Richard Phillips Feynman was an American 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
his contributions to the development of quantum
electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian
Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He 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.
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. In
addition to 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 Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical
physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics
through both books and lectures, notably 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!.
Early life
Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11,
1918, in New York City, the son of Lucille,
a homemaker, and Melville Arthur Feynman,
a sales manager. His family originated from
Russia and Poland; both of his parents were
Ashkenazi Jews. They were not religious, and
by his youth Feynman described himself as
an "avowed atheist".
Feynman was a late talker, and by his third
birthday had yet to utter a single word. He
would retain a Bronx accent as an adult. That
accent was thick enough to be perceived as
an affectation or exaggeration — so much
so that his good friends Wolfgang Pauli and
Hans Bethe would one day comment that Feynman
spoke like a "bum".
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.
When Richard was five years old, his mother
gave birth to a younger brother, but this
brother died at four weeks of age. Four years
later, Richard gained a sister, Joan, and
the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens.
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 cranial 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.
Education
In high school, his IQ was determined to be
125—high, but "merely respectable" according
to biographer James Gleick. In 1933, when
he turned 15, he taught himself trigonometry,
advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic
geometry, and both differential and integral
calculus. Before entering college, he was
experimenting with and deriving mathematical
topics such as the half-derivative using his
own notation. In high school he was developing
the mathematical intuition behind his Taylor
series of mathematical operators.
His habit of direct characterization sometimes
rattled more conventional thinkers; for example,
one of his questions, when learning feline
anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?".
Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School,
a school also attended by fellow laureates
Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg.
A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his
last year in high school Feynman won the New
York University Math Championship; the large
difference between his score and those of
his closest competitors shocked the judges.
He applied to Columbia University but was
not accepted because of their quota for the
number of Jews admitted. Instead, he attended
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where he received a bachelor's degree in 1939
and in the same year was named a Putnam Fellow.
He attained a perfect score on the graduate
school 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 Albert Einstein, Wolfgang
Pauli, and John von Neumann. He received a
Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942; his thesis advisor
was John Archibald Wheeler. Feynman's thesis
applied 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" approach
and Feynman diagrams, and was titled "The
Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics".
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.
— James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science
of Richard Feynman
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 build it before Nazi Germany developed
their own bomb. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's
theoretical division and impressed Bethe enough
to be made a group leader. He and Bethe developed
the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating
the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon
previous work by Robert Serber.
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
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.
As a junior physicist, he was not central
to the project. The greater part of his work
was administering the computation group of
human computers in the theoretical division.
Later, with Nicholas Metropolis, he assisted
in establishing the system for using IBM punched
cards for computation.
Feynman's 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. On completing
this work he was transferred to the Oak Ridge
facility, where he aided engineers in devising
safety procedures for material storage so
that criticality accidents could be avoided.
He also did theoretical work and calculations
on the proposed uranium hydride bomb, which
later proved not to be feasible.
Feynman 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. Feynman 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.
Due to the top secret nature of the work,
Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own
words, "There wasn't anything to do there".
Bored, 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 he thought a physicist
would use, 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. On several occasions, Feynman drove
to Albuquerque to see his ailing wife in a
car borrowed from Klaus Fuchs, who was later
discovered to be a real spy for the Soviets,
transporting nuclear secrets in his car to
Santa Fe.
On occasion, Feynman would find an isolated
section of the mesa where he could drum in
the style of American natives; "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 the laboratory
head, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who unsuccessfully
tried to court him away from his other commitments
after the war to work at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Feynman alludes to his thoughts on the justification
for getting involved in the Manhattan project
in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. He
felt the possibility of Nazi Germany developing
the bomb before the Allies was a compelling
reason to help with its development for the
U.S. He goes on to say, however, that it was
an error on his part not to reconsider the
situation once Germany was defeated. In the
same publication, Feynman also talks about
his worries in the atomic bomb age, feeling
for some considerable time that there was
a high risk that the bomb would be used again
soon, so that it was pointless to build for
the future. Later he describes this period
as a "depression."
