Richard P. Feynman
Richard P. Feynman was (and is) a hero to me, as he was (and is) to
physics students and colleagues around the world. When he died on
February 15th, 1988, the world lost one of the finest theoretical
physicist and one of the finest teachers of the 20th century.
Hans Bethe of Cornell University, paraphrasing the mathematician Mark
Kac, said there are two kinds of geniuses. The ordinary kind does great
things but lets other scientists feel that they could do the same if
only they worked hard enough. The other kind performs magic. "A magician
does things that nobody else can do and that seem completely
unexpected," Dr. Bethe said, "and that's Feynman."
To his scientific colleagues, Richard Feynman was a magician of the
highest caliber. Architect of quantum theories, 'enfant terrible' of the
atomic bomb project, caustic critic of the space shuttle commission,
Nobel Prize winner for work that gave physicists a new and easier way of
describing and calculating the interactions of subatomic particles,
Richard Feynman left his mark on virtually every area of modern physics.
Originality was his obsession. Never content with what he knew or with
what others knew, Feynman ceaselessly questioned scientific truths. But
there was another side to him, one which made him a legendary figure
among scientists. His curiosity moved well beyond things scientific: he
taught himself how to play drums, to give massages, to write Chinese, to
crack safes.
Because almost all Feynman's work originated with the spoken word, and
because its publication took so many shapes, formal and informal, no
final bibliography will ever be compiled. Neither Feynman nor Caltech
Libraries maintain more than a partial listing. Some lectures were
published repeatedly, in journals and collections, in versions that very
slightly or not at all. Others exist only in the form of Feynman's notes
before the fact, a student's handwritten notes after the fact, a
university preprint, a typed transcript, an edited or unedited
conference proceeding, a file on a computer disk, or a videotape or
audiotape. Some manuscripts are virtually intact and publishable; others
are no more than notes on a placemat; and in between is an unbroken
continuum.
What I, as reviewer, attempt to do here is introduce you, the reader, to
some of the writings by and about Feynman that have become a part of my
life.
THE THEORY OF FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES are notes on a special series of
lectures that Feynman gave during a visit to Cornell University in 1958.
Feynman's first academic position was as Professor at Cornell in the
Fall of 1945. He later moved to Caltech, so this was a visit to his old
institution in 1958.
Feynman: "That part of physics that we do understand today
(electrodynamics, beta-decay, isotropic spin rules, strangeness) has a
kind of simplicity which is often lost in the complex formulations
believed to be necessary to ultimately understand the dynamics of strong
interactions. To prepare oneself to be the theoretical physicist who
will some day find the key to these strong interactions, it might be
thought that a full knowledge of all these complicated formulations
would be necessary. That may be so, but the exact opposite may also be
so; it may be necessary to stay away from the corners where everyone
else has already worked unsuccessfully. In any event, it is always a
good idea to try analysis of those situations which have been
experimentally checked. This is necessary to get a clearer idea of what
is essential in our present knowledge and what can be changed without
serious conflict with experiments".
THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS, Vols. I, II, III, were written as
undergraduate texts, and though contain plenty of math, are an absolute
joy to read. Feynman was known to be a brilliant physicist, and a
brilliant teacher. Feynman wrote in his preface, "The lectures here are
not in any way meant to be a survey course, but are very serious. I
thought to address them to the most intelligent in the class and to make
sure, if possible, that even the most intelligent [freshman] student was
unable to completely encompass everything that was in the lectures--by
putting in suggestions of applications of the ideas and concepts in
various directions outside the main line of attack. For this reason,
though, I tried very hard to make all the statements as accurate as
possible, to point out in every case where the equations and ideas
fitted into the body of physics, and how--when they learned more--things
would be modified. I also felt that for such students it is important to
indicate what it is that they should--if they are sufficiently
clever--be able to understand by deduction from what has been said
before, and what is being put in as something new. When [new] ideas came
in, I would try either to deduce them if they were deducible, or to
explain that it was a new idea which hadn't any basis in terms of things
they had already learned and which was not supposed to be provable--but
was just added in".
Feynman was pessimistic about the success of his course, yet these
lectures have become classics. He did not think he had done well by the
students. Feynman continues in his preface, "I think, however, that
there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to
realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct
individual relationship between a student and a good teacher--a
situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the
things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much
by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that
are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach
that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal. Perhaps my
lectures can make some contribution. Perhaps in some small place where
there are individual teachers and students, they may get some
inspiration or some ideas from the lectures. Perhaps they will have fun
thinking them through--or going on to develop some of the ideas
further".
