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About Me


Richard Feynman is one of the greatest scientists and minds of the 20th century. He had an insatiable curiosity, deep love of nature, a passion for teaching, and high standards of scientific integrity.
Although he is not as well-known outside scientific circles as Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein or even Niels Bohr, he can easily stand beside any or all of them in the hall of fame of your choice. Indeed, Hawking describes Feynman as "the physicist's physicist," in his book, A brief History of Time.
In a sense, he surpasses them all, because of his wide range of interests. Feynman is noted in physics circles for re-formulating quantum mechanics in terms of quantum electrodynamics (QED)- a more successful theory of quantum fields, and his development of the Feynman diagram (a graphical way of describing interactions between sub-atomic particles). He is known in government circles for his incisive and revealing contributions to the Rogers Commission report into the Challenger disaster, in which he dramatically showed how rubber O-ring seals become brittle—and lose their ability to seal—at low temperatures. He is remembered by his colleagues on the Manhattan project as the man who worked out how to pick locks and break security, just to tease the security personnel. Mayan scholars remember his work on the Dresden Codex. He is remembered by thousands of physics students at Caltech as their personal hero, who imparted a little of his boundless and infectious enthusiasm for physics through his original and inspiring lectures.
Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but later revised this to "all-genius, all-buffoon". During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world.

My Interests

I'd like to meet:


Photons, Corpuscles of Light
Inconceivable Nature of Nature
Elementary Particles and the Law of Physics
University of Auckland Recordings
Remembering Richard Feynman

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1/5)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (2/5)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (3/5)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (4/5)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (5/5)

My Blog

Man of a Thousand Tongues

   When I was in Brazil I had struggled to learn the local language, and decided to give my physics lectures in Portuguese. Soon after I came to Caltech, I was invited to a party hosted...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:59:00 GMT

O Americano, Outra Vez!

   One time I picked up a hitchhiker who told me how interesting South America was, and that I ought to go there. I complained that the language is different, but he said just go ahead ...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:58:00 GMT

Lucky Numbers

   One day at Princeton I was sitting in the lounge and overheard some mathematicians talking about the series for e^x, which is 1 + x + x^2/2! + x^3/3! Each term you get by multiplying the ...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:57:00 GMT

You Just Ask Them?

   When I was first at Cornell I corresponded with a girl I had met in New Mexico while I was working on the bomb. I got to thinking, when she mentioned some other fella she knew, that ...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:56:00 GMT

I Want My Dollar!

   When I was at Cornell I would often come back home to Far Rockaway to visit. One time when I happened to be home, the telephone rings: it's LONG DISTANCE, from California. In those d...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:56:00 GMT

Any Questions?

   When I was at Cornell I was asked to give a series of lectures once a week at an aeronautics laboratory in Buffalo. Cornell had made an arrangement with the laboratory which included...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:55:00 GMT

The Dignified Professor

   I don't believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting anywhere I can say to myself, "At le...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:55:00 GMT

Uncle Sam Doesnt Need You!

   After the war the army was scraping the bottom of the barrel to get the guys for the occupation forces in Germany. Up until then the army deferred people for some reason other than p...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:54:00 GMT

Safecracker Meets Safecracker

   I learned to pick locks from a guy named Leo Lavatelli. It turns out that picking ordinary tumbler locks - like Yale locks - is easy. You try to turn the lock by putting a screwdrive...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:53:00 GMT

Los Alamos from Below

   When I say "Los Alamos from below," I mean that. Although in my field at the present time I'm a slightly famous man, at that time I was not anybody famous at all. I didn't even have ...
Posted by on Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:52:00 GMT