Early academic career
Following the completion of his Ph.D. in 1942,
Feynman held an appointment at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor
of physics. The appointment was spent on leave
for his involvement in the Manhattan project.
In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark
Ingraham of the College of Letters and Science
requesting his return to UW to teach in the
coming academic year. His appointment was
not extended when he did not commit to return.
In a talk given several years later at UW,
Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at
the only university that ever had the good
sense to fire me".
After the war, Feynman declined an offer from
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
New Jersey, despite the presence there of
such distinguished faculty members as Albert
Einstein, Kurt Gödel and John von Neumann.
Feynman followed Hans Bethe, instead, to Cornell
University, where Feynman taught theoretical
physics from 1945 to 1950. During a temporary
depression following the destruction of Hiroshima
by the bomb produced by the Manhattan Project,
he focused on complex physics problems, not
for utility, but for self-satisfaction. One
of these was analyzing the physics of a twirling,
nutating dish as it is moving through the
air. His work during this period, which used
equations of rotation to express various spinning
speeds, 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.
Despite yet another offer from the Institute
for Advanced Study, Feynman rejected the Institute
on the grounds that there were no teaching
duties: Feynman felt that students were a
source of inspiration and teaching was a diversion
during uncreative spells. Because of this,
the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton
University jointly offered him a package whereby
he could teach at the university and also
be at the institute. Feynman instead accepted
an offer from the California Institute of
Technology—and as he says in his book Surely
You're Joking Mr. Feynman!—because a desire
to live in a mild climate had firmly fixed
itself in his mind while he was installing
tire chains on his car in the middle of a
snowstorm in Ithaca.
Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer".
He gained a reputation for taking great care
when giving explanations to his students and
for making it a moral duty to make the topic
accessible. His guiding principle was that,
if a topic could not be explained in a freshman
lecture, it was not yet fully understood.
Feynman gained great pleasure from coming
up with such a "freshman-level" explanation,
for example, of the connection between spin
and statistics. What he said was that groups
of particles with spin ½ "repel", whereas
groups with integer spin "clump." This was
a brilliantly simplified way of demonstrating
how Fermi–Dirac statistics and Bose–Einstein
statistics evolved as a consequence of studying
how fermions and bosons behave under a rotation
of 360°. This was also a question he pondered
in his more advanced lectures, and to which
he demonstrated the solution in the 1986 Dirac
memorial lecture. In the same lecture, he
further explained that antiparticles must
exist, for if particles had only positive
energies, they would not be restricted to
a so-called "light cone."
He 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.
Caltech years
Feynman did significant work while at Caltech,
including research in:
Quantum electrodynamics. The theory for which
Feynman won his Nobel Prize is known for its
accurate predictions. This theory was begun
in the earlier years during Feynman's work
at Princeton as a graduate student and continued
while he was at Cornell. This work consisted
of two distinct formulations, and it is a
common error to confuse them or to merge them
into one. The first is his path integral formulation,
and the second is the formulation of his Feynman
diagrams. Both formulations contained his
sum over histories method in which every possible
path from one state to the next is considered,
the final path being a sum over the possibilities.
For a number of years he lectured to students
at Caltech on his path integral formulation
of quantum theory. The second formulation
of quantum electrodynamics was specifically
mentioned by the Nobel committee. The logical
connection with the path integral formulation
is interesting. Feynman did not prove that
the rules for his diagrams followed mathematically
from the path integral formulation. Some special
cases were later proved by other people, but
only in the real case, so the proofs don't
work when spin is involved. The second formulation
should be thought of as starting anew, but
guided by the intuitive insight provided by
the first formulation. Freeman Dyson published
a paper in 1949 which, among many other things,
added new rules to Feynman's which told how
to actually implement renormalization. Students
everywhere learned and used the powerful new
tool that Feynman had created. Eventually
computer programs were written to compute
Feynman diagrams, providing a tool of unprecedented
power. It is possible to write such programs
because the Feynman diagrams constitute a
formal language with a grammar. Marc Kac provided
the formal proofs of the summation under history,
showing that the parabolic partial differential
equation can be reexpressed as a sum under
different histories, what is now known as
the Feynman-Kac formula, the use of which
extends beyond physics to many applications
of stochastic processes.
