time, Addison Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-15026-3
- Feynman’s Tips On Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures On Physics, Addison Wesley, 2005, ISBN 0-8053-9063-4
Further reading
The Feynman Lectures on Physics are perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiled from lectures to
Caltech undergraduates in 1962. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, a large number of professional physicists began to drop in to listen. Physicist Robert B. Leighton edited 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 , with support from
Kip Thorne and other physicists.
Popular works by and about Feynman
- Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson, Harper and Row, 1979, ISBN 0-06-011108-9. Dyson’s autobiography. The chapters “A Scientific Apprenticeship” and “A Ride to Albuquerque” describe his impressions of Feynman in the period 1947-48 when Dyson was a graduate student at Cornell.
- Physics Today, American Institute of Physics magazine, February 1989 Issue. Special Feynman memorial issue containing non-technical articles on Feynman's life and work in physics.
- Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, edited by Ralph Leighton, W. W. Norton, 2005, ISBN 0-393-06132-9. Chronologically reordered omnibus volume of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, with a bundled CD containing one of Feynman’s signature lectures.
- Don't You Have Time to Think?, edited and with additional commentary by Michelle Feynman, Allen Lane, 2005, ISBN 0-7139-9847-4
Audio recordings
- Safecracker Suite
- Six Easy Pieces
- Six Not So Easy Pieces
- 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
- Feynman on Science and Vision, Volume 11
- Feynman on Sound, Volume 12
- Feynman on Fields, Volume 13
- Feynman on Electricity and Magnetism, Part 1, Volume 14
- Feynman on Electricity and Magnetism, Part 2, Volume 15
- Feynman on Electromagnetism, Volume 16
- Feynman on Electrodynamics, Volume 17
- Feynman on Flow, Volume 18
- Masers and Light, Volume 19
- The Very Best Lectures, Volume 20
- Samples of Feynman's drumming, chanting and speech are included in the songs "Tuva Groove " and "Kargyraa Rap " on the album Back Tuva Future, The Adventure Continues by Kongar-ol Ondar. The hidden track on this album also includes excerpts from lectures without musical background.
Video recordings
- The Messenger Lectures
- The Law of Gravitation
- The Relation of Mathematics to Physics
- The Great Conservation Principles
- Symmetry in Physical Law
- The Distinction of Past and Future
- Probability and Uncertainty - The Quantum Mechanical View of Nature
- Seeking New Laws
-
-
- Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics
Quotations
- "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."
- "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."
- "Mathematics is not real, but it feels real. Where is this place?"
- "The same equations have the same solutions."
- "When you are solving a problem, don't worry. Now, after you have solved the problem, then that's the time to worry."
- "The wonderful thing about science is that it's alive."
- "All fundamental processes are reversible."
- "What does it mean, to understand? ... I don't know."
- "What I cannot create, I do not understand."
- "Know how to solve every problem that has ever been solved."
- "But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose—which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."
- "To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in."
- "I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem."
- "When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next"
- "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring" .
Quotations about Feynman
- The "Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm", as facetiously observed by a colleague, Murray Gell-Mann in the NY Times, was:
- write down the problem;
- think very hard;
- write down the answer.
- Jeff Coffin says in the song "Ah shu Dekio" :
- This verse is for Richard Feynman, He was not a simple simon.
See also
- Physics
- Stückelberg-Feynman interpretation
- QED
- Infinity
- Feynman point
- Feynman sprinkler
External links