The seven chapters which make up Feynman's THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW
were lectures presented as the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University
in 1964. They were delivered to an audience of students who wished to
know in general terms more about 'The Character of Physical Law'. These
lectures were not given from a prepared manuscript, but were delivered
extempore from a few notes. This book is a transcript of those lectures
made by the BBC Science and Features Department. The subject matter is
described by the chapter titles:
1. The Law of Gravitation, an example of Physical Law
2. The Relation of Mathematics to Physics
3. The Great Conservation Principles
4. Symmetry in Physical Law
5. The Distinction of Past and Future
6. Probability and Uncertainty - the Quantum Mechanical view of
Nature
7. Seeking New Laws
It is truly a delight to read "SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" -
ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER. And like a book on tape that you can
listen to over and over, one tends to read Feynman's stories over and
over bringing inspiration and a smile each time read. Richard P. Feynman
solved the mystery of liquid helium. He also painted a Roman slave girl
for a massage parlor, played a skillful frigideira in a Brazilian samba
band, and accompanied ballet on the bongo drums. He was judged both
mentally deficient by a United States Army psychiatrist and worthy of
the Nobel Prize for physics by the Swedish Academy. If a more curious
character ever walked the halls of science, he or she never wrote a
book.
"SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" is based on taped conversations
with his friend and drumming partner, Ralph Leighton. As befits a great
teacher and storyteller, little was changed from Feynman's spoken words.
His unique mixture of intelligence, curiosity, skepticism, and chutzpah
comes off the page as vibrantly as if her were in the room. Ralph
Leighton writes in his short preface, "The stories in this book were
collected intermittently and informally during seven years of very
enjoyable drumming with Richard Feynman. I have found each story by
itself to be amusing, and the collection taken together to be amazing:
That one person could have so many wonderfully crazy things happen to
him in one life is sometimes hard to believe. That one person could
invent so much innocent mischief in one life is surely an inspiration"!
QED: THE STRANGE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER is the text and diagrams
from four lectures Feynman gave for the general public with the clarity,
accuracy, and completeness that have made his lectures famous. Assuming
little scientific background of his readers, he describes the
interactions of light and electrons--absurd, he points out, from the
point of view of common sense, yet underlying almost everything we
observe in the physical world. QED stands for the forbiddingly named
theory of quantum electrodynamics.
This book is a venture that, in all probability, was never previously
tried--a straightforward, honest explanation of a rather difficult
subject for a nontechnical audience. It is designed to give the
interested reader an appreciation for the kind of thinking that
physicists have resorted to in order to explain how Nature behaves.
As a boy, Richard Feynman was inspired to study calculus from a book
that began, "What one fool can do, another can." He dedicated QED to his
readers with similar words: "What one fool can understand, another can."
John C. Taylor writes in the forward to ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE
LAWS OF PHYSICS The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, "Paul Dirac was one of
the finest physicists of this century. The development of quantum
mechanics began at the turn of the century, but it was Dirac who in
1925-26, brought the subject to its definitive form, creating a theory
as compelling as Newton's mechanics had been.
"Dirac immediately set about reconciling the quantum theory with
Einstein's special theory of relativity (of 1905). The nature of the
marriage between these two marvelous theories, and the fruits of that
union, have been the constant preoccupation of fundamental physics from
1925 to the present day. Dirac contributed more than anyone else to this
crucial enterprise, including in 1930 the prediction of the existence of
antimatter.
"Dirac died in 1984, and St John's College, Cambridge (Dirac's college),
very generously endowed an annual lecture to be held a Cambridge
University in Dirac's memory. The first two Dirac Lectures, printed in
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, are contrasting variations
on Dirac's theme of the union of quantum theory and relativity.
"Richard Feynman, in the years since the Second World War, did more than
anyone else to evolve Dirac's relativistic quantum theory into a general
and powerful method of making physical predictions about the
interactions of particles and radiation. His work complements Dirac's in
a remarkable way. His style of doing physics has been vastly
influential. His lecture here, which gives some flavour of that style,
expounds the physical reality underlying Dirac's prediction of
antimatter.
"The crowning achievement to date of the relativistic quantum theory has
been the unification of electricity and magnetism on the one hand
(themselves unified by Maxwell a century ago) with the the weak forces
of radioactive decay on the other. Steven Weinberg is one of the chief
authors of this unification, in work which predicted the existence and
properties of new particles (weighing as much as heavy atoms), which
were subsequently triumphantly produced, precisely as predicted, at the
European laboratory CERN in Geneva in 1983. This echoed Dirac's
prediction, half a century earlier, of the positron and its subsequent
discovery, though the energy necessary to produce a positron was 100 000
times less.
"In his lecture, Weinberg shows how tightly quantum theory and
relativity together constrain the laws of Nature, and he speculates how
Einstein's theory of gravitation (of 1915) will be reconciled with
quantum theory.