Physics of the superfluidity 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 D. Landau’s
theory of superfluidity. 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; however,
the solution eluded Feynman. It was solved
with the BCS theory of superconductivity,
proposed by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper,
and John Robert Schrieffer.
A model of weak decay, which showed that the
current coupling in the process is a combination
of vector and axial currents. 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.
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 later
others, to approach time reversibility and
other fundamental processes. 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. Feynman famously painted
Feynman diagrams on the exterior of his van.
From his diagrams of a small number of particles
interacting in spacetime, Feynman could then
model all of physics in terms of the spins
of those particles and the range of coupling
of the fundamental forces. Feynman attempted
an explanation of the strong interactions
governing nucleons scattering called the parton
model. The parton model emerged as a complement
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". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed
that quarks were just a bookkeeping device
for symmetry numbers, not real particles,
as the statistics of the Omega-minus particle,
if it were interpreted as three identical
strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible
if quarks were real. The Stanford linear accelerator
deep inelastic scattering experiments of the
late 1960s showed, analogously to Ernest Rutherford's
experiment of scattering alpha particles on
gold nuclei in 1911, that nucleons contained
point-like particles which scattered electrons.
It was natural to identify these with quarks,
but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret
the experimental data in a way which 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 which
carry the forces between the quarks and carry
also the three-valued color quantum number
which 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 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 derived the Einstein field equation
of general relativity, but little more. However,
the computational device that Feynman discovered
then for gravity, "ghosts", which are "particles"
in the interior of his diagrams which have
the "wrong" connection between spin and statistics,
have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum
particle behavior of the Yang–Mills theories,
for example, QCD and the electro-weak theory.
In 1965, Feynman was appointed a foreign member
of the Royal Society. At this time in the
early 1960s, Feynman exhausted himself by
working on multiple major projects at the
same time, including a request, while at Caltech,
to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates.
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 most universities as textbooks,
they continue to sell well because they provide
a deep understanding of physics. As of 2005,
The Feynman Lectures on Physics has sold over
1.5 million copies in English, an estimated
1 million copies in Russian, and an estimated
half million copies in other languages. 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.
Feynman's students competed keenly for his
attention; he was once awakened when a student
solved a problem and dropped it in his mailbox;
glimpsing the student sneaking across his
lawn, he could not go back to sleep, and he
read the student's solution. The next morning
his breakfast was interrupted by another triumphant
student, but Feynman informed him that he
was too late.
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 William McLellan and the
other by Tom Newman. He was also one of the
first scientists to conceive the possibility
of quantum computers.
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."
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 and, as a consequence,
to the most accurate determination of critical
exponents measured in satellite experiments.
In the late 1980s, according to "Richard Feynman
and the Connection Machine", Feynman played
a crucial role in developing the first massively
parallel computer, and in finding innovative
uses for it in numerical computations, in
building neural networks, as well as physical
simulations using cellular automata, working
with Stephen Wolfram at Caltech. His son Carl
also played a role in the development of the
original Connection Machine engineering; Feynman
influencing the interconnects while his son
worked on the software.
Feynman diagrams are now fundamental for string
theory and M-theory, and have even been extended
topologically. The world-lines of the diagrams
have developed to become tubes to allow better
modeling of more complicated objects such
as strings and membranes. Shortly before his
death, Feynman criticized string theory in
an interview: "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.'" These words have since been much-quoted
by opponents of the string-theoretic direction
for particle physics.
Challenger disaster
Feynman played an important role on the Presidential
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. The commission ultimately
determined that the disaster was caused by
the primary O-ring not properly sealing in
unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.
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 the
space shuttle reliability estimate by NASA
management was fantastically unrealistic,
and he was particularly angered that NASA
used these figures to recruit Christa McAuliffe
into the Teacher-in-Space program. He warned
in his appendix to the commission's report,
"For a successful technology, reality must
take precedence over public relations, for
nature cannot be fooled."
