Richard Feynman

American physicist

• Born: May 11, 1918; New York, New York
• Died: February 15, 1988; Los Angeles, California

Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman was a groundbreaking physicist who helped to combine classical electrodynamics and quantum physics into a theory that guided the formation of modern physics.

Primary field: Physics

Specialties: Quantum mechanics; theoretical physics

Early Life

Richard P. Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York. His father, Melville, was originally from Minsk and worked as a sales manager. He influenced Feynman greatly by teaching him to question everything. Feynman’s mother Lucille, a homemaker, helped to mold the sense of humor for which he was noted. His parents were of Russian and Polish descent and Jewish, although not devout. He had a younger brother, Henry, who died as an infant, and a younger sister, Joan, who also went on to become a physicist.

Feynman showed a talent for electronics and engineering from an early age. He dismantled radios and repaired electronics and was remarkably gifted in mathematics. Feynman learned both integral and differential calculus by the time he was fifteen, and he experimented with math and reinvented mathematical topics that he had not yet learned. He was an honor student in high school and won the New York University Math Championship in his senior year. His final score was so far ahead of the rest of the participants that the judges were reportedly openly amazed.

After high school, Feynman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. While still an undergraduate, he took a graduate-level course in physics and published an article in Physical Review. He received his bachelor’s degree with honors in 1939, and he was named a Putnam Fellow, which placed him as one of the top five scorers in a mathematics competition for colleges in the United States and Canada. Feynman earned a perfect score in mathematics and physics on the graduate school entrance exams for Princeton University—a feat never before accomplished. Feynman’s grades in history, literature, and fine arts were, however, close to the bottom of the class.

Feynman’s first seminar that he gave at Princeton was attended by such luminaries in physics as Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Feynman’s PhD thesis explored the relationship between quantum mechanics and classic electrodynamics and laid the groundwork for his future Nobel Prize. His mathematical solutions, applied to different aspects of physics, were seen as an important step in the development of physics. In 1941, he married his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum. Feynman received his PhD in 1942.

Life’s Work

While at Princeton, Feynman was asked to work on the Manhattan Project—the research program for developing the atomic bomb. He was persuaded to join the program after learning the goal of developing the bomb before Nazi Germany could develop the weapon first. He worked in the theory division and helped develop the formula to determine the yield of a fission bomb. Feynman’s sense of humor came into play during the secluded stay at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He picked the locks of other scientists’ filing cabinets and left notes, leading some to believe that there was a spy in their midst. He also went to an isolated section of the mesa to pound a drum, creating a rumor about a Native American drummer. His wife Arline died from tuberculosis a month before the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb, at which Feynman was present.

Another of his important contributions at Los Alamos was the discovery of how to calculate how close a mass was to criticality—that is, the point where fissionable material can sustain a chain reaction by itself. This helped establish safety procedures for storing fissile materials. After Feynman saw the devastation at Hiroshima, he expressed regret at not having left the project when Germany was defeated.

After the war, Feynman turned down an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study despite the prestige of the position. He instead went to Cornell University, where he taught theoretical physics from 1945 to 1950. He experienced a bout of depression after the bombing of Hiroshima and worked on solving physics problems to relax rather than to further research. He developed an explanation for a balancing, spinning dish that would later feature in his Nobel Prize work. Other universities offered him professorships, and in 1950 he accepted one from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which promised a milder climate than that of New York. He married Mary Lou Bell in 1952, but they divorced in 1954.

At Caltech, Feynman constantly strove to take complex issues in physics and make them understandable at a layperson’s level, which would earn him the nickname “The Great Explainer.” Memorization of facts with no discovery through experiment was abhorrent to him, a position he strongly advocated. Feynman married his third wife Gwyneth Howarth in 1960. They had a son and a daughter.

At Caltech, Feynman conducted research on the behavior of super-cooled helium, which allowed physicists to see quantum behavior on an observable level, and he developed a model for weak decay. He also developed Feynman diagrams, which can be used to note and calculate the interactions between particles in space-time. Additionally, Feynman’s undergraduate lectures were compiled into a physics textbook, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963). The book has sold millions of copies and is considered the best introduction to college-level physics. His memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985), spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

Feynman also helped to develop the first massively parallel computer, and in 1986, he served on the presidential commission to determine the cause of the Challenger space shuttle explosion; despite having been diagnosed with cancer, he persevered and found the design flaw in the rubber rings used in the joints of the fuel boosters. He died in Los Angeles on February 15, 1988, from complications from his disease.

Impact

Feynman was a groundbreaking physicist who helped to usher in the modern age of physics. He helped to develop the atomic bomb, and he solved the mathematics problems that united the disparate elements of quantum and electrodynamic physics. In 1965, Feynman won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, and he also received the Albert Einstein Award (1954) and the E. O. Lawrence Award (1962). He developed Feynman diagrams, which physicists use as a tool to track particle interactions.

He was an educator who inspired his students to learn through experiment and experience—what he considered to be the true ideals of science. His unique personality and strong drive to question everything brought physics to the attention of the public instead of keeping it sequestered in a research lab. His breakthroughs and discoveries in the fields of mathematics and physics are still used today.

Bibliography

Feynman, Richard Phillips, and Laurie M. Brown. Feynman’s Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2010. Print. Describes the development of Feynman’s thesis and explains the thought process that led to his groundbreaking theories.

---, Ralph Leighton, and Edward Hutchings. “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: Bantum, 1989. Print. A series of anecdotes relating Feynman’s life in his own words. His views on learning through understanding and questioning everything come through the humor.

Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Pantheon, 1992. Print. Biography of Feynman covering his scientific achievements and his personality.

Krauss, Lawrence M. Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science. New York: Norton, 2011. Print. A biography of Feynman that discusses the physicist’s life and personality, as well as his scientific legacy. Includes information from Feynman’s lectures.

Ottaviani, Jim, and Leland Myrick. Feynman. New York: First Second, 2011. Print. Biography in graphic novel format provides insight into Feynman’s life from childhood through his work on the Challenger disaster.