Richard Feynmann

Richard Phillips Feynman (Queens, New York, May 11, 1918-Los Angeles, California, February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist known for his work on the formulation by path integrals in quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of subcooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics, a field in which he proposed the Parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, along with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

He developed a set of widely used pictorial representation schemes for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 survey by the British magazine Physics World, of the top 130 physicists from around the world cited, Feynman was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.

He helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the group that investigated the space shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman did research with pioneers in the field of quantum computing, and introduced the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard Chace Tolman Chair in Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Feynman was an enthusiastic popularizer of physics through books and lectures, including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (There's plenty of room in the back), and the three-volume publication of his lectures for undergraduates, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Are you kidding, Mr. Feynman?) and What Do You Care What Other People Think?. There are also books written about him such as Tuva or Bust! and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick.

Early Years

Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York, the son of Lucille Phillips, a homemaker, and Arthur Melville Feynman, a sales manager. His family was originally from Russia and Poland.. His parents were Ashkenazi Jews although they were not religious. In his youth, Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist". He also stated that "To select, for the approval of the peculiar elements that supposedly come from Jewish heritage, is to open the door to all sorts of nonsense in the racial theory", adding that "... at the age of thirteen I not only converted to other religious views, but also had stopped believing that the Jewish people were, in any way, 'the chosen people' ». Later in his life, during a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary, he commented on the Talmud that despite being impressed, he was disappointed with the lack of interest in nature and the outside world expressed by the rabbis, whom only they cared about the questions that arise from said work.

Feynman was slow to start speaking; at 3 years old he didn't utter a single word. He retained his Bronx accent well into adulthood. That accent was thick enough to be perceived as forced or exaggerated. So much so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe would one day make the comment that Feynman spoke like a "bum." ».

The young Feynman was strongly influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions that challenged orthodox thought, and was always willing to teach Feynman something new. From his mother he acquired the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. When he was young, he had a talent for engineering; he maintained an experimental laboratory in his house and enjoyed repairing radios. When he was in elementary school, he created a home burglar alarm system while his parents were away working.

When Richard was 5 years old, his mother gave birth to a brother, who died at four weeks of age. Four years later Joan was born and the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens. Although they were nine years apart, Joan and Richard were close, sharing a natural curiosity about the world. His mother thought that women did not have the mental capacity to understand such things. Although her mother disapproved of Joan's desire to study astronomy, Richard encouraged her. After a while Joan became an astrophysicist specializing in the interactions between the Earth and the solar wind.

Education

Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, a school in Far Rockaway, Queens, which was also attended by Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Starting high school, Feynman was quickly transferred to a math class high level An IQ test at school estimated his IQ at 123 — high, but "merely respectable" — according to biographer James Gleick.

At the age of 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and differential and integral calculus.^{[citation needed]} Before entering college college, he liked to experiment with mathematics, even going so far as to develop mathematical concepts such as the derived mean using his own notation. He created special symbols for the functions logarithm, sine, cosine, and tangent so that they would not look like three variables multiplied together. He also invented a new notation for the derivative.

His habit of direct characterization shocked more conventional thinkers several times; for example, one of his questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart).

As a member of the Arista Honor Society, as a senior in high school, Feynman won the New York University Mathematics Championship; the large difference between his scores and those of his competitors surprised the judges.

He attempted to enroll at Columbia University, but was not accepted due to exceeding the quota for the number of Jews admitted. Instead, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1939.

She achieved a perfect score on the Princeton University graduate school entrance exams in mathematics and physics, an unprecedented feat; however, she scored low on the history and English parts. Attendees at Feynman's first seminar included 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, entitled The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics, applies the principle of least action to problems in quantum mechanics, inspired by the desire to quantize the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory. on electrodynamics, laying the foundations for the formulation using path integrals and Feynman diagrams.

This was Richard Feynman near the top of his powers. At the age of twenty-three, there may be no other physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command in the native materials of theoretical science. It had not only a facility for mathematics (although it had become clear... that the mathematical machinery that arose from the collaboration Wheeler-Feynman, went beyond the capacity of Wheeler himself). Feynman seemed to possess a terrifying ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, or Soviet physicist Lev Landau, but few others.

—James Gleick Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Manhattan Project

Feynman (center) with Robert Oppenheimer (right), in Los Alamos, Manhattan Project

At Princeton, physicist Robert R. Wilson encouraged Feynman to participate in the Manhattan Project, a US military project developed at Los Alamos during World War II to make the atomic bomb. Feynman said that what made him decide to join this effort was to build it before Nazi Germany developed its own bomb. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's theoretical division and impressed Bethe enough that he commissioned him to lead a task force. He and Bethe developed the Bethe-Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, based on the previous work of Robert Serber.