A television documentary drama named The Challenger
Disaster, detailing Feynman's part in the
investigation, was aired in 2013.
Cultural identification
Although born to and raised by parents who
were Ashkenazi, Feynman was not only an atheist,
but declined to be labelled Jewish on supposedly
"ethnic" grounds. He routinely refused to
be included in lists or books that classified
people by race. He asked to not be included
in Tina Levitan's The Laureates: Jewish Winners
of the Nobel Prize, writing, "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," and 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'".
Personal life
While researching for his Ph.D., Feynman married
his first wife, Arline Greenbaum. They married
knowing that Arline was seriously ill from
tuberculosis, which she died of in 1945. In
1946, Feynman wrote a letter to her, but kept
it sealed for the rest of his life. This portion
of Feynman's life was portrayed in the 1996
film Infinity, which featured Feynman's daughter,
Michelle, in a cameo role.
He married a second time in June 1952, to
Mary Louise Bell of Neodesha, Kansas; this
marriage was unsuccessful:
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.
He later married Gweneth Howarth from Ripponden,
Yorkshire, who shared his enthusiasm for life
and spirited adventure. Besides their home
in Altadena, California, they had a beach
house in Baja California, purchased with the
prize money from Feynman's Nobel Prize, his
one third share of $55,000. They remained
married until Feynman's death. They had a
son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter,
Michelle, in 1968.
Feynman had a great deal of success teaching
Carl, using, for example, 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 were not useful with 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 co-worker characterized Feynman
as akin to Don Quixote at his desk, rather
than at a computer workstation, ready to do
battle with the windmills.
Feynman traveled widely, notably to Brazil,
where he gave courses at the CBPF and near
the end of his life schemed to visit the Russian
land of Tuva, a dream that, because of Cold
War bureaucratic problems, never became reality.
The day after he died, a letter arrived for
him from the Soviet government, giving him
authorization to travel to Tuva. Out of his
enthusiastic interest in 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 firsthand.
The documentary movie, Genghis Blues, mentions
some of his attempts to communicate with Tuva
and chronicles the successful journey there
by his friends.
Responding to Hubert Humphrey's congratulation
for his Nobel Prize, Feynman admitted to a
long admiration for the then vice president.
In a letter to an MIT professor dated December
6, 1966, Feynman expressed interest in running
for governor of California.
Feynman took up drawing at one time and enjoyed
some success under the pseudonym, "Ofey",
culminating in an exhibition of his work.
He learned to play a metal percussion instrument
in a samba style in Brazil, and participated
in a samba school.
In addition, he had some degree of synesthesia
for equations, explaining that the letters
in certain mathematical functions appeared
in color for him, even though invariably printed
in standard black-and-white.
According to Genius, the James Gleick-authored
biography, Feynman tried LSD during his professorship
at Caltech. Somewhat embarrassed by his actions,
he largely sidestepped the issue when dictating
his anecdotes; he mentions it in passing in
the "O Americano, Outra Vez" section, while
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 vague, early signs of alcoholism,
as he did not want to do anything that could
damage his brain—the same reason given in
"O Americano, Outra Vez" for his reluctance
to experiment with LSD.
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 or 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 place,
all visitors except Feynman refused to testify
in favor of the bar, fearing that their families
or patrons would learn about their visits.
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. While the bar lost the
court case, it was allowed to remain open
as a similar case was pending appeal.
Feynman has a minor acting role in the film
Anti-Clock credited as "The Professor".
Death
Feynman had two rare forms of cancer, liposarcoma
and Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, dying
shortly after a final attempt at surgery for
the former on February 15, 1988, aged 69.
His last recorded words are noted as, "I'd
hate to die twice. It's so boring."
Popular legacy
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 prior to Feynman's death. The play,
QED, which was based on writings about Richard
Feynman's life during the 1990s, premiered
at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California
in 2001. The play was then presented at the
Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway, with
both presentations starring Alda as Richard
Feynman.
