| THE THEORY OF FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES by Richard P. Feynman Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1987 (1963) 61-18180 ISBN 0-8053-2507 THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS Vol. I - Mainly Mechanics, Radiation and Heat Vol. II - Mainly Electromagnetism and Matter Vol. III - Quantum Mechanics by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA 1963 63-20717 THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW by Richard P. Feynman MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1965 67-14527 ISBN 262 56003 8 (pbk) "SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" - ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by Edward Hutchings Norton, New York 1985 Bantom, New York 1989 QC16.F49A3 1989 530'.092'4 [B] 88-47879 ISBN 0553 34668-7 (pbk) QED: THE STRANGE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER by Richard P. Feynman Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1985 ISBN 0-691-08388-6 ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures by Richard P. Feynman and Steven Weinberg Lecture notes compiled by Richard MacKenzie and Paul Doust Forward by John C. Taylor Cambridge University Press , New York 1987 QC793.28F49 1987 539.7'21dc19 ISBN 521 340004 "WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?" - FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton Norton, New York 1988 TUVA OR BUST! RICHARD FEYNMAN'S LAST JOURNEY by Ralph Leighton Norton, New York 1991 QC16.F49L45 1991 957.5dc20 90-42206 ISBN 0-393-02953-0 GENIUS - THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN by James Gleick Pantheon Books, New York 1992 QC16.F49G54 1992 530'.092dc20 [B] 92-6577 ISBN 0-679-40836-3 Richard P. Feynman was (and is) a hero to me, as he was (and is) to physics students and colleagues around the world. When he died on February 15th, 1988, the world lost one of the finest theoretical physicist and one of the finest teachers of the 20th century. Hans Bethe of Cornell University, paraphrasing the mathematician Mark Kac, said there are two kinds of geniuses. The ordinary kind does great things but lets other scientists feel that they could do the same if only they worked hard enough. The other kind performs magic. "A magician does things that nobody else can do and that seem completely unexpected," Dr. Bethe said, "and that's Feynman." To his scientific colleagues, Richard Feynman was a magician of the highest caliber. Architect of quantum theories, 'enfant terrible' of the atomic bomb project, caustic critic of the space shuttle commission, Nobel Prize winner for work that gave physicists a new and easier way of describing and calculating the interactions of subatomic particles, Richard Feynman left his mark on virtually every area of modern physics. Originality was his obsession. Never content with what he knew or with what others knew, Feynman ceaselessly questioned scientific truths. But there was another side to him, one which made him a legendary figure among scientists. His curiosity moved well beyond things scientific: he taught himself how to play drums, to give massages, to write Chinese, to crack safes. Because almost all Feynman's work originated with the spoken word, and because its publication took so many shapes, formal and informal, no final bibliography will ever be compiled. Neither Feynman nor Caltech Libraries maintain more than a partial listing. Some lectures were published repeatedly, in journals and collections, in versions that very slightly or not at all. Others exist only in the form of Feynman's notes before the fact, a student's handwritten notes after the fact, a university preprint, a typed transcript, an edited or unedited conference proceeding, a file on a computer disk, or a videotape or audiotape. Some manuscripts are virtually intact and publishable; others are no more than notes on a placemat; and in between is an unbroken continuum. What I, as reviewer, attempt to do here is introduce you, the reader, to some of the writings by and about Feynman that have become a part of my life. THE THEORY OF FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES are notes on a special series of lectures that Feynman gave during a visit to Cornell University in 1958. Feynman's first academic position was as Professor at Cornell in the Fall of 1945. He later moved to Caltech, so this was a visit to his old institution in 1958. Feynman: "That part of physics that we do understand today (electrodynamics, beta-decay, isotropic spin rules, strangeness) has a kind of simplicity which is often lost in the complex formulations believed to be necessary to ultimately understand the dynamics of strong interactions. To prepare oneself to be the theoretical physicist who will some day find the key to these strong interactions, it might be thought that a full knowledge of all these complicated formulations would be necessary. That may be so, but the exact opposite may also be so; it may be necessary to stay away from the corners where everyone else has already worked unsuccessfully. In any event, it is always a good idea to try analysis of those situations which have been experimentally checked. This is necessary to get a clearer idea of what is essential in our present knowledge and what can be changed without serious conflict with experiments". THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS, Vols. I, II, III, were written as undergraduate texts, and though contain plenty of math, are an absolute joy to read. Feynman was known to be a brilliant physicist, and a