Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick

  249 HE LATER FELT THAT HE WAS BETTER KNOWN: Kac 1985, 115–16.

  250 THE ELECTRON DOES ANYTHING: Quoted by Dyson in “Comment on the Topic ‘Beyond the Black Hole,’” in Woolf 1980, 376.

  250 FEYNMAN FELT THAT HE HAD UNCOVERED: Feynman 1948a, 377–78.

  250 THE TREACHEROUSLY INNOCENT EXERCISES: See QED.

  251 SEMIEMPIRICAL SHENANIGANS: NL, 451; F-W, 459.

  251 HE PROMISED BETHE AN ANSWER: NL, 449; F-W, 459.

  251 WHEN FEYNMAN HEARD LATE IN THE FALL: F-W, 462 f.

  251 GOD IS GREAT: Rabi to Bethe, 2 December 1947, and Bethe to Rabi, 4 December 1947, BET. Quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

  252 THE SCHWINCER-WEISSKOPF-BETHE CAMP: Feynman to Corbens, 20 March 1948, CIT.

  252 HIS LECTURE DREW A CROWD: “The Prodigy Who Grew,” Newsweek, 23 February 1948, 45–46; William L. Laurence, “New Guide Offered on Atom Research,” New York Times, 1 February 1948; Stephen White, “Physics Society Hears Theory of Electron Action,” New York Herald Tribune, 1 February 1948, 51.

  252 I DID IT TOO, DADDY: F-W, 463–64.

  252 I’M SO SORRY: Rose McSherry to Feynman, 21 January, 1948, PERS.

  253 MONTHS PASSED BEFORE FEYNMAN CALLED: Feynman formally acknowledged the error in a footnote to a paper published the next year; he juggled the footnotes so that the apology would fall in number 13: “That the result… was in error was repeatedly pointed out to the author, in private communication, by V. F. Weisskopf and J. B. French…. The author feels unhappily responsible for the very considerable delay in the publication of French’s result occasioned by this error.” Feynman 1949b, 777; Weisskopf, interview; Weisskopf 1991, 168.

  253 A HOLE IF THERE WERE ONE: Dirac in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 133(1931):60.

  253 SUPPOSE A BLACK THREAD: Feynman 1948f 2–3.

  254 A CORNELL STUDENT WHO HAD SERVED: Schweber 1986a, 488.

  254 A BOMBARDIER WATCHING A SINGLE ROAD: Feynman 1948f, 4; cf. Feynman 1949a, 749.

  254 HE KNEW FROM HIS OLD WORK: Feynman 1947, 1.

  255 USUAL THEORY SAYS NO: Ibid., 4.

  255 IT MAY PROVE USEFUL IN PHYSICS: Ibid.

  256 FEYNMAN GLEEFULLY SAID: Marshak, interview. Instead these mesons were named muon and pion, after Greek letters.

  256 AS THE POCONO MEETING OPENED: Wheeler 1948.

  256 EACH SMALL VOLUME OF SPACE: Ibid.

  257 SCHWINGER HATED THIS: Schwinger, interview.

  257 BETHE NOTICED THAT THE FORMAL MATHEMATICS: F-W, 469; Bethe, interview.

  257 FERMI, GLANCING ABOUT: Segrè 1970, 174.

  257 THIS IS A MATHEMATICAL FORMULA: F-W, 470.

  258 HE THOUGHT IT INTELLECTUALLY REPULSIVE: Schwinger, interview.

  258 BOHR HAS RAISED THE QUESTION: Wheeler 1948.

  258 BOHR CONTINUED FOR LONG MINUTES: F-W, 473; cf. Pais 1986, 459, but this conflates Teller’s and Bohr’s objections.

  258 I HAD TOO MUCH STUFF: F-Sch.

  258 ON HIS FIRST DAY BACK: Arthur Wightman, interview, Princeton, N.J.

  259 YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT I WAS HIGHLY PLEASED: Quoted in Schweber, forthcoming. 259 ANONYMOUSLY, HE HOPED: Feynman 1948e, 9.

  259 A MAJOR PORTION OF THE CONFERENCE: Ibid., 5.

  259 WHEN SCHWINGER SAW FEYNMAN’S NAME: Schwinger 1983, 342.

  260 TOMONAGA, A NATIVE OF TOKYO: Tomonaga 1966, 127–29.

  260 AFTER SUPPER I TOOK UP MY PHYSICS: Quoted in Julian Schwinger, ‘Two Shakers of Physics,” in Brown and Hoddeson 1983, 357–58.

