For Feynman, the process was what he loved. It was a release from the tedium of existence. Stephen Wolfram, who created Mathematica, was a young protégé of Feynman’s for several years while he was a student at Caltech, and he described something similar:
It was probably 1982. I’d been at Feynman’s house, and our conversation had turned to some kind of unpleasant situation that was going on. I was about to leave. And Feynman stops me and says: “You know, you and I are very lucky. Because whatever else is going on, we’ve always got our physics.” . . . Feynman loved doing physics. I think what he loved most was the process of it. Of calculating. Of figuring things out. . . . It didn’t seem to matter to him so much if what came out was big and important. Or esoteric and weird. What mattered to him was the process of finding it. . . . Some scientists (myself probably included) are driven by the ambition to build grand intellectual edifices. I think Feynman—at least in the years I knew him—was much more driven by the pure pleasure of actually doing the science. He seemed to like best to spend his time figuring things out, and calculating. And he was a great calculator. All around perhaps the best human calculator there’s ever been. I always found it incredible. He would start with some problem, and fill up pages with calculations. And at the end of it, he would actually get the right answer! But he usually wasn’t satisfied with that. Once he’d got the answer, he’d go back and try to figure out why it was obvious.
When Feynman took an interest in something, or someone, that was it. The effect was magnetic. He focused all of his energy, his concentration, and, it seemed, his brilliance on that one thing or person. That is why so many people were so affected when Feynman came to listen to their seminars and remained to ask questions.
Because the reactions of colleagues to Feynman were generally so intense, they tended to reflect not only Feynman’s character but also that of the colleagues. For example, I asked David Gross and Frank Wilczek, two very different individuals who discovered asymptotic freedom in QCD, how Feynman had reacted to QCD and their 1973 results. David told me he was irritated that Feynman had not shown enough interest, largely, David felt, because Feynman hadn’t derived the result. Later, when I spoke to Frank about the same subject, he told me how honored and surprised he was by the interest Feynman had displayed. He said Feynman was skeptical, but in those early years Frank thought that that was the appropriate response. I suspect they were both right.
The most telling story that captures the Richard Feynman that I have come to know in writing this book, and the principles that guided his life and directed the nature of his physics, was told to me by a friend, Barry Barish, who was Richard’s colleague at Caltech for the last twenty years of his life. Barry and Richard lived relatively close by, so they would often see each other. And since they both lived about three miles from campus, they would sometimes walk, rather than drive, to work—sometimes together, sometimes not. One time Richard asked Barry if he had seen a certain house on a certain street and what he thought of it. Barry didn’t know the house because, like most of us, he had found a route he favored and took that route to work and back every journey. Richard, he learned, made a point of doing precisely the opposite. He tried never to take the same path twice.
Acknowledgments and Sources
As I indicated in the introduction, one of the reasons why I agreed to write this volume, after the idea was proposed to me by James Atlas, was that it provided me with the opportunity, and motivation, to go back and read, with varying levels of detail, all of Feynman’s scientific papers. I knew the experience, as a physicist, would be enlightening and would allow me to better understand the actual course of physics history, instead of the revisionist version that inevitably develops as physicists refine and simplify techniques that were once obscure.
Nevertheless, I make no pretense to have performed any sort of fundamental historical scholarship. While I have pursued some historical investigations in the past, which required me to go to archives and search out letters and other primary source documents, in the case of Richard Feynman almost all of the primary material I have needed has been nicely compiled and is available in published form. When this is supplemented by two extraordinary books, one focusing primarily on Feynman’s life and the other on the detailed physics history of his work on quantum electrodynamics, an interested and technically trained reader can have direct access to almost all of the material I used as a basis for this book.
Outside of these sources, I am grateful to many of my physics colleagues for discussions about their impressions and personal experiences with Feynman. These include, but are not limited to, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, David Gross, Frank Wilczek, Barry Barish, Marty Block, Danny Hillis, and James Bjorken. In addition, I thank Harsh Mathur for helping, as he often has for me, to act as a preliminary guide to the condensed matter literature, in this case to the work of Feynman in this area.
The major sources of information that interested readers can turn to, and which incidentally provide every Feynman quote one can find in this book, include published primary source material by Feynman and about Feynman. These include, as I have described, a comprehensive technical presentation of not only Feynman’s work on QED but also reproductions of all of his major papers, and a wonderful and definitive personal biography of his life. In addition, there are several excellent references including a recent illuminating compilation of Feynman’s letters and various compendia of reflections on Feynman by those who knew him, scientists and otherwise:
QED and the Men Who Made It, Sylvan S. Schweber, Princeton University Press, 1994.
Selected Papers of Richard Feynman, Laurie Brown (ed.), World Scientific, 2000.
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, Pantheon, 1992.
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations: The Letters of Richard Feynman, M. Feynman (ed.), Basic Books, 2005.
Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman, Laurie Brown and John Rigden (eds.), Springer Press, 1993 (proceedings of an all-day workshop in 1988 in which key scientists wrote their reflections of Feynman).
No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman, Christopher Sykes (ed.), W. W. Norton, 1994.
