An instructor at cal tech for thirty years, Nobel prize laureate for physics, in charge of the team that performed the complex calculations needed for the Manhattan project in Los Alamos. He lead this team at a time before computers, when men with pencils computed the complex mathematics by hand and by formulas. Feynman’s ability to lead this team, was nothing short of fantastic by all accounts.
He said that his love of science was instilled in him by his father, a salesman who wanted to be a scientist. He taught his son to notice things. Feynman states, “he knew the difference between knowing something and just knowing the name for something. He talked about an example of when he was a young boy an dhe had a ball in the back of his wagon. When he started, the ball rolled to the back. When he stopped, the ball rolled to the front. His father said, “no one knows why this is. It’s called inertia, and things at rest, tend to want to stay at rest. Things in motion tend to want to stay in motion, until and unless some force acts upon it. That’s the difference between knowing the name of something and the reason why it exist/true understanding.
In July of 1945, while still working on his PhD, he went to work with Dr. Oppenheimer on the Manhattan project. Dr. Feynman speaks of the moral question. He says he didn’t remember the reason why they were doing what they were doing. Germany was the enemy and they were also working on the problem, so the race was to do it first, and the fate of the world rested on their shoulders. Ocne Germany was defeated. Feynman faults himself for not once again re-evaluating his reasons for working on the project. Feynman talks about the wild celebrations that went on after the bomb was drooped on Hiroshima. He talks of champagne being popped, people getting drunk, yelling, celebrating, blissful… and the death and destruction and suffering in japan.
While working on the Manhattan project, he fell in love with and married a beautiful woman. A woman who was expected to die of tuberculosis. Her name was Arline Feynman. He realized that the only way he could care for her and also be with her, is if he married her. INH had been invented and she had taken the medication for a few months, but it was too late. She died.
Feynman formed a great relationship with an artist, and he decided that he would teach him physics if the artist taught him art. They did this on Sundays and they continued it for a number of years until Feynman become a very good artist. His artist friend would say that he could look at a flower and enjoy it’s beauty, but that a scientist would break that all down and not be able to enjoy the simple beauty. Feynman disagreed. He said that his knowledge of the mystery of cell biology, what was happening on the cell level, the biological level, the microscopic level, in addition to the colors, the sweetness of the smell,t he nectar and pollen, and the seeming awareness of the plant of itself and it’s surroundings added to the mystery, rather then subtracting from it.
Feynman won his Nobel prize for his work in physics and electrodynamics and electromagnetic physics. He shared the prize with two other scientist that also discovered the process of taking into account the phenomenon. Feynman also devised a way to diagram the processes that ignored the wave part of particles all together and focused on the particle behavior. It was described as a “very powerful” method. Another scientist speaking on the subject stated, “it never occurred to us to make a drawing and to combine the protons an electrons int his way.”
Feynman did not like honors. Saying, “I don’t like honors, I appreciate them, but I don’t like them. the prize is the discovery, the knowledge, the accomplishment. These are the real things. Honors are epaulets and uniforms. This bothers me.” Feynman talks about receiving an academic honor in school and then being awarded membership in a society. He said the major work of the society was in deciding who should be let into the society. He said he resigned from the national academy of science for this very same reason. “the whole thing was rotten”
Another friend agrees that Feynman did not like honrs per se, but also, in a way he did like them, because it gave him the “credentials to be quirky”. Feynman also learned to become an accomplished bongo player.
He met a guy flying kites in baja California. Feynman had to go to Lucienne Switzerland and the kite flying friend also had business so they went together. When they got there, Feynman talked to a scientist about a large two story experiment that they had going on. It was tons of people, and knobs and levels. When the other scientist was explaining the experiment, he remembered that the theory they were testing was one of Feynman’s theories, so he said, “this is to test one of your theories.” Feynman said, “how much did it cost?” the man said, “$37 million” Feynman said, “what? Don’t you trust me?”
Feynman loved imagination, but not so much the idea of “creativity” he called what he did “imagination in a straight jacket” meaning, that given all of the laws, and understanding of how the world worked, what is possible? It has to agree with what we already know, or what can we imagine that we already know?”
In 1978 Feynman began a 10 year battle with cancer. He had 4 cancer operations, not knowing if he would survive the first one. He had a strange form of cancer that never metastasized, but began in his kidney and grew around in tentacles around it, but never metastasizing. Shortly before his first surgery, someone had found an error in a paper that he had written with another scientist. Feynman weak, sick and close to death took on the problem a few days before his first surgery, plunged completely absorbed intot he problem. The other scientist could not do the calculations that Feynman could , so he could only watch. After 6 hours they gave up, but all the shile, they knew that the error was trivial, and not important. They finally decided to call it quits. Two hours later, Feynman called the other scientist to say that he had found the error. He was exhilarated, and walking on air.
Perhaps Feynman was best known for his work on the investigation of the space shuttle challenger tragedy. His work on the committee gave it instant credibility. he searched for the answer, looking in all the regular places, asking all of the questions that should be asked. He was able to see that the problem was simple and basic. So basic that he had to ask the question of how the tragedy was allowed to happen. The big wigs at NASA did not want anyone to think the space shuttle wasn't capable of hundreds of missions. the engineers knew it wasn't. The problems were ignored and the astronauts died as a result. when Feynman demanded that the evidence be included, those in power argued that it would be put in the appendix. when they said that they wanted a watered down version of what had been found, Feynman threatened to not sign his name to the report. they backed down, and Feynman was once again thrust into the public spotlight two years before his death.
In facing his death, he had a good ten years to contemplate it from when he was first diagnosed with Cancer. He figured that although he would die, he had shared so much of himself with so many individuals, that he would not really, ever truly die.
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