He immersed himself in the work on the project, and was present at the Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without dark glasses or welder's goggles, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield as it filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation. Witnessing the explosion, Feynman crouched to the floor of his truck due to the immense brightness of the explosion, where he saw a trail of a "purple blob" in the aftermath of the explosion. temporary at the event.

As an assistant physicist, he was not central to the project. He coordinated the calculation group of the & # 39; human computers & # 39; in the theoretical division (one of his students there, John G. Kemeny, later co-designed and co-specified the BASIC programming language). Later, with Nicholas Metropolis, he helped establish IBM's system for using punched cards for calculation.

Feynman's other work at Los Alamos was the calculation of the neutron equations for the "Caldera" at Los Alamos, a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close a set of fissile material was to criticality. Upon completion of this job, he was transferred to the Oak Ridge facility, where he assisted engineers in designing safety procedures for material storage so that criticality accidents (for example, due to subcritical quantities of the fissile material inadvertently stored in proximity to opposite sides of a wall) could be avoided. He also did the theoretical work and calculations on the uranium hydride bomb proposal, which later turned out to be unfeasible.

Feynman was sought out by physicist Niels Bohr for face-to-face talks. The reason was later discovered: most other physicists were too afraid of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman did not have these limitations, forcefully pointing out anything he considered to be wrong in Bohr's thinking. Feynman said that he had as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but once someone got him talking about physics, he was so focused that he forgot about the social niceties.

The Los Alamos facility was isolated due to the top-secret nature of the project. In Feynman's own words, "There was nothing to do there." Bored, he dedicated himself to opening locks to show the vulnerabilities of security systems. They changed the padlocks to Mosler locks with 3 number combinations like 21-63-43. After much testing and study he discovered that he could discover the last two numbers when the lock was open. When he went to another person's office and the lock was open, he would inadvertently feel it to discover the last two numbers and write them down in a notebook. If he needed to open that lock the other day, he would consult his notebook and only needed a few minutes to discover the number that was missing. He also studied how to open some safes. One Sunday he went to the Oak Ridge uranium plant where in a meeting with a general they needed some documents that were inside a safe. They tried to call the secretary who knew the combination but was not reachable. Feynman asked permission to try to open it and opened it in 10 minutes.

Feynman pulled a lot of pranks on his peers. On one occasion he came across a locked filing cabinet combination trying to guess the numbers a physicist would use (which turned out to be 27-18-28 since it is the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828…), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept a set of research notes on the atomic bomb all had the same combination. He left a series of notes in the cabinets as a joke, which initially scared his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann., who believed that a spy or saboteur had gained access to the secrets of the atomic bomb.

On several occasions, Feynman drove to Albuquerque to see his ailing wife in a car borrowed from Klaus Fuchs, who was later discovered to be a genuine spy for the Soviets transporting nuclear secrets in his car to Santa Fe.

On one occasion, Feynman found a secluded area of the Mesa where he could play in the style of the Native American drum; "And maybe I'd like to dance and sing, a little bit." This did not go unnoticed, and rumors spread about a mysterious Indian drummer named 'Injun Joe'. He also befriended the head of the lab, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who unsuccessfully tried to lure him away from his other post-war commitments to work at the University of California, Berkeley.

Feynman alludes to his thoughts on the rationale for involvement in the Manhattan Project in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. He felt that the possibility of Nazi Germany developing the bomb before the Allies was a compelling reason to aid its development for the United States. He later admitted that it was a mistake not to reconsider the situation once Germany was defeated. In the same post, Feynman also discusses his concerns in the atomic bomb era, feeling for a considerable time that there was a high risk that the bomb would soon be used again, so there was no point in building one for the future.. He later describes this period as a 'depression'.

Early academic life

Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1942, Feynman held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor of physics. The appointment was for his participation in the Manhattan project. In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Sciences requesting his return to the University of Washington to teach for the next academic year. His appointment was not extended when he decided not to return. In a talk he gave several years later at the University of Washington, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at the only university that ever had the good sense to fire me."

After the war, Feynman turned down an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, despite the presence of distinguished professors such as Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel, and John von Neumann. Feynman followed Hans Bethe to Cornell University, where Feynman taught theoretical physics from 1945 to 1950. During a temporary slump after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by bombs produced in the Manhattan Project, he focused on complex problems in physics., not for its usefulness, but for self-satisfaction. One of them was the analysis of the physics of the movement through the air of a rotating disk with associated nutation. In his work during this period he uses equations of rotation to express different rates of spin, which was important to his Nobel Prize-winning work, but only because he was feeling exhausted and had turned his attention to problems with no immediate practical application, and was surprised by the offers from the chairs of other renowned universities.