"We in Cambridge were fortunate that these two leading physicists agreed
to commemorate Dirac by coming to lecture here. They drew audiences of
several hundred undergraduates and and graduates, some of them
physicists, some not. Both Feynman and Weinberg have been concerned to
explain physics to nonspecialists, and we hope that this volume too will
interest a wide readership.
"Dirac stated his philosophy of physics in the sentence 'physical laws
should have mathematical beauty. Dirac, Feynman and Weinberg have each
made beautiful theories which have been spectacularly upheld in
experimental tests. But the experiment, outside the scope of these
Lectures, are another story".
"WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?" - FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A
CURIOUS CHARACTER is a bit more serious that its predecessor. Ralph
Leighton explains, "BECAUSE of the appearance of 'SURELY YOU'RE JOKING,
MR. FEYNMAN!' a few things need to be explained here.
"First, although the central character in this book is the same as
before, the 'adventures of a curious character' here are different: some
are light and some tragic, but most of the time Mr. Feynman is surely
not joking--although it's often hard to tell.
"Second, the stories in this book fit together more loosely than those
in 'SURELY YOU'RE JOKING...,' where they were arranged chronologically
to give a semblance of order. (That resulted in some readers getting the
mistaken idea that SYJ is an autobiography.) My motivation is simple:
ever since hearing my first Feynman stories, I have had the powerful
desire to share them with others.
"Finally, most of these stories were not told at drumming sessions, as
before. I will elaborate on this in the brief outline that follows.
"Part 1, 'A Curious Character.' begins by describing the influence of
those who most shaped Feynman's personality--his father, Mel, and his
first love, Arlene. The first story was adapted from 'The Pleasure of
Finding Things Out,' a BBC program [aired on PBS's NOVA series] produced
by Christopher Sykes. The story of Arlene, from which the title of this
book was taken, was painful for Feynman to recount. It was assembled
over the past ten years out of pieces from six different stories. When
it was finally complete, Feynman was especially fond of this story, and
happy to share it with others.
"The other Feynman stories in Part 1, although generally lighter in
tone, are included here because there won't be a second volume of SYJ.
Feynman was particularly proud of 'It's as Simple as One, Two, Three,"
which he occasionally thought of writing up as a psychology paper. The
letters in the last chapter of Part 1 have been provided courtesy of
Gweneth Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and Henry Bethe.
"Part 2, 'Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington,' is, unfortunately, Feynman's
last big adventure. The story is particularly long because its content
is still timely. (Shorter versions have appeared in ENGINEERING AND
SCIENCE and PHYSICS TODAY.) It was not published sooner because Feynman
underwent his third and fourth major surgeries--plus radiation,
hyperthermia, and other treatments--since serving on the Rogers
Commission [which investigated the Challenger accident].
"Feynman's decade-long battle against cancer ended on February 15, 1988,
two weeks after he taught his last class at Caltech. I decided to
include one of the most eloquent and inspirational speeches, 'The Value
of Science,' as an epilogue".
TUVA OR BUST! RICHARD FEYNMAN'S LAST JOURNEY was also aired on PBS's
NOVA series.
"So you think you know every county in the world?" The mischievous voice
was that of Richard Feynman, world-renowned physicist and prankster par
excellence.
"Uh, sure," answered Ralph Leighton, Feynman's sidekick, fellow drummer,
and geography enthusiast. The scene was the Feynman's dinner table; the
year. 1977.
"Okay," Feynman went on, "then whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?"
"Tannu what? I never heard of it, " replied Ralph. "There is no such
country."
"When I was a kid," Richard continued, "I used to collect stamps. There
were some wonderful triangular and diamond-shaped stamps that came from
a place called Tannu Tuva. In the 1930's it was a purple splotch on the
map near Outer Mongolia, but I've never heard anything about it ever
since."
Still doubtful, Leighton followed Feynman to his favorite book, the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, looking for Tuva. There it was, a notch in
northwest Mongolia, masquerading as the Tuvinskaya ASSR, deep in the
heart of Asia, isolated and inaccessible.
"Look at this!" exclaimed Richard. "Its capital is Kyzyl. A place that's
spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L has just got to be interesting." Feynman and Leighton
grinned and shook hands. Each knew what the other was thinking: We will
go to Tuva together!
During their decade-long quest to reach Tannu Tuva, Richard Feynman
struggled with recurring bouts of cancer and with NASA bureaucracy as a
member of the Rogers Commission investigating the space shuttle
Challenger disaster. His protege often had to make forays into the
unknown without him. TUVA OR BUST! chronicles the deepening friendship
of two zany strategists whose laughter, love of the absurd, and sense of
the utter gravity of fun is infectious. The journey to Tuva was Richard
Feynman's last adventure, a journey of the mind and spirit. One could
have no better guide and companion.