  260 HE MADE A HOME: Schweber, forthcoming.

  261 JUST BECAUSE WE WERE ABLE: Oppenheimer to Members of the Pocono Conference, 5 April 1948, OPP.

  261 OTHER PEOPLE PUBLISH TO SHOW HOW: Dyson 1965a, 428.

  261 SCHWINGER OCCASIONALLY HEARD: Schwinger 1983, 341.

  261 I GATHER I STAND ACCUSED: Ibid.

  261 ARE WE TALKING ABOUT PARTICLES: Schwinger, interview.

  262 YOUR SUDDEN DEPARTURE FROM ITHACA: Lloyd P. Smith to Feynman, 13 June 1947, CIT.

  263 FEYNMAN THOUGHT DYSON: WDY, 65.

  263 DYSON LIKED THE ROLE: Dyson to parents, 25 June 1948.

  263 HE HAD DECIDED THAT MODERN AMERICA: Dyson to parents, 14 June 1948.

  263 AN ATOMIC BLAST ON EAST 20TH STREET: Morrison 1946; SYJ, 118.

  264 DYSON SUDDENLY FELT THAT FEYNMAN: Dyson 1979, 59; Dyson to parents, 25 June 1948.

  264 AS WE DROVE THROUGH CLEVELAND: Dyson 1979, 60–61.

  264 SOMETIMES IT OCCURRED TO HIM: F-W, 532.

  264 DYSON HAD NEVER SEEN RAIN: Dyson 1979, 59.

  264 THE CAR RADIO REPORTED: Dyson to parents, 25 June 1948.

  264 THIS HOTEL IS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT: WDY, 65.

  265 IN THAT LITTLE ROOM: Dyson 1979, 59.

  265 THE ROOM WAS FAIRLY CLEAN: WDY, 66. Dyson, far from taking offense, merely commented that he had left out “the best part of the story.” Dyson 1989, 38.

  266 THAT STORMY NIGHT IN OUR LITTLE ROOM: Dyson 1979, 63.

  266 ON WEDNESDAY OPPENHEIMER RETURNS: Dyson to parents, 10 October 1948, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

  267 THERE WASN’T ENOUGH ROOM: Leonard Eyges to Dyson, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

  267 A UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUBJECT: Dyson 1949a, 486.

  267 THERE IS THE FATHER INCOMPREHENSIBLE: Dyson 1989, 35–36.

  267 ANY MODERATELY INTELLIGIBLE ACCOUNT: Dyson to parents, 4 October 1948.

  267 SO THE RESULT OF ALL THIS: Ibid.

  268 THEIR EVALUATION GIVES RISE: Dyson 1949a, 491.

  268 WRITE DOWN THE MATRIX ELEMENTS: Ibid., 495.

  268 IT WAS “SCHWINGER’S THEORY": Oppenheimer 1948.

  269 DEAR FREEMAN: I HOPE YOU DID NOT GO BRAGGING: Feynman to Dyson, 29 October 1948, CIT.

  270 WELL, DOC, YOU’RE IN: Dyson to parents, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

  270 FEYNMAN HAD NOT LEARNED: NL, 452.

  271 HE BUTTONHOLED SLOTNICK: F-W, 489–92.; NL, 452; F-Sch; Schweber, forthcoming.

  271 WHAT ABOUT SLOTNICK’S CALCULATION?: Later Case sent Feynman his manuscript, and Feynman found an algebraic error that undermined the proof. F-W, 495–96.

  271 THERE WERE VISIONS AT LARGE: Schwinger 1983, 343.

  272 THE REST MASS PARTICLES HAVE: Feynman 1948b, 943.

  272 FEYNMAN AND I REALLY UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER: Dyson to parents, 1 November 1948.

  272 FEYNMAN’S STUDENTS, HOWEVER, SOMETIMES NOTICED: Baranger, interview.

  272 HE HAD STARTED HEARING ABOUT DYSON GRAPHS: Cf. F-W, 501.

  272 WENTZEL HIMSELF: Crease and Mann 1986, 143.

  273 FEYNMAN STRESSED HOW FREE: Feynman 1949b, 773.

  275 FOR A WHILE IT WAS ALL SCHWINGER: F-W, 499.

  275 IN THE SUMMER OF 1950: J. Ashkin, T. Auerbach, and R. Marshak, “Notes on a Possible Annihilation Process for Negative Protons,” Physical Review 79(1950):266.

  275 A TECHNIQUE DUE TO FEYNMAN: K. A. Brueckner, “The Production of Mesons by Photons,” Physical Review 79(1950):641.

  275 THE UNREASONABLE POWER OF THE DIAGRAMS: Segrè 1980, 274.

  276 LIKE THE SILICON CHIP: Schwinger 1983, 343. 276 PEDAGOGY, NOT PHYSICS: Ibid., 347.

  276 YES, ONE CAN ANALYZE EXPERIENCE: Ibid., 343.

  277 ALTHOUGH ‘ONE’ IS NOT PERFECTLY: Bernstein 1987, 63.

  277 THEY ALSO WORRIED ABOUT SCHWINCER’S ABILITY: Sheldon Glashow, interview, Cambridge, Mass.

  277 MURRAY GELL-MANN LATER SPENT A SEMESTER: Murray Gell-Mann, interviews, Pasadena and Chicago.

  278 THERE WAS A NEW NOTE: E.g., Virginia Prewett, “I Homesteaded in Brazil,” Saturday Evening Post, 22 April 1950, 10, began, “It’s going to be the first atomic-bomb shelter in the New World.” Cf. F-W, 551.