Despite receiving a new offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, Feynman turned it down on the grounds that there were no teaching assignments: Feynman felt students were inspirational and teaching was a distraction during non-creative periods. So the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University offered him a package whereby he could teach at the university and also be in high school. Feynman instead accepted an offer from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—and as he says in his book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!—out of a desire to live in a mild climate., a thought that had entered his mind while he was installing tire chains on his car in the middle of a snow storm in Ithaca.

Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care in explaining to his students as it was a moral duty to make the subject accessible. His guiding principle was that if a topic couldn't be explained in a freshman lecture, it wasn't fully understood yet. Feynman took great pleasure in coming up with a "freshman-level" explanation, for example, of the connection between spin and statistics. What he said was that groups of particles with ½ spin "repel" while groups with integer spin "clump together". This was a brilliantly simplified way of showing how Fermi-Dirac statistics and Bose-Einstein statistics evolved as a consequence of studying how fermions and bosons behave under 360° rotation. This was also a question that he pondered in his more advanced lectures, as he demonstrated the solution in Dirac's 1986 commemorative lecture. In the same lecture, he further explained that antiparticles must exist, because if the particles had only energies positive, they would not be limited to a so-called "cone of light".

He opposed thoughtless rote learning and other teaching methods that emphasized form over function. clear thinking and clear presentation were fundamental requirements for his care. It could be dangerous even to approach him unprepared, let alone the foolish or the pretentious.

Years at Caltech

Feynman did important work while at Caltech, including research on:

• Quantum electrodynamics. The theory with which Feynman won his Nobel Prize is known for his exact predictions. This theory began in the previous years that Feynman worked at Princeton as a graduate student and continued while at Cornell. This work consisted of two different formulations. The first is its integral formulation, and the second is the elaboration of Feynman diagrams. Both formulations contained the sum on the stories of the method in which each possible path is considered from one state to another, the final path is an amount on the odds (also known as sum on roads). For several years he lectured students in Caltech on his way to the integral formulation of quantum theory. The second formulation of quantum electrodynamics (using Feynman diagrams) was specifically mentioned by the Nobel Committee. The logical connection to the integral formulation of the way is interesting. Feynman did not demonstrate that the rules for his diagrams were mathematically followed from the integral formulation of trajectory. Some special cases were subsequently tested by other people, but only in the actual case, so the tests do not work when a spin is involved. The second formulation should have been thought about how to start again, but guided by the intuitive vision provided by the first formulation. Freeman Dyson published an article in 1949, adding to Feynman's new rules that told how to implement renormalization. Students from around the world learn and use the new powerful tool that Feynman had created. Over time, computer programs were written to calculate Feynman diagrams, providing an unprecedented power tool. It is possible to write these programs because Feynman diagrams constitute a formal language with a grammar. Marc Kac provided the formal proofs of the sum by virtue of history, which shows that the partial parabolic differential equation can be expressed as an sum in different stories (i.e. an expectative operator), which is now known as the Feynman-Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics for many applications of stochastic processes.
• Physics of the superfluidez of the sub cooled liquid helium, where helium seems to show a total lack of viscosity when it flows. Feynman gave an explanation of quantum mechanics for the theory of the superfluidez of Soviet physicist Lev D. Landau. The application of Schrödinger's equation to the question showed that the superfluid showed observable quantum mechanical behavior on a macroscopic scale. This helped with the problem of superconductivity, but the solution eluded Feynman. It was solved with the BCS theory of superconductivity, proposed by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer.
• A model of weak decay, which showed that the coupling in the process is a combination of vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay is the disintegration of a neutron in an electron, a proton, and an anti-neutrino). Although E.C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory almost simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Murray Gell-Mann was seen as fundamental, because weak interaction is often described by the vector and axial currents. Therefore, it combines the 1933 Beta decay theory of Enrico Fermi with an explanation of parity violation.

He also developed Feynman diagrams, an accounting device that aids in the conceptualization and calculation of interactions between particles in space-time, including interactions between electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. This device and other later ones allowed us to approach the reversibility of time and other fundamental processes. Feynman's mental image for these diagrams started with the approximation of a hard sphere, and the interactions could be thought of as collisions at first. It was not until decades later that physicists thought about analyzing the nodes of Feynman diagrams more carefully.

Using his diagrams of a small number of particles interacting in space-time, Feynman could then model all of physics in terms of the spins of those particles and the coupling range of the fundamental forces. Feynman attempted to give a explanation of the strong interaction that governs the scattering nucleons, which he calls the Parton model. The Parton model arose as a complement to the quark model developed by his Caltech colleague Murray Gell-Mann. The relationship between the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "putting ins." In the mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were nothing more than an accounting device for symmetry numbers, not actual particles, since the omega-minus particle statistics were interpreted as three identical strange quarks. bound together, it seemed impossible that quarks were real. Stanford's linear accelerator enabled inelastic scattering experiments in the 1960s that showed, analogous to Ernest Rutherford's experiment scattering alpha particles in gold nuclei in 1911, that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point particles that They scattered the electrons. It was natural to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's Parton model attempted to interpret the experimental data in a way that did not use an additional hypothesis. For example, the data showed that about 45% of the energy pulse was carried away by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles have now been determined to be the gluons that realize the forces between quarks and also carry the three-valued color quantum number that solves the omega-minus problem. Feynman did not question the quark model; For example, when the fifth quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to his students that the discovery implied the existence of a sixth quark, which was discovered in the decade after his death.