The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Jagdish Mehra, Oxford University Press, 1994.
Three useful additional sources include historical studies of physics and other physicists:
Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, Laurie M. Brown, Max Dresden, Lillian Hoddeson (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in the Twentieth Century Physics, G. Johnson, Vintage, 1999.
Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics, David Kaiser, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Finally, useful scientific books by Feynman include:
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Princeton University Press, 1985.
The Character of Physical Law, MIT Press, 1965.
The Feynman Lectures on Computation, A. J. G. Hey and R. W. Allen (eds.), Perseus, 2000.
The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation, with F. B. Morinigo, and W. G. Wagner; B. Hatfield (ed.), Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures, Addison-Wesley, 1981.
Theory of Fundamental Processes, Addison-Wesley, 1961.
Quantum Electrodynamics, Addison-Wesley, 1962.
Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, with A. Hibbs, McGraw-Hill, 1965.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, with R. B. Leighton and M. Sands, Addison-Wesley, 2005.
Nobel Lectures in Physics, 1963–72, Elsevier, 1973.
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, with S. Weinberg, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist
, Helix Books, 1998.
Feynman’s Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory, Laurie Brown (ed.), World Scientific, 2005.
Index
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.
About Time, 229
Abrikosov, Alexei, 190
absolute zero, 170, 174–75, 185–86
absorption theory, 28–32, 38, 69, 110–20, 114, 121, 126, 130–31
aces (particles), 292–93, 295, 299–300
acoustics, 54
action-at-a-distance principle, 40
Albuquerque, N.Mex., 80, 88–89
algae-to-gasoline project, 269
algorithms, 273, 278–79, 283, 284, 286
“Alternative Formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics” (Feynman), 144–46
American Physical Society (APS), 143–44, 154, 157, 263–72, 273
amplitude, 54–56
Anderson, Carl, 106–7
angular momentum, 100–102, 121
see also spin
anti-K-zero particles, 201–2
antimatter, xii, 41
antiparticles, 106–7, 110–11, 113–14, 131–40, 144–46, 197–98, 201–2
anti-Semitism, 22–23, 36–37
Arithmetica (Diophantus), 9
astrophysics, 20, 82–85, 106–7, 239, 240, 255–61
asymptomatic freedom, 306–7, 309, 312, 319
atomic bomb, 20, 46–47, 67–68, 72, 74, 76–95, 108, 122, 163–64, 194, 273–74, 283
atomic force microscopes, 269–70
atomic number, 66
atomic-scale machines, 270–72
“atomic tweezers,” 270
atoms, 19, 23–35, 84, 107, 171–79, 181–82, 240, 267–72, 294
automata, 278
axial vector (A) interaction, 212–16, 292
“baby universes,” 256
Bacher, Robert, 164, 223
background radiation, 240
backward-in-time reaction, xii, 34–35, 38–42, 47–48, 107, 129–40, 144–46, 148–54, 169, 173, 193
Bader, Mr. (teacher), 8–9, 14, 16–17, 74
Bardeen, John, 189
Barish, Barry, 218–19, 319–20
bar magnets, 203–4
Bell, John, 281
Bell, Mary Louise, 168
Bell Laboratories, 284
Bennett, Charles, 281–82
beta decay, 194, 208, 210, 213–15
Bethe, Hans, 37, 81–86, 90, 92–93, 95, 97, 110, 122–23, 125–27, 129, 139–40, 145, 148, 154, 168, 273–74, 288, 308
Bethe, Rose, 90
Bethe-Feynman formula, 81
Bhagavad Gita, 90–91
“big bang” theory, 240
biology, xii, 20, 222, 267–68
Biology on the Atomic Scale (Feynman), 267–68
bits, information, 265
Bjorken, James, 297, 298–99, 306
Blackett, Patrick, 106–7
black holes, 249–51, 252
Block, Martin, 206–7
Boehm, Felix, 214
Bogan, Louise, 47
Bohr, Niels, 61–62, 100, 112, 119–20, 145–46, 173, 186–87
Boltzmann, Ludwig, xi–xii
Bose, Satyendra, 102, 175
Bose-Einstein condensation, 175–76, 180, 189
bosons, 102, 175, 176, 182, 184, 303–5
branes (higher dimensional objects), 253–54
Brazil, 109–10, 164–67, 168, 169, 212
Brookhaven Laboratory, 301
bubble chambers, 4–5, 169
Buddha, 289–90
cages, atomic, 182
calculating machines, 20, 87, 274–75
calculus, 5, 7, 9
“Calculus for the Practical Man, The” (Feynman), 7
California, University of:
