{"id":2365,"date":"2011-05-23T01:00:17","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T05:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info-libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=2365"},"modified":"2023-07-12T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T16:11:59","slug":"1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/05\/23\/1997\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 137 – 1997: “Surely You\u2019re Joking, Mr. Feynman!\u201d: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman, as told to Ralph Leighton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published: Ashland, Ore., 1997\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Surely you\u2019ve heard of Richard Feynman! Library shelves groan under the weight of books by and about the illustrious theoretical physicist. In addition to his towering scientific contributions, he was an expert safecracker, player of the bongos and the frigideira, visual artist (pseudonym \u201cOfey\u201d), fan of Tuvan throat singing, and prankster extraordinaire. You couldn\u2019t make this guy up \u2013 though \u201cRichard Feynman\u201d has also been a character on screen and on Broadway. It\u2019s not everyone who\u2019s been played by both Alan Alda (in QED<\/em> at Lincoln Center) and Matthew Broderick (in the bio-pic Infinity<\/em>).<\/p>\n

A Nobel Prize winner in 1965, Feynman made contributions to many of the most significant developments in physics of the 20th century. He won the Nobel for his work in the 1940s on the theory of quantum electrodynamics (or QED), which deals with the interaction between light and matter. With his \u201csum over paths\u201d approach, he reformulated QED, which had been mathematically unwieldy and untidy, the equations sometimes breaking down and yielding infinities. The notation he developed to represent the interactions of elementary particles in an intuitive way, christened \u201cFeynman diagrams,\u201d revolutionized theoretical physics.<\/p>\n

In addition to his work on QED, Feynman devised a quantum-mechanical explanation for the superfluidity of helium in 1953; he developed a theory with Murray Gell-Mann of the weak force (the force behind radioactive decay) in 1958; and he posited the existence of point-like sub-nuclear entities he called \u201cpartons\u201d (later to be reconciled with Gell-Mann\u2019s quarks) while working with experimenters at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in 1968. Oh, and did we mention he was part of the Manhattan Project during World War II?<\/p>\n

Beyond his brilliance as a theorist, Feynman was also a legendary teacher. The Feynman Lectures on Physics<\/em>, developed from his Caltech teaching and published in three volumes in the 1960s, is considered a classic, and several other textbooks and popular books followed. His celebrity grew in the 1980s. Feynman was a maverick member of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. To many, he\u2019s remembered as the guy who submerged an O-ring in ice water on TV, demonstrating the rings\u2019 failure at cold temperatures.<\/p>\n

By then Feynman had already made his mark in the wider public with Surely You\u2019re Joking, Mr. Feynman!<\/em>, a collection of humorous anecdotes published in 1985 and a surprise bestseller. The book recounts hijinks (scientific and extracurricular) from Feynman\u2019s youth and college years at MIT through his unconventional professional years at Caltech. (You can read his MIT undergraduate thesis here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The text of Surely You\u2019re Joking <\/em>originated from recorded conversations between Feynman and his friend Ralph Leighton, and the written words were \u201clittle changed from their spoken form,\u201d according to the print book\u2019s dust jacket. This audio edition from 1997, read by Raymond Todd, might be an even more authentic way to get to know the freewheeling physicist and raconteur.<\/p>\n

Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: Ashland, Ore., 1997 Surely you\u2019ve heard of Richard Feynman! Library shelves groan under the weight of books by and about the illustrious theoretical physicist. In addition to his towering scientific contributions, he was an expert safecracker, player of the bongos and the frigideira, visual artist (pseudonym \u201cOfey\u201d), fan of Tuvan throat singing, and prankster extraordinaire. You couldn\u2019t make this guy up \u2013 though \u201cRichard Feynman\u201d has also been a character on screen and on Broadway. It\u2019s not everyone who\u2019s been played by both Alan Alda (in QED at Lincoln Center) and Matthew Broderick (in the bio-pic Infinity). A Nobel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-years"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2365"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4329,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions\/4329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}