After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless field of spin 2, and derives Einstein's field equation from general relativity and goes a step further. The computational device that Feynman discovered, it was later applied to the study of "ghosts" in gravitational theories, as "particles" inside your diagrams that have the "wrong" connection; between spin and statistics, have proven to be of great value in explaining the behavior of quantum particles from Yang-Mills theories, for example, QCD and the electroweak theory.

Feynman was elected a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1965. By this time in the 1960s, Feynman exhausted himself working on several major projects, simultaneously, while at Caltech he enhanced the teaching of pre- degree. After three years devoted to the task, he produced a series of lectures that eventually became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman wanted the cover of that book to be a photo of a drumhead sprinkled with powder to show modes of vibration. Concerned about the connections between drugs and rock and roll induced by such an image, the editors changed the cover to a monochrome red color, despite including a photo of him playing drums in the foreword. Feynman's book Lectures on Physics held two physicists, Robert B. Leighton and Sands Mateo, as part-time co-authors for several years. Even though the books were not adopted by universities as textbooks, they still sell well as they provide a deep understanding of physics. Many of his lectures and various talks were turned into other books, including The Character of Physical Law, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Statistical Mechanics, Lectures on Gravitation, and Feynman Lectures on Computation.

As a way to publicize advances in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for two of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other by Tom Newman.He was also one of the first scientists to conceive of the possibility of quantum computers.^{[citation needed]}

In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the theme "Cult of office science", defining it as that which has the appearance of scientific, but is only pseudoscience, due to the lack in the scientist of " a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to the kind of absolute honesty. He instructed his audience stating that: “The first principle is that you should not deceive yourself and you are the easiest person to deceive. That is why you must be very careful. After you haven't fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. After this you just have to be honest in a conventional way."

In 1984-1986, he developed a variational method for the approximate computation of path integrals, which has given rise to a powerful method of converting divergent perturbation expansions into strongly coupled convergent expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as a consequence, to a better determination of precision of the critical exponents measured in satellite experiments.

In the late 1980s, according to Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine, Feynman played a crucial role in developing the first massively parallel computer, and in finding innovative uses for computations. numerical, in the construction of neural networks, as well as in physical simulations using cellular automata (such as turbulent fluid flow), in collaboration with Stephen Wolfram at Caltech His son Carl also played a role in the development of computer engineering. the original connection machine; Feynman influenced the interconnects, while his daughter worked on the software.

Feynman diagrams are now fundamental to string theory and M-theory, and have even been extended topologically. The worldlines of the diagrams have been developed into tubes to allow better modeling of objects more complicated as strings and membranes. Shortly before his death, Feynman criticized string theory in an interview: "I don't like that they're not calculating anything," he said. “I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that doesn't agree with an experiment, they cook up an explanation, instead of saying, 'Well, it could still be true.' These words have been widely quoted by opponents of the direction string theory has taken in particle physics.

The Challenger Disaster

Feynman played an important role on the Presidential Rogers Commission, where he investigated the Challenger disaster. During a televised hearing, Feynman demonstrated that the material used in the ship's O-rings becomes less resistant in cold weather, by compressing a sample of the material in a clamp and immersing it in ice water. The commission ultimately determined, that the disaster was caused by the primary O-ring not being properly sealed in unusually cold weather at Cape Canaveral.

The Challenger Disaster in 1986

Feynman devoted the second half of his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience on the Rogers Commission, deviating from his usual convention of short light-hearted anecdotes to offer a lengthy narrative and sober. He reveals a disconnect between NASA engineers and executives that was far more surprising than expected. His interviews with high-ranking NASA managers revealed startling misunderstandings of elementary concepts. For example, NASA administrators claimed that there was a 1 in 100,000 chance of catastrophic failure aboard the shuttle, but Feynman found that NASA engineers estimate their own chances of catastrophe at about 1 in 200. They concluded that NASA management's estimates of the reliability of the space shuttle were unbelievably unrealistic, and he was particularly infuriated that NASA used these figures to recruit Christa McAuliffe into the "Master in Space" program. He warned in his appendix to the commission's report (which was included only after he threatened not to sign the report), "For successful technology, reality must prevail over public relations, nature cannot be fooled.."