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. The stamps were designed
by Victor Stabin under the artistic direction
of Carl T. Herrman.
The main building for the Computing Division
at Fermilab is named the "Feynman Computing
Center" in his honor.
The principal character in Thomas A. McMahon's
1970 novel, Principles of American Nuclear
Chemistry: A Novel, is modeled on Feynman.
Real Time Opera premiered its opera Feynman
at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in June
2005.
In February 2008 LA Theatre Works released
a recording of 'Moving Bodies' with Alfred
Molina in the role of Richard Feynman. This
radio play written by playwright Arthur Giron
is an interpretation on how Feynman became
one of the iconic American scientists and
is loosely based on material found in Feynman's
two transcribed oral memoirs Surely You're
Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care
What Other People Think?.
On the twentieth anniversary of Feynman's
death, composer Edward Manukyan dedicated
a piece for solo clarinet to his memory. It
was premiered by Doug Storey, the principal
clarinetist of the Amarillo Symphony.
Between 2009 and 2011, clips of an interview
with Feynman were used by composer John Boswell
as part of the Symphony of Science project
in the second, fifth, seventh, and eleventh
installments of his videos, "We Are All Connected",
"The Poetry of Reality", "A Wave of Reason",
and "The Quantum World".
In a 1992 New York Times article on Feynman
and his legacy, James Gleick recounts the
story of how Murray Gell-Mann described what
has become known as "The Feynman Algorithm"
or "The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm"
to a student: "The student asks Gell-Mann
about Feynman's notes. Gell-Mann says no,
Dick's methods are not the same as the methods
used here. The student asks, well, what are
Feynman's methods? Gell-Mann leans coyly against
the blackboard and says: Dick's method is
this. You write down the problem. You think
very hard. Then you write down the answer."
In 1998, a photograph of Richard Feynman giving
a lecture was part of the poster series commissioned
by Apple Inc. for their "Think Different"
advertising campaign.
In 2011, Feynman was the subject of a biographical
graphic novel entitled simply, Feynman, written
by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland
Myrick.
In 2013, the BBC drama The Challenger depicted
Feynman's role on the Rogers Commission in
exposing the O-ring flaw in NASA's solid-rocket
boosters, itself based in part on Feynman's
book What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Bibliography
Selected scientific works
Feynman, Richard P.. Laurie M. Brown, ed.
Selected Papers of Richard Feynman: With Commentary.
20th Century Physics. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-02-4131-5. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Laurie M. Brown, ed.
The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University.
World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-256-380-4. 
Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P.. "Interaction
with the Absorber as the Mechanism 
of Radiation". Rev. Mod. Phys. 17: 157–181.
Bibcode:1945RvMP...17..157W. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.17.157. 
Feynman, Richard P.. A Theorem and its Application
to Finite Tampers. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory,
Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4341197. 
Feynman, Richard P.; Welton, T. A.. Neutron
Diffusion in a Space Lattice of Fissionable
and Absorbing Materials. Los Alamos Scientific
Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4381097. 
Feynman, Richard P.; Metropolis, N.; Teller,
E.. Equations of State of Elements Based on
the Generalized Fermi-Thomas Theory. Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission.
OSTI 4417654. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Space-time approach
to non-relativistic quantum mechanics". Rev.
Mod. Phys. 20: 367–387. Bibcode:1948RvMP...20..367F.
doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.20.367. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Relativistic Cut-Off
for Quantum Electrodynamics". Physical Review
74: 1430–1438. Bibcode:1948PhRv...74.1430F.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.74.1430. 
Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P.. "Classical
Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle
Action". Rev. Mod. Phys. 21: 425–433. Bibcode:1949RvMP...21..425W.
doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.21.425. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "The theory of positrons".
Phys. Rev. 76: 749–759. Bibcode:1949PhRv...76..749F.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.76.749. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Space-Time Approach
to Quantum Electrodynamic". Phys. Rev. 76:
769–789. Bibcode:1949PhRv...76..769F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.76.769. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Mathematical formulation
of the quantum theory of electromagnetic interaction".
