Richard Feynman
(physicist)
Richard Feynman was a somewhat eccentric scientist who had interests such as JugglingJuggling
and lockpicking safes. He worked on the atom bomb in Los Alamos, won a Nobel prize, wrote some acclaimed physics textbooks, and finally also wrote some great non-fiction books about his life.
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
Started reading What Do You Care What Other People Think by Feynman. I’m not sure if I’ve read this one, probably not, but some parts feel familiar so I’ve at least seen them quoted. The book Surely You Are Joking I have read for certain.
I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention—it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature. Any word can be spelled just as well a different way. I was impatient with all this English stuff.
My father was horrified, because from the earliest times, as he saw me develop, he thought I would be happy as a scientist. He thought it was still too early to marry—it would interfere with my career. He also had this crazy idea: if a guy was in some difficulty, he used to always say, “Cherchez la femme”—look for the woman behind it. He felt that women were the great danger to a man, that a man always has to watch out and be tough about women.
One time, near the beginning of May, newspapers mysteriously appeared in almost everybody’s mailbox at Los Alamos. The whole damn place was full of them—hundreds of newspapers. You know the kind—you open it up and there’s this headline screaming in thick letters across the front page: ENTIRE NATION CELEBRATES BIRTHDAY OF R.P. FEYNMAN!
I had arranged ahead of time with a friend of mine at Los Alamos, Klaus Fuchs, to borrow his car in case of an emergency, so I could get to Albuquerque quickly. I picked up a couple of hitchhikers to help me in case something happened on the way. Sure enough, as we were driving into Santa Fe, we got a flat tire. The hitchhikers helped me change the tire. Then on the other side of Santa Fe, the spare tire went flat, but there was a gas station nearby. I remember waiting patiently for the gas station man to take care of some other car, when the two hitchhikers, knowing the situation, went over and explained to the man what it was. He fixed the flat right away. We decided not to get the spare tire fixed, because repairing it would have taken even more time. We started out again towards Albuquerque, and I felt foolish that I hadn’t thought to say anything to the gas station man when time was so precious. About thirty miles from Albuquerque, we got another flat! We had to abandon the car, and we hitchhiked the rest of the way. I called up a towing company and told them the situation.
About speaking while mentally counting the seconds:
We talked about it a while, and we discovered something. It turned out that Tukey was counting in a different way: he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by. He would say, “Mary had a little lamb,” and he would watch it! Well, now it was clear: he’s “looking” at his tape going by, so he can’t read, and I’m “talking” to myself when I’m counting, so I can’t speak!”
Heh, I also think I count time visually like that and just tried out: I can talk while visualizing the time (not very well) but while reading my eyes follow the lines and I can’t seem to hold a mental image of the time.
After that discovery, I tried to figure out a way of reading out loud while counting—something neither of us could do. I figured I’d have to use a part of my brain that wouldn’t interfere with the seeing or speaking departments, so I decided to use my fingers, since that involved the sense of touch. I soon succeeded in counting with my fingers and reading out loud. But I wanted the whole process to be mental, and not rely on any physical activity. So I tried to imagine the feeling of my fingers moving while I was reading out loud. I never succeeded. I figured that was because I hadn’t practiced enough, but it might be impossible: I’ve never met anybody who can do it. By that experience Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people’s heads when they think they’re doing the same thing—something as simple as counting—is different for different people.
Richard Feynman I have read so much about Feynman before, but there’s a lot of parts in the Wikipedia article that look new to me.
He created special symbols for logarithm, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the derivative, to remove the temptation of canceling out the d’s.
Vallarta let his student in on a secret of mentor-protégé publishing: the senior scientist’s name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a few years later, when Heisenberg concluded an entire book on cosmic rays with the phrase: “such an effect is not to be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman.” When they next met, Feynman asked gleefully whether Vallarta had seen Heisenberg’s book. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. “Yes,” he replied. “You’re the last word in cosmic rays.”
Feynman’s $380 monthly salary was about half the amount needed for his modest living expenses and Arline’s medical bills, and they were forced to dip into her $3,300 in savings. On weekends he drove to Albuquerque to see Arline in a car borrowed from his friend Klaus Fuchs. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely to be a spy, Fuchs mentioned Feynman’s safe cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself later confessed to spying for the Soviet Union.
In a talk given there several years later, Feynman quipped, “It’s great to be back at the only university that ever had the good sense to fire me.”
By 1949, Feynman was becoming restless at Cornell. He never settled into a particular house or apartment, living in guest houses or student residences, or with married friends “until these arrangements became sexually volatile.” He liked to date undergraduates, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of friends.
I do not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist or very strongly pro-Communist—and as such as [sic] a very definite security risk. This man is, in my opinion, an extremely complex and dangerous person, a very dangerous person to have in a position of public trust ... In matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, I further believe, completely ruthless, unhampered by morals, ethics, or religion—and will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his ends.
[Feynman] was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his effort generating anecdotes about himself.
http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm Reminder that this talk/article by Feynman is great.
[EKWGGDXe5MA] “Richard Feynman Computer Heuristics Lecture”. I’ve read quite a lot of Feynman’s writings, but not sure if I had watched any of his presentations before.