A TV documentary drama called The Challenger Disaster, detailing part of Feynman's investigation, aired in 2013.

Religious identification

Although born and raised by parents who were Ashkenazi, Feynman was not only an atheist, but refused to be labeled as Jewish. He consistently refused to be included in lists or books that classified people by his race. He asked not to be included in Tina Levitan's writing The Laureates: Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize, "To select, the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heritage is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense about racial theory", adding that "...at the age of thirteen I converted not only to other religious views, but also stopped believing that the Jewish people are somehow the 'chosen people';".

Personal life

While doing research for his doctorate, Feynman married Arline Greenbaum (often misspelled Arlene). They married knowing that Arline was seriously ill with tuberculosis, from which she died in 1945. In 1946, Feynman wrote her a letter, but it was kept sealed for the rest of her life. This part of Feynman's life was portrayed in the 1996 film Infinity, featuring Feynman's daughter, Michelle, in a role in the film.

He married a second time in June 1952, to Mary Louise Bell of Neodesha, Kansas; this marriage was unsuccessful:

He starts working with calculus problems in his head as soon as he wakes up. He was doing calculation while driving his car, while he was sitting in the living room, and while he was lying in bed at night.

Divorce claim Mary Louise Bell

He later married Gweneth Howarth (1934-1989), who was from Ripponden, Yorkshire, and shared his zest for life and adventure. In addition to their home in Altadena, California, they had a beach house in Baja California, purchased with Feynman's Nobel Prize money, one third of $55,000. They remained married until Feynman's death. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968.

Feynman was highly successful in teaching Carl, using, for example, discussions about ants and Martians as a device to gain perspective on problems and issues. He was surprised to learn that the same teaching devices were not helpful with Michelle Mathematics was a common interest for father and son; both entered the computer field as consultants and were involved in promoting a new method of using multiple computers to solve complex problems, known as parallel computing. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory retained Feynman as a computer consultant during critical missions. A coworker characterized Feynman as akin to Don Quixote at his desk, rather than at a computer workstation, he was ready to do battle with windmills.

Feynman traveled to Brazil, where he taught courses at the CBPF (Brazilian Center for Physics Research) and near the end of his life he planned to visit the Russian region of Tuva, a dream that, due to Cold War bureaucratic problems, never came. could come true. The day after his death, a letter arrived for Feynman from the Soviet government, giving him permission to travel to Tuva. From his enthusiastic interest in reaching Tuva came the phrase "Tuva or Bust"; (also the title of a book about his efforts to get there), which was used frequently among his circle of friends in the hope that, one day, he would see it firsthand. The documentary film, Genghis Blues, mentions some of his attempts to communicate with Tuvá and chronicles the successful journey by his friends.

In response to Hubert Humphrey's congratulations on his Nobel Prize, Feynman admitted a longstanding admiration for him, then vice president. In a letter to an MIT professor dated December 6, 1966, Feynman expressed interest in running for Governor of California.

Feynman took drawing and painting classes and enjoyed some success under the pseudonym "Ofey," culminating in an exhibition of his work. He learned to play a brass percussion instrument (frigideira) in a samba style in Brazil, and participated in a samba school.

In addition, he had a degree of synesthesia for equations, explaining that the letters in certain mathematical functions appeared in color to him, despite always being printed in black and white.

According to James Gleick, author of the biography Genius, Feynman attempted to use LSD during his tenure at Caltech. Somewhat embarrassed by his actions, he largely evaded the issue by dictating his anecdotes; he mentions it in the section & # 34; O Americano, Outra Vez & # 34;, while the chapter of & # 34; Altered States & # 34; in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! he describes only experiences with marijuana and ketamine in John Lilly's famous sensory deprivation tanks, as a way to study consciousness. Inside the tank he would hallucinate in less than 15 minutes.

Feynman gave up alcohol when he began to show the first signs of alcoholism, not wanting to do anything that would damage his brain. In "Altered States" he explains his reluctance to experiment with drugs.

‘I had once thought to take drugs, but I got kind of scared of that: I love to think, and I don't want to screw the machine. ‘

‘Once I thought about taking drugs, but I was scared: I love thinking and I didn’t want to spoil the machine. ’

In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he gives advice on the best way to pick up girls in a bar. At Caltech, he used a topless bar as an office away from his usual office, sketching or writing physics equations on paper napkins. When county officials tried to shut down the place, all the visitors except Feynman refused to testify on behalf of the bar, fearing their families or patrons would find out they were patrons of such establishments. Only Feynman agreed, and in court, he asserted that the bar was a public necessity, stating that workers, technicians, engineers, common laborers, "and a physics professor"; They frequented the establishment. While the bar lost the case in court, he was allowed to stay open while the appeal lasted.

Feynman has a supporting role in the film Anti-Clock credited as "The Professor".