News of Feynman's death was slow to reach Moscow. In early March Gweneth
received a letter dated February 19, 1988. The letterhead was adorned
with two busts of Lenin. The text said:
Dear Professor R. P. Feynman,
I have the great pleasure to invite you, your wife, and four
of your colleagues to visit the Soviet Union as the guests of the
USSR Academy of Sciences.
I was informed by the corresponding member of the USSR
Academy of Sciences, Prof. A. P. Kapitsa, that you would like
to visit Tuva ASSR and get acquainted with its sightseeings.
We consider the most favourable time for such a trip to be the
period of May and June of this year. Your trip will take three
to four weeks.
I hope that during your tour you will have time to meet
Soviet colleagues in Novosibirsk and Moscow who know your
activities and works and, undoubtedly, will be very pleased to
meet you.
Kindly note that the USSR Academy of Sciences will cover
expenses on your and your colleagues' staying in the USSR.
Yours sincerely,
Academician E. P. Velikhov
In GENIUS - THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN, James
Gleick, author of the acclaimed best-seller CHAOS, shows us a
Feynman few have seen. He penetrates beyond the gleeful showman
depicted in Feynman's own memoirs and reveals a darker Feynman:
his ambition, his periods of despair and uncertainty, his intense
emotional nature. Gleick explores the nature of genius, our
obsession with it and why the very idea may belong to another
time. GENIUS records the life of a scientist who has forever
changed science--and changed what it means to know something in
this uncertain century.
Gleick writes, "Feynman resented the polished myths of most scientific
history, but when he had ascended to the top of the physicists' mental
pantheon of heroes, he had created a myth of his own. The reputation,
apart from the person, became an edifice standing monumentally amid the
rest of the scenery of modern science. Feynman diagrams, Feynman
integrals, and Feynman rules joined Feynman stories in the language that
physicists share. They would say of a promising young colleague, 'He's
no Feynman, but...' When he entered a room where physicists had
gathered--the student cafeteria at the California Institute of
Technology, or the auditorium at any scientific meeting--with him would
come a shift in the noise level, a disturbance of the field that seemed
to radiate from where he was carrying his tray or taking his front-row
seat. Even his senior colleagues tried to look without looking. Younger
physicists were drawn to Feynman's rough glamour. They practiced
imitating his handwriting and his manner of throwing equations onto the
blackboard. One group held a half-serious debate on the question Is
Feynman human? They envied the inspiration that came (so it seemed to
them) in flashes. They admired him for other qualities as well: a faith
in nature's simple truths, a skepticism about official wisdom, and an
impatience with mediocrity.
"After he died several colleagues tried to write his epitaph. One was
Julian Schwinger, in a certain time not just his colleague but his
pre-eminent rival, who chose these words: 'An honest man, the
outstanding intuitionist of our age, and a prime example of what may lie
in store for anyone who dares to follow the beat of a different drum.'"
-S. Wormley
THE THEORY OF FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES
by Richard P. Feynman
Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1987
(1963) 61-18180
ISBN 0-8053-2507
THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS
Vol. I - Mainly Mechanics, Radiation and Heat
Vol. II - Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter
Vol. III - Quantum Mechanics
by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands
Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1963
63-20717
THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW
by Richard P. Feynman
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1965
67-14527
ISBN 0 262 56003 8 (pbk)
"SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" - ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER
by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton
edited by Edward Hutchings
Norton, New York 1985 Bantom, New York 1989
QC16.F49A3 1989 530'.092'4 [B] 88-47879
ISBN 0553 34668-7 (pbk)
QED: THE STRANGE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER
by Richard P. Feynman
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1985
ISBN 0-691-08388-6
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS
The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures
by Richard P. Feynman and Steven Weinberg
Lecture notes compiled by Richard MacKenzie and Paul Doust
Forward by John C. Taylor Cambridge University Press , New York 1987
QC793.28F49 1987 539.7'21--dc19
ISBN 0 521 340004
"WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?" - FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A
CURIOUS CHARACTER
by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton
Norton, New York 1988
TUVA OR BUST! RICHARD FEYNMAN'S LAST JOURNEY
by Ralph Leighton
Norton, New York 1991
QC16.F49L45 1991 957.5--dc20 90-42206
ISBN 0-393-02953-0
GENIUS - THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN
by James Gleick
Pantheon Books, New York 1992
QC16.F49G54 1992 530'.092--dc20 [B] 92-6577
ISBN 0-679-40836-3