at Berkeley, 92–93, 154, 164
at Los Angeles (UCLA), 214
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), xiv, 143, 164, 165, 168–69, 193, 195, 202, 206, 214–18, 220, 223–29, 244, 263–64, 277, 278, 293–94, 315–20
Cambridge University, 106, 148
Canadian Undergraduate Physics Association, xiii–xiv
cancer, 309, 317
carbon dioxide, 269
carbon nanotubes, 271
cariocas (Brazilian locals), 166, 167
Case (physicist), 156–57
celestial mechanics, 16
cellular automata, 278
centrifuges, 68
Centro Brasiliero de Pesquisas Fisicas, 164–66
CERN, 124, 235, 292, 305
chain reactions, 68, 77, 84
Challenger investigation, xv, 309
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan, 241
Character of Physical Law, The (Feynman), xi–xii, 229
chemistry, 8, 101, 225, 270
Chicago, University of, 68, 77–78, 164, 194–95, 197, 202, 207
Church, George, 269
Clotilde (friend), 165
clusters, galaxy, 260
coal, 83
cobalt 60, 208
cold war, 181
Coleman, Sidney, 236–37, 256, 306
“color,” 305–8
color charges, 306–7
color vision, 226
Columbia University, 119, 128, 142, 208–9
Commonwealth Graduate Fellowship, 149
complex differential equations, 86, 273
complex numbers, 116
computers, 186, 266–67, 273–86, 308–9, 316
computer science, 276–77
condensed matter, 172–79, 181–82, 183, 190–91
conducting polymers, 271
Conference on the Foundations of Quantum Theory (1947), 122–23, 124, 143
Connection Machine, 308
Cooper, Leon, 189
Copacabana, 165, 166–67
Corben, Bert, 98–99
Corben, Mulaika, 98–99
Cornell University, 37, 92–97, 109, 126–27, 148, 152, 156–57, 163, 164, 165, 168, 223, 229, 288
cosines, 7
cosmic rays, 20, 106–7, 240
cosmological constant, 239
cosmology, 20, 82–85, 106–7, 239, 240, 255–61
current, electric, 171
cyclotrons, 154
“dead spots,” 54
decouplets, 290
deep inelastic scattering, 298–99
Delbrück, Max, 222
dense materials science, 172–79, 181–82, 183, 190–91
density, 182, 183
density waves, 183
differential equations, 86, 273
Diophantus, 9
Dirac, Paul, 19, 59–65, 76, 83–84, 97, 102, 103–7, 108, 110–12, 114–16, 118–19, 120, 121, 124, 131, 138, 157, 158, 192, 210, 211, 231, 257
“Dirac sea,” 104–7, 114, 126, 127, 131, 157
dissipation, energy, 173–74, 181–82, 185, 247–48, 281–82, 295–300, 310
DNA, 267–68
down quarks, 291–92, 305
Dyson, Freeman, 37, 98–99, 109, 141, 148–54, 231–32
E=mc2, 29–30, 102, 103–4
eclipses, 241
Eddington, Arthur Stanley, 83, 241
Edson, Lee, 287
effective theory, 310–12
Ehrenfest, Paul, xi–xii
eightfold way, 289–91
Einstein, Albert, 6–7, 19, 22, 27, 39–42, 60, 93, 95, 97, 102, 175, 238, 239–40, 248, 251, 280–81
Einstein Prize, 221
elec
trical engineering, 6
electrical resistance, 170–71
electric motors, 272–73
electromagnetism, 47, 49, 52–53, 56, 58, 62, 63, 69, 71, 72–73, 100, 131, 142, 173. 224–25, 243
see also quantum electrodynamics (QED)
electronics, 67–68
electron microscopes, 269–70, 272
electron-positron (particle-antiparticle) pairs, 113–14, 133–40, 137, 197–98
electrons, 19, 23–35, 38, 54–58, 66, 81, 97, 100–107, 111, 113–14, 126, 127, 128–40, 137, 143–44, 154–56, 157, 173–74, 181–82, 186–88, 190, 197–98, 208–10, 212–13, 294, 297–98, 301
electroweak unification, 304–6, 312
encryption, 284–85
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 264–65
energy:
alternative sources of, 269
atomic levels of, 26–27
conservation of, 199–200
dissipation of, 173–74, 181–82, 185, 247–48, 281–82, 295–300, 310
kinetic, 15–16, 49–50, 177, 258–59
levels of, 49–50, 119–23, 126, 182–88, 189
matter vs., 27, 29–30, 102, 103–6, 113, 125, 126, 151, 177, 238–39, 241, 250–51, 257–60, 306–7, 309–13
negative, 102–7, 114, 126, 127, 131, 157
nonzero, 174
positive, 102–3, 114, 174
potential, 15–16, 49–50, 257–59, 309–13
quanta of, 28
radiation of, 27–28, 33, 35, 173, 247–48 250–251, 281–82, 295–300, 310
reabsorption of, 29–32, 38
self-, 23–24, 30, 41–42, 111–12, 115–23, 124, 136–39, 137, 150–51, 159
solar, 82–85
states of, 102–6, 113, 125, 126, 151, 170–75, 177, 181–85, 187–88
thermal, 174, 183, 248, 250–51, 275
total, 257–58
transfer of, 29
zero, 102–3, 118, 257–58, 306–7
engineering, 6, 67, 81, 226, 263, 270–73
Engineering and Science, 263
entropy, xi–xii
Esalen, 234
Escher, M. C., 199
Euclidean space, 258