Death

Feynman suffered from two rare forms of cancer, liposarcoma and Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, dying shortly after his last surgery on February 15, 1988, at age 69. His last quoted words are: "I don't I would like to die twice. It's so boring".

Popular Legacy

Actor Alan Alda commissioned playwright Peter Parnell to write a two-character play about a fictional day in the life of Feynman dated two years before his death. The play, QED, based on the writings of Richard Feynman's life during the 1990s, premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, California in 2001. The play was then presented at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Broadway, with both performances starring Alda as Richard Feynman.

On May 4, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative series of self-adhesive 37-cent stamps in various configurations about American scientists. The scientists represented were Feynman, John von Neumann, Barbara McClintock, and Josiah Willard Gibbs. The sepia-toned Feynman stamp featured a photograph of Feynman at age 30 and eight small Feynman diagrams. The stamps were designed by Victor Stabin under the artistic direction of Carl T. Herrman.

The main building of the Computing Division at Fermilab is named the Feynman Computing Center in his honor.

Real Time Opera premiered his opera Feynman at the Norfolk (CT) Chamber Music Festival in June 2005.

In a 1992 New York Times article on Feynman and his legacy, James Gleick tells the story of how Murray Gell-Mann describes what is known as "The Feynman Algorithm" 3. 4; or "The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm " to a student: 'The student asks Gell-Mann about Feynman's notes, and Gell-Mann says no, Dick's methods are not the same as the methods used here. The student asks, well, what are Feynman's methods? Gell-Mann leans timidly against the blackboard and says: Dick's method is this. You write the problem. Do you think it is very difficult? (He closes his eyes and presses his knuckles parodically to his forehead). Well, write your answer".

In 1998, a photograph of Richard Feynman giving a lecture was part of the poster series commissioned by Apple Inc. for their 'Think Different' ad campaign.

In 2011, Feynman was the subject of a biographical graphic novel titled "Just Feynman," written by Jim Ottaviani and illustrated by Leland Myrick.

In 2013, the BBC drama The Challenger played the role of Feynman on the Rogers Commission denouncing the O-ring failure in solid rocket boosters (SRBs) of NASA, based in part on Feynman's book What Do You Care What Other People Think?.

In The Big Bang Theory season 9 episode 3, titled "The Bachelor Party Corrosion,"Raj and Howard decide to "kidnap" to Leonard for a bachelor party weekend despite taking Sheldon, who is shocked to learn that the van they are riding in belonged to the late Dr. Richard Feynman, rented for the occasion by Howard from a friend.

In The Big Bang Theory season 11 episode 2, titled "The Retraction Reaction", the series leads visit Feynman's grave in search of of inspiration and comfort.

Feynman appears in some of the music videos that make up the work Symphony of Science by John Boswell: "We are all connected", "A wave of Reason", "The Quantum World" and "We are Star Dust".

