"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

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When you have the world’s top theoretical physicist helming a book, what kind of a book would you expect it to be? Let me guess. A book filled with enthralling insights and learnings from his life and career? If you nodded your head yes, I am afraid you might be disappointed with Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. Feynman served as doctoral advisor to 30 students. [168] Case before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [ edit ] Gates, Bill. "The Best Teacher I Never Had". The Gates Notes. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016 . Retrieved January 29, 2016. Physics Today, American Institute of Physics magazine, February 1989 Issue. (Vol. 42, No. 2.) Special Feynman memorial issue containing non-technical articles on Feynman's life and work in physics.

After the war, Feynman takes a job as a professor at Cornell. He works and teaches there for several years before moving to CalTech. He decides CalTech is everything he ever wanted in a workplace and settles down there permanently. He establishes a reputation as a brilliant and accomplished physicist, and achieves worldwide recognition—including a Nobel prize in 1965. (However, the book tells us very little about the actual physics he does in his career).Feynman was not the only frustrated theoretical physicist in the early post-war years. Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in the theory, which Feynman and Wheeler had tried, unsuccessfully, to work around. [90] "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". [91] In June 1947, leading American physicists met at the Shelter Island Conference. For Feynman, it was his "first big conference with big men... I had never gone to one like this one in peacetime." [92] The problems plaguing quantum electrodynamics were discussed, but the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of the experimentalists, who reported the discovery of the Lamb shift, the measurement of the magnetic moment of the electron, and Robert Marshak's two-meson hypothesis. [93] Feynman, Richard P. (1953). "The λ-Transition in Liquid Helium". Physical Review. 90 (6): 1116–1117. Bibcode: 1953PhRv...90.1116F. doi: 10.1103/PhysRev.90.1116.2. Archived from the original on September 17, 2020 . Retrieved May 20, 2019.

Pines, David (1989). "Richard Feynman and Condensed Matter Physics". Physics Today. 42 (2): 61. Bibcode: 1989PhT....42b..61P. doi: 10.1063/1.881194. Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for 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 work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. 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 and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world. Hirshberg, Charles (April 18, 2002). "My Mother, the Scientist". Popular Science . Retrieved June 10, 2023. Peat, David (1997). Infinite Potential: the Life and Times of David Bohm. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-40635-7. OCLC 1014736570. Feynman had synesthesia, and said that mathematical symbols had different colors for him: "When I see equations, I see the letters in colors. I don't know why. I see vague pictures of Bessel functions with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around." [135]

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This book was a pure delight. The subtitle "Adventures of a Curious Character" is spot-on. Feynman gave an amazingly human and honest view into his philosophy and take on life, thought a series of stories. Feynman, Richard P. "Appendix F – Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle". Kennedy Space Center. Archived from the original on May 5, 2019 . Retrieved September 11, 2017. SAC (Special Agent in Charge ), Washington Field Office) (January 26, 1955). "FOI Request FBI files on Richard Feynman Requested by Michael Morisy on March 12, 2012 for the Federal Bureau of Investigation of United States of America and fulfilled on March 21, 2012". p.1(324) . Retrieved June 10, 2023. Way, Michael (2017). "What I cannot create, I do not understand". Journal of Cell Science. 130 (18): 2941–2942. doi: 10.1242/jcs.209791. ISSN 1477-9137. PMID 28916552. S2CID 36379246. Feynman, Richard P. (2000). Hey, Tony; Allen, Robin W. (eds.). Feynman Lectures on Computation. Perseus Books Group. ISBN 0-7382-0296-7. Computer science also differs from physics in that it is not actually a science. It does not study natural objects. Neither is it, as you might think, mathematics; although it does use mathematical reasoning pretty extensively. Rather, computer science is like engineering – it is all about getting something to do something, rather than just dealing with abstractions .

Feynman, Richard. "Richard Feynman's Poignant Letter to His Departed Wife Arline: Watch Actor Oscar Isaac Read It Live Onstage". OpenCulture . Retrieved June 10, 2023. I can't still blame a reader if they felt what I described above, as I also felt the same in some parts of this book. There are innumerable positives in this book that will cancel all the above negatives easily. Rasmussen, Cecilia (June 5, 2005). "History Exhumed Via Computer Chip". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved June 10, 2023. Near the end of his life, Feynman attempted to visit the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the Soviet Union, 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 made the journey. [195]

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Full Details

Rieffel, Eleanor G.; Polak, Wolfgang H. (March 4, 2011). Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction. MIT Press. p.44. ISBN 978-0-262-01506-6. Feynman, Richard P. (1987). Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34000-4. Cohen, M.; Feynman, Richard P. (1957). "Theory of Inelastic Scattering of Cold Neutrons from Liquid Helium". Physical Review. 107 (1): 13–24. Bibcode: 1957PhRv..107...13C. doi: 10.1103/PhysRev.107.13. Archived from the original on September 14, 2020 . Retrieved May 20, 2019. This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three... there may now have been 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 in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others. [42] Feynman wrote about his experiences teaching physics undergraduates in Brazil. The students' studying habits and the Portuguese language textbooks were so devoid of any context or applications for their information that, in Feynman's opinion, the students were not learning physics at all. At the end of the year, Feynman was invited to give a lecture on his teaching experiences, and he agreed to do so, provided he could speak frankly, which he did. [161] [162]

Richard Phillips Feynman ( / ˈ f aɪ n m ə n/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. Gribbin, John; Gribbin, Mary (1997). Richard Feynman: A Life in Science. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94124-X. OCLC 636838499. Feynman, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams. [44] In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's degree [36] and was named a Putnam Fellow. [37] He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in physics—an unprecedented feat—and an outstanding score in mathematics, but did poorly on the history and English portions. The head of the physics department there, Henry D. Smyth, had another concern, writing to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no definite rule against Jews but have to keep their proportion in our department reasonably small because of the difficulty of placing them." [38] Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and manner, however, show no trace of this characteristic". [38] Mehra, J. (2002). "Richard Phillips Feynman 11 May 1918– 15 February 1988". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 48: 97–128. doi: 10.1098/rsbm.2002.0007. S2CID 62221940.a b c "Richard P. Feynman – Biographical". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on July 1, 2006 . Retrieved April 23, 2013. Feynman, R. P. (August 1939). "Forces in Molecules". Physical Review. American Physical Society. 56 (4): 340–343. Bibcode: 1939PhRv...56..340F. doi: 10.1103/PhysRev.56.340. S2CID 121972425. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020 . Retrieved May 20, 2019. Feynman, Richard P. (1987). Leighton, Ralph (ed.). "Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington". Engineering and Science. Caltech. 51 (1): 6–22. ISSN 0013-7812. Miller, Anthony (March 13, 2013). "Big Bang Theory: Sheldon's Top 5 Moments". Los Angeles Magazine . Retrieved June 10, 2023. The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection, selections from which were also released as Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces