Richard Feynman On Love, Life, and Science
Remembering the great scientific genius on his 104th birthday
Today marks the 104th birth anniversary of American physicist Richard Feynman. He was born on this day in 1918 in Queens, New York City. He developed a fascination for science from quite a tender age. He was greatly inspired by his father who used to work in a company that made military uniforms. His father would often take him walking and teach him how to ask questions. He would often refer to use Encyclopedia Britannica to teach him about the wonders of science and the world, as Feynman recalls himself. Feynman learned how to question and think from his father and he gained his sense of humor from his mother.
By the age of 10, he had his lab at his home where he would repair radios and other mechanical and electrical equipment. He would keep his sister Joan Feynman as a lab assistant and often conduct experiments to amuse his friends. By the age of 15, Feynman had taught himself advanced calculus, analytical geometry, infinite series, and several other significant concepts of science. Just to now get himself confused with the mathematical notations, he would often invent his notations and symbols for different mathematical functions.
Feynman had an above-average IQ of 125, as per a test conducted during his high school years, but it was his passion and fascination for science and mathematics that got him so far in his life. Feynman, in his autobiographical book Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, mentions that during his high school days he would invent his theorems and problems and would often associate a practical example for each so that it would be useful. As a school student, he didn’t care much about the language or literature, or grammar. His notes would be aesthetically untidy but understandable. He would often challenge himself with complex problems and spent hours solving them. In his own words, he once said,
“Once I get on a puzzle, I can’t get off.”
Persistence, for him, was the key to success and that is relevant in so many other aspects of life. After high school, Feynman got admitted into MIT where he majored initially in mathematics then later switched to electrical engineering and eventually physics. As, in MIT, it was mandatory for students to choose a humanities subject during that time, Feynman chose astronomy during his first year and philosophy in the second. During his undergrad years at MIT, Feynman published two scientific papers in the Physics Review journal. After finishing MIT, he applied for jobs at the Bell Labs, since he knew William Shockley who was working there at the time. Feynman never received a letter from the lab but would often visit there, with the help of William Shockley, for his curiosity. Feynman worked at his friend’s company for some time where he worked as a chief research chemist.
After the completion of his undergraduate years at MIT, Feynman wanted to do his graduation at MIT itself but he decided to choose Princeton University after his professor’s suggestion. Reportedly, Feynman scored the highest marks on record in physics and math exams at Princeton. He was also a Putnam fellow and did unprecedentedly well at the Putnam Mathematical Competition. At one of his seminars during his graduate years, he got an opportunity to meet physicists like Albert Einstein, John Von Neumann, and Wolfgang Pauli. In 1942 Feynman married his high school love, Arline Greenbaum, who at the time was suffering from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was incurable at the time and Greenbaum had no more than two years to live. She got admitted to Deborah hospital where Feynman would visit her every weekend. In 1946, after the passing away of his wife, Feynman wrote a letter to her mentioning his love and passion for her,
While working at Princeton, one day Feynman was visited by Bob Wilson who told him that he was working on a secret government project at a national laboratory. Wilson explained to him that his job was to separate the isotopes of Uranium for making a nuclear bomb. Wilson asked him to attend a meeting shortly. Feynman denied his proposal at first but attended the meeting. During those days he was working on his graduate thesis. He took a vacation for a couple of weeks and completed his thesis shortly before getting into the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos was a government-funded research facility in New Mexico to create the world’s first atomic bomb. The most feasible nuclear material to create the bomb was uranium. But the scientists didn’t exactly know how to differentiate the isotopes more efficiently. That’s where Feynman came into. While at Los Alamos, he came across some great physics personalities including Rabi and Oppenheimer. Later Feynman was appointed as the head of the calculation division at the lab.
It was during his time at the Los Alamos when he developed his fascination for safe cracking. He claimed that he had a particular way of thinking about opening complicated safes. He would often open confidential safes at the lab and leave notes that said, “Guess who?!” While still working at the Los Alamos, Feynman was approached by his colleague Hans Bethe who offered him a job at Cornell University. Feynman started teaching physics at Cornell for $4000 a year. Feynman taught at Cornell University and was quite impeccable at teaching. His classes would be full of laughter and gags while still holding up the intellectuality of the subject matter. While working at Cornell, Feynman did visits to different places including Brazil. Feynman held a position at the Centre of Physical Research in Brazil and spent some time there. In 1951, Feynman got a job offer from Caltech. He came into a dilemmatic situation choosing between Cornell and Caltech as both the institutions would give a raise in his favor.
Feynman chose to work at Caltech and remained there for a significantly long period of his life. While working at Caltech, Feynman worked on the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium. It was during that time that he formulated the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics with the help of the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory of Quantum electrodynamics. Feynman developed a keen interest in nanotechnology which was a new discipline at the time. He did several monumental research on this and arguably he was the first person ever to use the term ‘nanotechnology’.
In the early 1960s, Feynman gave a series of physics lectures at the Caltech and Cornell (as part of the lecture titled ‘The Character of Physical Laws’). The lectures went on to become Feynman Lectures in Physics co-authored by Matthew Sands and Ralph Leighton. In the third chapter of the first volume of the series, Feynman mentions the relation of physics with other sciences in the most beautiful and thought-provoking way possible,
“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
All of Feynman’s lectures are now freely available online:
In 1965, Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his works on Quantum Electrodynamics. He shared the prize with two other independent physicists Shinichiro Tomonaga, and Julian Schwinger. Feynman was not fond of these awards and honors. He always believed that the award of a physicist is in the happiness of his discovery, and the fact that it can be useful. In his own words, in one of his interviews.
In 1986, Feynman was chosen as one of the members of the Roger’s Commission led by William Rogers and formed under President Ronald Reagan to investigate the Challenger Shuttle Disaster. He demonstrated the failure of the O-rings by using a metal clamp and ice water.
Feynman was more than just a physicist. He was an excellent teacher, an amazing artist, an impeccable author, a showman, an actor, a safe-cracker, and a loving father. He lived his life being as playful as possible and never cared about the authorities. He was a passionate teacher and used to practice for hours in an empty classroom before every lecture. This shows how much he loved teaching. His methods and approaches to teaching and learning have inspired generations of scientists and thinkers. Some of Feynman’s ideologies on science and scientific integrity.
Feynman on success in science
The only way to have real success in science, the field I’m familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good and what’s bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.
Mentioned in What Do You Care What Other People Think (1988), p. 2017
Feynman on the importance of uncertainty
It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.
Mentioned in The Meaning Of it All (1999), inspired by Feynman’s 1963 lecture at University of Washington, Seattle.
The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
As stated by Feynman in a public address at the National Academy of Science (1955) titled “Value of Science”
Feynman on scientific integrity
It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Feynman's statement in 1974 Caltech commencement address “Cargo Cult Science”
I have written a different story on Feynman’s poetic approach to explain the physical phenomena of the universe that you can read here:
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