Work

Selected scientific papers

• Feynman, Richard P. (2000). Laurie M. Brown, ed. Selected Papers of Richard Feynman: With Commentary. 20th Century Physics. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-02-4131-5.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1942). Laurie M. Brown, ed. The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University. World Scientific (with title Feynman's Thesis: a New Approach to Quantum Theory(published in 2005). ISBN 978-981-256-380-4.
• Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P. (1945). «Interaction with the Absorber as the Mechanism of Radiation». Reviews of Modern Physics 17 (2-3): 157-181. Bibcode:1945RvMP...17..157W. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.17.157.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1946). A Theorem and its Application to Finite Tampers. The Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4341197.
• Feynman, Richard P.; Welton, T.A. (1946). Neutron Diffusion in a Space Lattice of Fissionable and Absorbing Materials. The Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4381097.
• Feynman, Richard P.; Metropolis, N.; Teller, E. (1947). Equations of State of Elements Based on the Generalized Fermi-Thomas Theory. The Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4417654.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1948a). «Space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics». Reviews of Modern Physics 20 (2): 367-387. Bibcode:1948RvMP...20..367F. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.20.367.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1948b). «Relativistic Cut-Off for Quantum Electrodynamics». Physical Review 74 (10): 1430-1438. Bibcode:1948PhRv...74.1430F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.74.1430.
• Wheeler, John A.; Feynman, Richard P. (1949). "Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action". Reviews of Modern Physics 21 (3): 425-433. Bibcode:1949RvMP...21..425W. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.21.425.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1949). «The theory of positrons». Physical Review 76 (6): 749-759. Bibcode:1949PhRv...76..749F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.76.749.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1949b). «Space-Time Approach to Quantum Electrodynamic». Physical Review 76 (6): 769-789. Bibcode:1949PhRv...76..769F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.76.769.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1950). «Mathematical formulation of the quantum theory of electromagnetic interaction». Physical Review 80 (3): 440-457. Bibcode:1950PhRv...80..440F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.80.440.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1951). «An Operator Calculus Applications Having Quantum Electrodynamics». Physical Review 84: 108-128. Bibcode:1951PhRv...84.108F. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.84.108.
• 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.
• Feynman, Richard P.; Hoffmann, F.; Serber, R. (1955). Dispersion of the Neutron Emission in U235 Fission. The Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission. OSTI 4354998.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1956). "Science and the Open Channel". Science (February 24, 1956) 123 (3191): 307. Bibcode:1956Sci...123..307F. PMID 17774518. doi:10.1126/science.123.3191.307.
• Cohen, M.; Feynman, Richard P. (1957). «Theory of Inelastic Scattering of Cold Neutrons from Liquid Helium». Physical Review 107: 13-24. Bibcode:1957PhRv..107...13C. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.107.13.
• Feynman, Richard P.; Vernon, F.L.; Hellwarth, R. W. (1957). «Geometric representation of the Schrödinger equation for solving maser equations». J. Appl. Phys 28: 49. Bibcode:1957JAP....28...49F. doi:10.1063/1.1722572.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1959). «Plenty of Room at the Bottom». Presentation to American Physical Society. Archived from the original on 11 February 2010.
• Edgar, R. S.; Feynman, Richard P.; Klein, S.; Lielausis, I.; Steinberg, C. M. (1962). «Mapping experiments with r mutants of bacteriophage T4D». Genetics (February 1962) 47 (2): 179-86. PMC 1210321. PMID 13889186.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1966). «The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics». Science (August 12, 1966) 153 (3737): 699-708. Bibcode:1966Sci...153..699F. PMID 17791121. doi:10.1126/science.153.3737.699.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1974a). «Structure of the proton». Science (February 15, 1974) 183 (4125): 601-610. Bibcode:1974Sci...183..601F. PMID 17778830. doi:10.1126/science.183.4125.601.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1974). «Cargo Cult Science» (PDF). Engineering and Science 37 (7).
• Feynman, Richard P.; Kleinert, Hagen (1986). «Effective classical partition functions». Physical Review A (December 1986) 34 (6): 5080-5084. Bibcode:1986PhRvA.34.5080F. PMID 9897894. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.34.5080.

Textbooks and lecture notes

The Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiling lectures for Caltech students from 1961-1964. As news of the conferences grew, professional physicists and graduate students began turning out to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, Feynman's colleagues, edited and illustrated them in book form. The work has remained current and demonstrated its usefulness even today. The work was edited and completed in 2005 with Feynman's Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics by Michael Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton (son of Robert Leighton), with the support of Kip Thorne and other physicists.

• Feynman, Richard P.; Leighton, Robert B.; Sands, Matthew (2005). The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Definitive and Extended Edition (2nd edition). Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-9045-6.
• - (1961). Theory of Fundamental Processes. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-8053-2507-7.
• - (1962). Quantum Electrodynamics. Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-8053-2501-0.
• - Hibbs, Albert (1965). Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals. McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-07-020650-3.
• - (1967). The Character of Physical Law: The 1964 Messenger Lectures. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-56003-8.
• - (1972). Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures. Reading, Mass: W. A. Benjamin. ISBN 0-8053-2509-3.
• - (1985b). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02417-0.
• - (1987). Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34000-4.
• - (1995). Brian Hatfield, ed. Lectures on Gravitation. Addison Wesley Longman. ISBN 0-201-62734-5.
• - (1997). Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (Vintage Press edition). London: Vintage. ISBN 0-09-973621-7.
• - (2000). Tony Hey and Robin W. Allen, ed. Feynman Lectures on Computation. Perseus Books Group. ISBN 0-7382-0296-7.

Disclosure works

• Feynman, Richard P. (1985). Ralph Leighton, ed. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-01921-7. OCLC 10925248.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1988). Ralph Leighton, ed. What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-02659-0.
• No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynmaned. Christopher Sykes, W. Norton & Co, 1996, ISBN 0-393-31393-X.
• Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant TeacherPerseus Books, 1994, ISBN 0-201-40955-0.
• Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-TimeAddison Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-15026-3.
• The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen ScientistPerseus Publishing, 1999, ISBN 0-7382-0166-9.
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman, edited by Jeffrey Robbins, Perseus Books, 1999, ISBN 0-7382-0108-1.
• Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, edited by Ralph Leighton, W. W. Norton & Co, 2005, ISBN 0-393-06132-9. Chronologically reordered omnibus volume of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, with a bundled CD containing one of Feynman's signature lectures.
• Quantum Man, Atlas books, 2011, Lawrence M. Krauss, ISBN 978-0-393-06471-1.
• "Feynman: The Graphic Novel" Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick, ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8.

Audio and video recordings

• Safecracker Suite (collection of percussion fragments interspersed with Feynman counting anecdotes)
• Los Alamos From Below (audio, lecture given by Feynman in Santa Barbara on February 6, 1975)
• Six Easy Pieces (singles and original classes on which your book is based)
• Six Not So Easy Pieces (singles and original classes on which your book is based)
• The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection
• Feynman shows playing percussion instruments, singing and chatting are included in the songs "Tuva Groove (Bolur Daa-Bol, Bolbas Daa-Bol)" and "Kargyraa Rap (Dürgen Chugaa)" of the album Back Tuva Future, The Adventure Continues of Kongar-ool Ondar. The hidden track of this album also includes pieces of physics talks without background music.
• The Messenger Lectures, given at Cornell in 1964, in which he explains the basics of physics. Available for free in the Tuva Project (See also the book The Character of Physical Law)
• Take the world from another point of view [videorecording] / with Richard Feynman; Films for the Hu (1972)
• The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures Four public classes whose transcripts are the four chapters of the book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. (1979)
• The Pleasure of Finding Things Out on YouTube. (1981) (it should not be confused with the book of the same name)
• Richard Feynman: Fun to Imagine Collection, BBC archive of 6 brief Feynman films speaking in a style accessible to all about physics behind experiences accessible to ordinary people. (1983)
• Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics (1986)
• Tiny Machines: Feynman talks about Nanotechnology (video, 1984)
• Computers From the Inside Out (video)
• Quantum Mechanical View of Reality: Workshop at Esalen (video, 1983)
• Idiosyncratic Thinking Workshop (video, 1985)
• Bits and Pieces — From Richard's Life and Times (video, 1988)
• Strangeness Minus Three (video, BBC Horizon 1964)
• No Ordinary Genius (video, Cristopher Sykes Documentary)
• Richard Feynman — The Best Mind Since Einstein (Video, Documentary)
• The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (audio, sometimes entitled "Feynman's Lost Lecture")
• Nature of Matter (audio)

Bibliography on Feynman

• Bethe, Hans A. (1991). The Road from Los Alamos. Masters of Modern Physics 2. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-74012-1. OCLC 24734608.
• Brian, Denis (2008). The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01139-1.
• Chown, Marcus (2 May 1985). «Strangeness and Charm». New Scientist: 34. ISSN 0262-4079.
• Close, Frank (2011). The Infinity Puzzle: The Personalities, Politics, and Extraordinary Science Behind the Higgs Boson. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959350-7.
• Deutsch, David (1 June 1992). "Quantum computation". Physics World: 57-61. ISSN 0953-8585.
• Edwards, Steven Alan (2006). The Nanotech Pioneers. Wiley. ISBN 978-3-527-31290-0. OCLC 64304124.
• Feynman, Richard P. (1986). Rogers Commission Report, Volume 2 Appendix F – Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle. NASA.
• - (1987). "Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington." Ralph Leighton, ed. Engineering and Science (Caltech) 51 (1): 6-22. ISSN 0013-7812.
• Feynman, Michelle, ed. (2005). Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. Basic Books. ISBN 0-7382-0636-9. (Published in the UK under the title: Don't You Have Time to Think?, with additional commentary by Michelle Feynman, Allen Lane, 2005, ISBN 0-7139-9847-4.)
• Friedman, Jerome (2004). "A Student's View of Fermi." In Cronin, James W., ed. Fermi Remembered. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-12111-6.
• Gribbin, John; Gribbin, Mary (1997). Richard Feynman: A Life in Science. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-94124-X.
• Gleick, James (1992). Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-40836-3. OCLC 243743850.
• Henderson, Harry (2011). Richard Feynman: Quarks, Bombs, and Bongos. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8160-6176-1.
• Hey, Tony; Walters, Patrick (1987). The quantum universe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-31845-7.
• Hillis, W. Daniel (1989). "Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine". Physics Today (Institute of Physics) 42 (2): 78. Bibcode:1989PhT....42b..78H. doi:10.1063/1.881196. Archived from the original on December 9, 2006.
• Krauss, Lawrence M. (2011). Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-06471-9. OCLC 601108916.
• Leighton, Ralph (2000). Tuva Or Bust!: Richard Feynman's last journey. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-32069-3.
• LeVine, Harry (2009). The Great Explainer: The Story of Richard Feynman. Greensboro, North Carolina: Morgan Reynolds. ISBN 978-1-59935-113-1.
• Ottaviani, Jim; Myrick, Leland; Sycamore, Hilary (2011). Feynman (1st edition). New York: First Second. ISBN 978-1-59643-259-8.
• Schweber, Silvan S. (1994). QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03327-7.
• Schwinger, Julian, ed. (1958). Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics. Dover. ISBN 0-486-60444-6.
• Sykes, Christopher (1994). No ordinary genius: the illustrated Richard Feynman. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-03621-9.