— Adventures
of a Curious Character
“Darling
how can I show you how much you mean to me when we’re miles apart! If
only tomorrow would hurry and come—I want to feel your warm cheek pressed close
to mine and your tender embrace—your nearness fills me with such content!”
—
Arline Greenbaum’s letter to to Richard Phillips Feynman,
26 March 1943.
Richard
Phillips Feynman was all ordinary people and all buffoon. The deep thinking and
the joyful clowning were not separate parts of a split personality: he did not
do his thinking in morning and his clowning in evening, he was thinking and
clowning simultaneously.
Richard
Feynman was born at 11 May 1918 in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York City. He grew
up with inquiry activities dealing mathematical training. Later, he move beyond
specialized boundaries.
In
the International Phonetic Alphabet his surname is rendered [ˈfaɪnmən], the first
syllable sounding like “fine”, but some part of his self was “faint”. From this faint, Richard Feynman or Richard
Faint-Man, began tackling physics problems, not for utility, but for
self-satisfaction which he won the Nobel Prize.
Nobel
Prize in Physics recognition of Richard Feynman’s work came in 1965, jointly with Julian Seymour
Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, for their fundamental work in quantum
electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary
particles.
Outside
from Nobel Prize, Richard Feynman was one of the first people to study quantum
physics. He added significantly to a branch of science called quantum
electrodynamics and invented the ‘Feynman diagram’. Richard Feynman was, also,
part of the Manhattan Project team that made the atomic bomb. This project gave
impact to Indonesia and South Korea!
In
the 1960s, Richard Feynman began thinking of writing an autobiography, and he
began granting interviews to historians. In the 1980s, working with Ralph
Leighton (Robert Benjamin Leighton's son), he recorded chapters on audio tape
that Ralph transcribed. The book was published in 1985 as Surely You're
Joking, Mr. Feynman!.
The
publication of the book brought a new wave of protest about Richard Feynman’s
attitude toward women. There had been protests over his alleged sexism in 1968,
and again in 1972. It did not help that Jenijoy La Belle, who had been hired
as Caltech's first female professor in 1969, was refused tenure in 1974.
Jenijoy
La Belle filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which
ruled against Caltech in 1977, adding that she had been paid less than male
colleagues. Jenijoy La Belle finally received tenure in 1979. Many of Richard
Feynman’s colleagues were surprised that he took her side. He had got to know
Jenijoy La Belle and both liked and admired her.
Murray
Gell-Mann was upset by Richard Feynman’s account in the book of the weak
interaction work, and threatened to sue, resulting in a correction being
inserted in later editions. This incident was just the latest provocation in
decades of bad feeling between the two scientists.
Murray
Gell-Mann often expressed frustration at the attention Richard Feynman received; he remarked:
“[Richard Feynman] was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his
effort generating anecdotes about himself.” He noted that Richard Feynman’s
eccentricities included a refusal to brush his teeth, which he advised others
not to do on national television, despite dentists showing him scientific
studies that supported the practice.
Richard
Feynman died of liposarcoma at 15 February 1988 in Los Angeles, California. His
burial was at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena. His last words
were, “I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.”
Surely
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is one of my lovely book. This book
include pieces that are obviously transcripts of interviews and conversations
which have been edited to minimize the difference between the spoken and the
written word. Truly it’s a pleasure to read, yet they contain enough signals
and cues of casual verbal expression to reveal that his role wassometimes not
to write, but to talk.
Richard
Feynman’s colorful books about him apparently used copy editors to good effect
to shape the man’s spoken words into a text forhis reader-consumers. Itz seemz he
don’t speak writable English. Surely I’m not-so-joking, to suggesting this
book. Nolza!
Story
Listing
Part
1: From Far Rockaway to MIT
Part
2: The Princeton Years
Part
3: Feynman, the Bomb, and the Military
Part
4: From Cornell to Caltech, With a Touch of Brazil
Part
5: The World of One Physicist