Phys. Rev. 80: 440–457. Bibcode:1950PhRv...80..440F.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.80.440. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "An Operator Calculus
Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics".
Phys. Rev. 84: 108–128. Bibcode:1951PhRv...84..108F.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.84.108. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "The λ-Transition in
Liquid Helium". Phys. Rev. 90: 1116–1117.
Bibcode:1953PhRv...90.1116F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.90.1116.2. 
Feynman, Richard P.; de Hoffmann, F.; Serber,
R.. Dispersion of the Neutron Emission in
U235 Fission. Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory,
Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4354998. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Science and the Open
Channel". Science 123: 307. Bibcode:1956Sci...123..307F.
doi:10.1126/science.123.3191.307. PMID 17774518. 
Cohen, M.; Feynman, Richard P.. "Theory of
Inelastic Scattering of Cold Neutrons from
Liquid Helium". Phys. Rev. 107: 13–24. Bibcode:1957PhRv..107...13C.
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.107.13. 
Feynman, Richard P.; Vernon, F. L.; Hellwarth,
R.W.. "Geometric representation of the Schrödinger
equation for solving maser equations". J.
Appl. Phys 28: 49. Bibcode:1957JAP....28...49F.
doi:10.1063/1.1722572. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Plenty of Room at the
Bottom". Presentation to American Physical
Society. 
Edgar, R. S.; Feynman, Richard P.; Klein,
S.; Lielausis, I.; Steinberg, CM. "Mapping
experiments with r mutants of bacteriophage
T4D". Genetics 47: 179–86. PMC 1210321.
PMID 13889186. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "The Development of the
Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics".
Science 153: 699–708. Bibcode:1966Sci...153..699F.
doi:10.1126/science.153.3737.699. PMID 17791121. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Structure of the proton".
Science 183: 601–610. Bibcode:1974Sci...183..601F.
doi:10.1126/science.183.4125.601. PMID 17778830. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Cargo Cult Science".
Engineering and Science 37. 
Feynman, Richard P.; Kleinert, Hagen. "Effective
classical partition functions". Phys. Rev.,
A 34: 5080–5084. Bibcode:1986PhRvA..34.5080F.
doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.34.5080. PMID 9897894. 
Textbooks and lecture notes
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps
his most accessible work for anyone with an
interest in physics, compiled from lectures
to Caltech undergraduates in 1961–64. As
news of the lectures' lucidity grew, a number
of 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, with support from Kip Thorne
and other physicists.
Feynman, Richard P.; Leighton, Robert B.;
Sands, Matthew. The Feynman Lectures on Physics:
The Definitive and Extended Edition. 3 volumes.
Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-9045-6.  Includes
Feynman's Tips on Physics, which includes
four previously unreleased lectures on problem
solving, exercises by Robert Leighton and
Rochus Vogt, and a historical essay by Matthew
Sands.
Feynman, Richard P.. Theory of Fundamental
Processes. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-2507-7. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Quantum Electrodynamics.
Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-8053-2501-0. 
Feynman, Richard P.; Hibbs, Albert. Quantum
Mechanics and Path Integrals. McGraw Hill.
ISBN 0-07-020650-3. 
Feynman, Richard P.. The Character of Physical
Law: The 1964 Messenger Lectures. MIT Press.
ISBN 0-262-56003-8. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Statistical Mechanics:
A Set of Lectures. Reading, Mass: W. A. Benjamin.
ISBN 0-8053-2509-3. 
Feynman, Richard P.. QED: The Strange Theory
of Light and Matter. Princeton University
Press. ISBN 0-691-02417-0. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Elementary Particles
and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial
Lectures. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34000-4. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Brian Hatfield, ed. Lectures
on Gravitation. Addison Wesley Longman. ISBN 0-201-62734-5. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Feynman's Lost Lecture:
The Motion of Planets Around the Sun. London:
Vintage. ISBN 0-09-973621-7. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Tony Hey and Robin W.
Allen, ed. Feynman Lectures on Computation.
Perseus Books Group. ISBN 0-7382-0296-7. 
Popular works
Feynman, Richard P.. Ralph Leighton, ed. Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of
a Curious Character. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-01921-7.
OCLC 10925248. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Ralph Leighton, ed. What
Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further
Adventures of a Curious Character. W. W. Norton
& Co. ISBN 0-393-02659-0. 
No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard
Feynman, ed. Christopher Sykes, W. W. Norton
& Co, 1996, ISBN 0-393-31393-X.
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.
The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen
Scientist, Perseus Publishing, 1999, ISBN
0-7382-0166-9.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best
Short Works of Richard P. Feynman, edited
by Jeffrey Robbins, Perseus Books, 1999, ISBN
0-7382-0108-1.
Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious
Character, edited by Ralph Leighton, W. W.
Norton & Co, 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.
Quantum Man, Atlas books, 2011, Lawrence M.
Krauss, ISBN 978-0-393-06471-1.
"Feynman: The Graphic Novel" Jim Ottaviani
and Leland Myrick, ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8.
Audio and video recordings
Safecracker Suite
Los Alamos From Below
Six Easy Pieces
Six Not So Easy Pieces
The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete
Audio Collection
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-ool
Ondar. The hidden track on this album also
includes excerpts from lectures without musical
background.
The Messenger Lectures, given at Cornell in
1964, in which he explains basic topics in
physics. Available on Project Tuva for free
Take the world from another point of view
[videorecording] / with Richard Feynman; Films
for the Hu
The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures Four public
lectures of which the four chapters of the
book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and
Matter are transcripts.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out on YouTube
Richard Feynman: Fun to Imagine Collection,
BBC Archive of 6 short films of Feynman talking
in a style that is accessible to all about
the physics behind common to all experiences.
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics
Tiny Machines: The Feynman Talk on Nanotechnology
Computers From the Inside Out
Quantum Mechanical View of Reality: Workshop
at Esalen
Idiosyncratic Thinking Workshop
Bits and Pieces — From Richard's Life and
Times
Strangeness Minus Three
No Ordinary Genius
Richard Feynman — The Best Mind Since Einstein
The Motion of Planets Around the Sun
Nature of Matter
See also
Notes
References
Bethe, Hans A.. The Road from Los Alamos.
Masters of Modern Physics 2. New York: Simon
and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74012-1. OCLC 24734608. 
Brian, Denis. The Voice of Genius: Conversations
with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries.
Basic Books. ISBN 9780465011391. 
Chown, Marcus. "Strangeness and Charm". New
Scientist: 34. ISSN 0262-4079. 
Close, Frank. The Infinity Puzzle: The Personalities,
Politics, and Extraordinary Science Behind
the Higgs Boson. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 9780199593507. 
Deutsch, David. "Quantum computation". Physics
World: 57–61. ISSN 0953-8585. 
Edwards, Steven Alan. The Nanotech Pioneers.
Wiley. ISBN 978-3-527-31290-0. OCLC 64304124. 
Feynman, Richard P.. Rogers Commission Report,
Volume 2 Appendix F – Personal Observations
on Reliability of Shuttle. NASA. 
Feynman, Richard P.. "Mr. Feynman Goes to
Washington". In Ralph Leighton. Engineering
and Science 51: 6–22. ISSN 0013-7812. 
Feynman, Michelle, ed.. Perfectly Reasonable
Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters
of Richard P. Feynman. Basic Books. ISBN 0-7382-0636-9. 
Friedman, Jerome. "A Student’s View of Fermi".
In Cronin, James W.. Fermi Remembered. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226121116. 
Gribbin, John; Gribbin, Mary. Richard Feynman:
A Life in Science. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94124-X. 
Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science
of Richard Feynman. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-40836-3.
OCLC 243743850. 
Henderson, Harry. Richard Feynman: Quarks,
Bombs, and Bongos. Chelsea House Publishers.
ISBN 9780816061761. 
Hey, Tony; Walters, Patrick. The quantum universe.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-31845-7. 
Hillis, W. Daniel. "Richard Feynman and The
Connection Machine". Physics Today 42: 78.
