|  Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 in Queens, New York – February 15, 1988 in Los Angeles, California) (surname pronounced FINE-man; /'fa?nm?n/ in IPA) 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 [1], 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".
Contents
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* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Education
o 1.2 The Manhattan Project
o 1.3 Early career: Cornell University
o 1.4 The Caltech years
o 1.5 Personal life
o 1.6 Feynman's later years
* 2 Commemorations
* 3 Miscellany
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
o 5.1 Popular works by and about Feynman
o 5.2 Audio recordings
o 5.3 Video recordings
* 6 Quotations
o 6.1 Quotations about Feynman
* 7 See also
* 8 External links
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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. Feynman (as was true of other famous physicists such as Edward Teller and Albert Einstein) was a late-talker who, by his third birthday, had yet to utter a single word- though his later pluck and inquisitiveness would seem to bely this. 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. His sister Joan also became a professional physicist. 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 (a mathematical operator, which when applied twice in succession, resulted in the derivative of a function), 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?" (referring to an anatomical chart). When he spoke, it was with clarity.
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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 (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler-Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau - but few others. — 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[1]. 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's name is often spelled Arlene). Arline was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a terminal illness at that time, but she and Feynman were careful, and he never contracted the disease.
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The Manhattan Project
Feynman (center) with Robert Oppenheimer (right) relaxing at a Los Alamos social function during the top-secret Manhattan Project.
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Feynman (center) with Robert Oppenheimer (right) relaxing at a Los Alamos social function during the top-secret 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. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's theoretical division, and impressed Bethe enough to be made a group leader. Together with Bethe, he developed the Bethe-Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon a previous calculation done by Robert Serber. 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 (so that inadvertent criticality accidents, e.g. by storing individually subcritical amounts of fissile material in proximity on opposite sides of a wall, could be avoided). 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.
Feynman's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.
Feynman's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.
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 phy
Related Resources: filing cabinets, work desks, personal care
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