brilliant teacher. Feynman wrote in his preface, "The lectures here are not in any way meant to be a survey course, but are very serious. I thought to address them to the most intelligent in the class and to make sure, if possible, that even the most intelligent [freshman] student was unable to completely encompass everything that was in the lecturesby putting in suggestions of applications of the ideas and concepts in various directions outside the main line of attack. For this reason, though, I tried very hard to make all the statements as accurate as possible, to point out in every case where the equations and ideas fitted into the body of physics, and howwhen they learned morethings would be modified. I also felt that for such students it is important to indicate what it is that they shouldif they are sufficiently cleverbe able to understand by deduction from what has been said before, and what is being put in as something new. When [new] ideas came in, I would try either to deduce them if they were deducible, or to explain that it was a new idea which hadn't any basis in terms of things they had already learned and which was not supposed to be provablebut was just added in". Feynman was pessimistic about the success of his course, yet these lectures have become classics. He did not think he had done well by the students. Feynman continues in his preface, "I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teachera situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal. Perhaps my lectures can make some contribution. Perhaps in some small place where there are individual teachers and students, they may get some inspiration or some ideas from the lectures. Perhaps they will have fun thinking them throughor going on to develop some of the ideas further". The seven chapters which make up Feynman's THE CHARACTER OF PHYSICAL LAW were lectures presented as the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University in 1964. They were delivered to an audience of students who wished to know in general terms more about 'The Character of Physical Law'. These lectures were not given from a prepared manuscript, but were delivered extempore from a few notes. This book is a transcript of those lectures made by the BBC Science and Features Department. The subject matter is described by the chapter titles: 1. The Law of Gravitation, an example of Physical Law 2. The Relation of Mathematics to Physics 3. The Great Conservation Principles 4. Symmetry in Physical Law 5. The Distinction of Past and Future 6. Probability and Uncertainty - the Quantum Mechanical view of Nature 7. Seeking New Laws It is truly a delight to read "SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" - ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER. And like a book on tape that you can listen to over and over, one tends to read Feynman's stories over and over bringing inspiration and a smile each time read. Richard P. Feynman solved the mystery of liquid helium. He also painted a Roman slave girl for a massage parlor, played a skillful frigideira in a Brazilian samba band, and accompanied ballet on the bongo drums. He was judged both mentally deficient by a United States Army psychiatrist and worthy of the Nobel Prize for physics by the Swedish Academy. If a more curious character ever walked the halls of science, he or she never wrote a book. "SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!" is based on taped conversations with his friend and drumming partner, Ralph Leighton. As befits a great teacher and storyteller, little was changed from Feynman's spoken words. His unique mixture of intelligence, curiosity, skepticism, and chutzpah comes off the page as vibrantly as if her were in the room. Ralph Leighton writes in his short preface, "The stories in this book were collected intermittently and informally during seven years of very enjoyable drumming with Richard Feynman. I have found each story by itself to be amusing, and the collection taken together to be amazing: That one person could have so many wonderfully crazy things happen to him in one life is sometimes hard to believe. That one person could invent so much innocent mischief in one life is surely an inspiration"! QED: THE STRANGE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER is the text and diagrams from four lectures Feynman gave for the general public with the clarity, accuracy, and completeness that have made his lectures famous. Assuming little scientific background of his readers, he describes the interactions of light and electronsabsurd, he points out, from the point of view of common sense, yet underlying almost everything we observe in the physical world. QED stands for the forbiddingly named theory of quantum electrodynamics. This book is a venture that, in all probability, was never previously trieda straightforward, honest explanation of a rather difficult subject for a nontechnical audience. It is designed to give the interested reader an appreciation for the kind of thinking that physicists have resorted to in order to explain how Nature behaves. As a boy, Richard Feynman was inspired to study calculus from a book that began, "What one fool can do, another can." He dedicated QED to his readers with similar words: "What one fool can understand, another can." John C. Taylor writes in the forward to ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures, "Paul Dirac was one of the finest physicists of this century. The development of quantum mechanics began at the turn of the century, but it was Dirac who in 1925-26, brought