“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.”
Richard Feynman, was an American theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era. He is famous for remaking quantum electrodynamics, which describes how light interacts with matter and how charged particles interact with each other. His work altered the way science understands the nature of waves and particles and won him the Nobel Prize. He was also handpicked by Oppenheimer for the Manhattan project that produced the first nuclear weapons in WW2.
This book is about none of that.
In a collection of loosely held together autobiographical anecdotes Richard Feynman invites the reader to see the other side of a colourful life that was never published in press or papers. In this book you meet him as a very curious character whose inquisitiveness takes him from cracking safes, playing bongo drums, selling art, deciphering Mayan Codex, learning languages, figuring out the numbers behind gambling and more. He is a bold, colourful personality who has no time for societal rituals or formalities. He has no notions of false dignity or excessive self importance. His faith in natures simple truths, skepticism and impatience with mediocrity left a deep impression on all those who knew him and continue to learn about him
What struck me was his unrelenting passion for learning new things and asking questions. You would think a Nobel prize winning physicist would only be passionate about physics or science but Feynman was curious about everything that snagged his interest. Most memoirs are self serving and aggrandising but this book is unique because it appears to have no agenda at-all - Feynman just happens to be really interested in sharing his stories rather than how they make him look. And he has a lot of stories to tell for he is a man who has built his entire life doing what interested him and exploring what he wanted.
The book works its way from his childhood to university years. It gives a good few chapters to Los Alamos where he worked on the Manhattan project before moving on to Cornell, Brazil and Caltech decades. Since it’s a collection of anecdotal stories there is no order to the timelines. Between the pages he leaves the reader with very important lessons that he learnt on the crossroads of science and life. Experiment, question, explore and never take data for granted.
This book will have you laughing unexpectedly at his antics like when he makes up Italian just to confuse people, or when he play pranks on his fellow colleagues in Princeton and MIT. It shows that life as a scientist can be interesting and adventurous - you just need to have the attitude for it.
Best way to close the weekend? Watch David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Our planet is headed for disaster and we need to quickly learn how work with nature rather than against it and he’s going to tell you how. It’s available on Netflix.
-Saima
Richard Feyman seems like a very interesting person!
David Attenborough and the Netflix season Our Planet pulls at my heart’s strings. The planet does need our help: we need to care more. Use our resources carefully. The most crucial thing is not to disturb the balance of nature; which we are.