Ruben Glueck

Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

Nobel Prize in 1965

His thesis adviser was John Wheeler.

Notable Contributions

• Path integral formulation of Quantum Mechanics

• Quantum Electrodynamics

• Superfluidity of super cooled liquid helium

• Quantum Computing

• Nano Technology

Feynman Diagrams

Rogers Commission on the Challenger disaster

Feynman served as a doctoral adviser to 31 students.

Publications

• 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

• What Do You Care What Other People Think?

• Tuva or Bust!

• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick

Both his parents were Lithuanian Jews but he was an athiest.

He was a "Late Talker" which means he did not speak until he was 3 years old.

          Albert Einstein and Edward Teller were also late talkers.

His sister Joan was an astrophysicist.

He declined to join Mensa International claiming his IQ was too low (125).

He scored high on the Putnam Mathematics Competition and graduate admission test to Princeton in which he attained a perfect score (an unprecedented feat).

He went to MIT and was not accepted to Columbia because he was Jewish.

Feynman had the insight that positrons behaved like electrons moving backward in time.

His wife Arline Greenbaum had tuberculosis which was incurable at the time.

Feynman was so into physics that he did not hesitate to argue with Bohr when he disagreed with him and perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed up to him.

Feynman noticed that people were careless with safe combinations by leaving them at the factory settings or easily guessed combinations. He liked to play jokes which scared people into thinking saboteurs had gained access to atomic bomb secrets.

Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the atomic explosion at Trinity without dark glasses or welder's lenses reasoning that the truck windshield could block UV radiation.

It will take some work to distribute Feynman on this main Glance and the more detailed information taken to by the following links:

There will be papers, lists and other information on the web not on his main Wikipedia page. The links in Feynman's Wiki give the full picture.

Get Feynman right and then do it for the other scientists following the same pattern.

Early Life          Education          Manhattan Project          Cornell          Caltech

Physics He Worked On                                                             Most Interesting