the subject to its definitive form, creating a theory as compelling as Newton's mechanics had been. "Dirac immediately set about reconciling the quantum theory with Einstein's special theory of relativity (of 1905). The nature of the marriage between these two marvelous theories, and the fruits of that union, have been the constant preoccupation of fundamental physics from 1925 to the present day. Dirac contributed more than anyone else to this crucial enterprise, including in 1930 the prediction of the existence of antimatter. "Dirac died in 1984, and St John's College, Cambridge (Dirac's college), very generously endowed an annual lecture to be held a Cambridge University in Dirac's memory. The first two Dirac Lectures, printed in ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, are contrasting variations on Dirac's theme of the union of quantum theory and relativity. "Richard Feynman, in the years since the Second World War, did more than anyone else to evolve Dirac's relativistic quantum theory into a general and powerful method of making physical predictions about the interactions of particles and radiation. His work complements Dirac's in a remarkable way. His style of doing physics has been vastly influential. His lecture here, which gives some flavour of that style, expounds the physical reality underlying Dirac's prediction of antimatter. "The crowning achievement to date of the relativistic quantum theory has been the unification of electricity and magnetism on the one hand (themselves unified by Maxwell a century ago) with the the weak forces of radioactive decay on the other. Steven Weinberg is one of the chief authors of this unification, in work which predicted the existence and properties of new particles (weighing as much as heavy atoms), which were subsequently triumphantly produced, precisely as predicted, at the European laboratory CERN in Geneva in 1983. This echoed Dirac's prediction, half a century earlier, of the positron and its subsequent discovery, though the energy necessary to produce a positron was 100 000 times less. "In his lecture, Weinberg shows how tightly quantum theory and relativity together constrain the laws of Nature, and he speculates how Einstein's theory of gravitation (of 1915) will be reconciled with quantum theory. "We in Cambridge were fortunate that these two leading physicists agreed to commemorate Dirac by coming to lecture here. They drew audiences of several hundred undergraduates and and graduates, some of them physicists, some not. Both Feynman and Weinberg have been concerned to explain physics to nonspecialists, and we hope that this volume too will interest a wide readership. "Dirac stated his philosophy of physics in the sentence 'physical laws should have mathematical beauty. Dirac, Feynman and Weinberg have each made beautiful theories which have been spectacularly upheld in experimental tests. But the experiment, outside the scope of these Lectures, are another story". "WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?" - FURTHER ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER is a bit more serious that its predecessor. Ralph Leighton explains, "BECAUSE of the appearance of 'SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!' a few things need to be explained here. "First, although the central character in this book is the same as before, the 'adventures of a curious character' here are different: some are light and some tragic, but most of the time Mr. Feynman is surely not jokingalthough it's often hard to tell. "Second, the stories in this book fit together more loosely than those in 'SURELY YOU'RE JOKING...,' where they were arranged chronologically to give a semblance of order. (That resulted in some readers getting the mistaken idea that SYJ is an autobiography.) My motivation is simple: ever since hearing my first Feynman stories, I have had the powerful desire to share them with others. "Finally, most of these stories were not told at drumming sessions, as before. I will elaborate on this in the brief outline that follows. "Part 1, 'A Curious Character.' begins by describing the influence of those who most shaped Feynman's personalityhis father, Mel, and his first love, Arlene. The first story was adapted from 'The Pleasure of Finding Things Out,' a BBC program [aired on PBS's NOVA series] produced by Christopher Sykes. The story of Arlene, from which the title of this book was taken, was painful for Feynman to recount. It was assembled over the past ten years out of pieces from six different stories. When it was finally complete, Feynman was especially fond of this story, and happy to share it with others. "The other Feynman stories in Part 1, although generally lighter in tone, are included here because there won't be a second volume of SYJ. Feynman was particularly proud of 'It's as Simple as One, Two, Three," which he occasionally thought of writing up as a psychology paper. The letters in the last chapter of Part 1 have been provided courtesy of Gweneth Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and Henry Bethe. "Part 2, 'Mr. Feynman Goes to Washington,' is, unfortunately, Feynman's last big adventure. The story is particularly long because its content is still timely. (Shorter versions have appeared in ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE and PHYSICS TODAY.) It was not published sooner because Feynman underwent his third and fourth major surgeriesplus radiation, hyperthermia, and other treatmentssince serving on the Rogers Commission [which investigated the Challenger