Feynman's stories

The slim book by Richard Feynman, the eminent theoretical physicist, contains stories from his life, Ralph Leighton has collected at irregular intervals over the course of seven years; The focus is not Feynman as a scientist in the foreground, in the first place is interesting and humorous stories from different periods of life, told in the tradition of Mark Twain, stories so how could they tell in a bar sure to the delight of Mr. Feynman.

It begins with a typical Feynman anecdote as other youngster of eleven, twelve years: he was interested in, inter alia, for the then usual simple tube radios and occasionally earned some money with repairs; in a particular case, the radio works in principle, but grumbled after turning for a while quite horribly Feynman found the cause of the problem: simply by thinking.

Towards the end of the Second World War, Richard Feynman working as a young physicist on the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb project the United States; he had his pleasure, thereby bringing the military security guards in embarrassment, as he himself wrote encrypted letters with his wife and his father; after it was prohibited, they cut the stationery to Puzzel- particles. In the laboratories at Los Alamos safes have been used to store secret documents, Feynman has fun to unravel their closing mechanism, he changed his various tricks to get behind the numerical codes, and advanced over time to experienced safecracker.

Although Feynman's main interest has always been considered the natural sciences, he had to talk with all sorts of interesting people and a lot of fun; a whole section is devoted to episodes of his artist friend Jirayr Zorthian, after endless debates, whether a scientist or an artist could better explain the world, they decided mutually to teach on the weekends, physics and drawing. While Feynman's initial attempts were rather miserably, he became an accomplished draftsman, the matter eventually paved real joy, he even sold some drawings and had an exhibition at the Faculty Club of Caltech.

In the bow colorful adventure also some stories about Feynman's career are interwoven, such as a young professor at Cornell University, his decision to Caltech in Pasadena, and of course the wedging of the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

Through many of these stories, like a red thread, a theme runs: Feynman's unique intellectual independence, he was hardly anything on expert opinion when he is working on a problem, he translated it into his own language, simplified it, it grabbed from any pages, to not infrequently opened an unusual solution. This style he used not only on physical issues but on all sorts of things. He hated it when people with big words auftrumpften, on closer inquiries, but could not even get to the point, what they were talking about, or could provide a striking example of their problem; a problem that he had frequently with representatives of the humanities. Feynman describes his views and experiences with such phenomena of pseudoscience detail in the final chapter he embossing for the concept of cargo cult science, which he first used the occasion of a Caltech graduation ceremony in 1974.

At the end of this collection of stories is a kaleidoscope, that breaks the facets of human Richard Feynman and his varied interests, and certainly they will not all aspects of justice; but enjoyable to read to a large extent. And finally, the book, launched ever since its first publication in 1985 and has since been translated into several languages.

The book appeared in also in German under the title 'to jest well, Mr. Feynman'.