Bibcode:1989PhT....42b..78H. doi:10.1063/1.881196. 
Krauss, Lawrence M.. Quantum Man: Richard
Feynman's Life in Science. W.W. Norton & Company.
ISBN 0-393-06471-9. OCLC 601108916. 
Leighton, Ralph. Tuva Or Bust!:Richard Feynman's
last journey. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-32069-3. 
LeVine, Harry. The Great Explainer: The Story
of Richard Feynman. Greensboro, North Carolina:
Morgan Reynolds. ISBN 978-1-59935-113-1. 
Ottaviani, Jim; Myrick, Leland Sycamore, Hilary.
Feynman. New York: First Second. ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8. 
Schweber, Silvan S.. QED and the Men Who Made
It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga.
Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03327-7. 
Schwinger, Julian, ed.. Selected Papers on
Quantum Electrodynamics. Dover. ISBN 0-486-60444-6. 
Sykes, Christopher. No ordinary genius :
the illustrated Richard Feynman. New York:
W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-03621-9. 
Further reading
Articles
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.
Books
Brown, Laurie M. and Rigden, John S. Most
of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman
Simon and Schuster, New York, ISBN 0-88318-870-8.
Commentary by Joan Feynman, John Wheeler,
Hans Bethe, Julian Schwinger, Murray Gell-Mann,
Daniel Hillis, David Goodstein, Freeman Dyson,
and Laurie Brown
Dyson, Freeman Disturbing the Universe. Harper
and Row. 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
Gleick, James Genius: The Life and Science
of Richard Feynman. Pantheon. ISBN 0-679-74704-4
LeVine, Harry, III The Great Explainer: The
Story of Richard Feynman Morgan Reynolds,
Greensboro, North Carolina, ISBN 978-1-59935-113-1;
for high school readers
Mehra, Jagdish The Beat of a Different Drum:
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Oxford
University Press. ISBN 0-19-853948-7
Gribbin, John and Gribbin, Mary Richard Feynman:
A Life in Science. Dutton, New York, ISBN
0-525-94124-X
Milburn, Gerard J. The Feynman Processor:
Quantum Entanglement and the Computing Revolution
Perseus Books, ISBN 0-7382-0173-1
Mlodinow, Leonard Feynman's Rainbow: A Search
For Beauty In Physics And In Life Warner Books.
ISBN 0-446-69251-4 Published in the United
Kingdom as Some Time With Feynman
Ottaviani, Jim and Myrick, Leland Feynman.
First Second. ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8 OCLC 664838951.
Films and plays
Infinity, a movie directed by Matthew Broderick
and starring Matthew Broderick as Feynman,
depicting Feynman's love affair with his first
wife and ending with the Trinity test. 1996.
Parnell, Peter "QED" Applause Books, ISBN
978-1-55783-592-5,.
Whittell, Crispin "Clever Dick" Oberon Books,
"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" A film
documentary autobiography of Richard Feynman,
Nobel laureate and theoretical physicist extraordinary.
1982, BBC TV ‘Horizon' and PBS ‘Nova'.
See Christopher Sykes Productions
"The Quest for Tannu Tuva" on YouTube, with
Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton. 1987,
BBC TV ‘Horizon' and PBS ‘Nova'
"No Ordinary Genius" A two-part documentary
about Feynman's life and work, with contributions
from colleagues, friends and family. 1993,
BBC TV ‘Horizon' and PBS ‘Nova'
The Challenger A BBC Two factual drama starring
William Hurt, tells the story of American
Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman’s
determination to reveal the truth behind the
1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster.
External links
Feynman's Google Scholar profile
Gallery of Drawings by Richard P. Feynman
Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from
the Office of Scientific and Technical Information,
United States Department of Energy
Richard Feynman at TED
Richard Feynman at the Internet Movie Database
Works by Richard Feynman on Open Library at
the Internet Archive
Richard 
Feynman collected news and commentary at The
New York Times
Richard Feynman collected news and commentary
at The Guardian
FOI Request FBI files on 
Richard 
Feynman 
at MuckRock.com