accident]. "Feynman's decade-long battle against cancer ended on February 15, 1988, two weeks after he taught his last class at Caltech. I decided to include one of the most eloquent and inspirational speeches, 'The Value of Science,' as an epilogue". TUVA OR BUST! RICHARD FEYNMAN'S LAST JOURNEY was also aired on PBS's NOVA series. "So you think you know every county in the world?" The mischievous voice was that of Richard Feynman, world-renowned physicist and prankster par excellence. "Uh, sure," answered Ralph Leighton, Feynman's sidekick, fellow drummer, and geography enthusiast. The scene was the Feynman's dinner table; the year. 1977. "Okay," Feynman went on, "then whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?" "Tannu what? I never heard of it, " replied Ralph. "There is no such country." "When I was a kid," Richard continued, "I used to collect stamps. There were some wonderful triangular and diamond-shaped stamps that came from a place called Tannu Tuva. In the 1930's it was a purple splotch on the map near Outer Mongolia, but I've never heard anything about it ever since." Still doubtful, Leighton followed Feynman to his favorite book, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, looking for Tuva. There it was, a notch in northwest Mongolia, masquerading as the Tuvinskaya ASSR, deep in the heart of Asia, isolated and inaccessible. "Look at this!" exclaimed Richard. "Its capital is Kyzyl. A place that's spelled K-Y-Z-Y-L has just got to be interesting." Feynman and Leighton grinned and shook hands. Each knew what the other was thinking: We will go to Tuva together! During their decade-long quest to reach Tannu Tuva, Richard Feynman struggled with recurring bouts of cancer and with NASA bureaucracy as a member of the Rogers Commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger disaster. His protege often had to make forays into the unknown without him. TUVA OR BUST! chronicles the deepening friendship of two zany strategists whose laughter, love of the absurd, and sense of the utter gravity of fun is infectious. The journey to Tuva was Richard Feynman's last adventure, a journey of the mind and spirit. One could have no better guide and companion. News of Feynman's death was slow to reach Moscow. In early March Gweneth received a letter dated February 19, 1988. The letterhead was adorned with two busts of Lenin. The text said: Dear Professor R. P. Feynman, I have the great pleasure to invite you, your wife, and four of your colleagues to visit the Soviet Union as the guests of the USSR Academy of Sciences. I was informed by the corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Prof. A. P. Kapitsa, that you would like to visit Tuva ASSR and get acquainted with its sightseeings. We consider the most favourable time for such a trip to be the period of May and June of this year. Your trip will take three to four weeks. I hope that during your tour you will have time to meet Soviet colleagues in Novosibirsk and Moscow who know your activities and works and, undoubtedly, will be very pleased to meet you. Kindly note that the USSR Academy of Sciences will cover expenses on your and your colleagues' staying in the USSR. Yours sincerely, Academician E. P. Velikhov In GENIUS - THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN, James Gleick, author of the acclaimed best-seller CHAOS, shows us a Feynman few have seen. He penetrates beyond the gleeful showman depicted in Feynman's own memoirs and reveals a darker Feynman: his ambition, his periods of despair and uncertainty, his intense emotional nature. Gleick explores the nature of genius, our obsession with it and why the very idea may belong to another time. GENIUS records the life of a scientist who has forever changed scienceand changed what it means to know something in this uncertain century. Gleick writes, "Feynman resented the polished myths of most scientific history, but when he had ascended to the top of the physicists' mental pantheon of heroes, he had created a myth of his own. The reputation, apart from the person, became an edifice standing monumentally amid the rest of the scenery of modern science. Feynman diagrams, Feynman integrals, and Feynman rules joined Feynman stories in the language that physicists share. They would say of a promising young colleague, 'He's no Feynman, but...' When he entered a room where physicists had gatheredthe student cafeteria at the California Institute of Technology, or the auditorium at any scientific meetingwith him would come a shift in the noise level, a disturbance of the field that seemed to radiate from where he was carrying his tray or taking his front-row seat. Even his senior colleagues tried to look without looking. Younger physicists were drawn to Feynman's rough glamour. They practiced imitating his handwriting and his manner of throwing equations onto the blackboard. One group held a half-serious debate on the question Is Feynman human? They envied the inspiration that came (so it seemed to them) in flashes. They admired him for other qualities as well: a faith in nature's simple truths, a skepticism about official wisdom, and an impatience with mediocrity. "After he died several colleagues tried to write his epitaph. One was Julian Schwinger, in a certain time not just his colleague but his pre-eminent rival, who chose these words: 'An honest man, the outstanding intuitionist of our age, and a prime example of what may lie in store for anyone who dares to follow the beat of a different drum.'" -S. Wormley | |
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