  278 AT LEAST A 40 PERCENT CHANCE OF WAR: Wheeler to Feynman, 29 March 1951, CIT.

  278 WHEN A BRAZILIAN PHYSICIST: Lopes 1988; J. Leite Lopes, personal communication.

  278 LATE THE NEXT WINTER HE IMPULSIVELY ASKED: Jayme Tiomno to Feynman, 6 March 1950, PERS. The Brazilians replied that a one-year appointment
was the best they could offer at the time.

  278 HE HAD ENDURED ONE TOO MANY DAYS: F-W, 546; Bacher, interview.

  278 ALL THE INS AND OUTS: Feynman to Bacher, 6 April 1950, PERS.

  278 I DO NOT LIKE TO SUGGEST: Ibid.

  279 ONCE (AND IT WAS NOT YESTERDAY): Cvitanoviç 1983, 6.

  CALTECH

  Three local histories are Judith Goodstein’s Millikan’s School, Ann Scheid’s Pasadena: Crown of the Valley, and Kevin Starr’s Inventing the Dream; they were useful background, as was Robert Kargon’s essay ‘Temple to Science.” I’ve also relied on the recollections of many present and former Caltech professors, students, and administrators. Some information on Feynman’s time in Brazil comes from the recollections of José Leite Lopes (1988 and personal communication), Cecile Dewitt-Morette, and others; from Feynman’s 1951 correspondence with Fermi; from Brownell 1952; from Feynman’s talk “The Problem of Teaching Physics in Latin America” (1963a), and from publications of the Centra Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas. Documentation of the government’s secret scrutiny of Feynman and of his consultation with the State Department on the advisability of travel to the Soviet Union came through my Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, CIA, Department of the Army, and Department of Energy in 1988 and 1989. Some of the State Department correspondence is also in CIT. On superfluidity, Robert Schrieffer, Hans Bethe, Michael Fisher, and Russell Donnelly were especially helpful. Donnelly sent written reminiscences by several colleagues. Andronikashvili 1990 is a remarkable memoir from the Russian perspective. For the particle physics of the 1950s and 1960s: the Rochester conference proceedings; John Polkinghorne’s witty memoir (1989) and Jeremy Bernstein’s “informal history” (1989); Robert Marshak’s account (1970); Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson’s symposium proceedings Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s; and interviews with the various scientists cited. Again, some material on personal relationships is based on letters and interviews that I cannot cite specifically for reasons of privacy. Feynman’s thinking on gravitation can be seen in a fifteen-page letter to Victor Weisskopf written in January and February 1961 (WHE) and in his Faraday lecture (1961b), as well as his one published paper (1965b) and various lecture notes in CIT. The development of quarks and partons has been well chronicled from different points of view by Andrew Pickering (1984) and Michael Riordan (1987); Feynman kept his notes from this period in unusually good order (CIT); Riordan and Burton Richter provided useful on-site guidance at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; James Bjorken, George Zweig, Sidney Drell, Yung-Su Tsai, and, of course, Murray Gell-Mann were among those with especially helpful reminiscences. For the record of Feynman’s illnesses I relied on notes and correspondence in his files and interviews with Drs. C. M. Haskell, William C. Bradley, and In Chang Kim. For the investigation into the Challenger accident: the hearing transcripts and documentation as published in the commission report; Feynman’s personal notes and commission memorandums (CIT and PERS); Ralph Leighton’s unedited transcript of Feynman’s oral account (later published in WDY); interviews with commissioners, NASA officials and engineers, and others (only William P. Rogers refused to make himself available, despite my repeated requests for an interview). Carl Feynman shared the manuscript of the paper Feynman was working on until he entered the hospital for the last time.

  281 THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: J. Goodstein 1991, 180.

  281 PASADENA IS TEN MILES FROM LOS ANGELES: Morrow Mayo, quoted in Scheid 1986, 156.

  281 EVERY LUNCHEON, EVERY DINNER: Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, 6 March 31, quoted in J. Goodstein 1991, 100.

  282 COULD IT BE THAT NITROGEN HAS TWO LEVELS: F-W, 559.

  282 DEAR FERMI: Feynman to Enrico Fermi, 19 December 1951; Fermi to Feynman, 18 January 1952 and 28 April 1952, AIR Some of Feynman’s meson work that year emerges in Lopes and Feynman 1952.

  282 DON’T BELIEVE ANY CALCULATION: Feynman to Fermi, 19 December 1951.

  283 IN RECENT YEARS SEVERAL NEW PARTICLES: Fermi and Yang 1949, 1739. 283 HE COULD SPEND DAYS AT THE BEACH: Lopes, personal communication.

  283 I WISH I COULD ALSO REFRESH: Fermi to Feynman, 18 January 1952, AIR

  283 FEYNMAN TAUGHT BASIC ELECTROMAGNETISM: Feynman 1963a.

  284 LIGHT IMPINGING ON A MATERIAL: Ibid., 26.

  284 BUT WHEN HE ASKED WHAT WOULD HAPPEN: SYJ, 192.

  284 THEY COULD DEFINE “TRIBOLUMINESCENCE": Even in his sixties he continued to consider ways of intensifying this phenomenon in the substances he described as “WL (Wint-o-green Lifesavers) and S (sucrose).” Feynman to J. Thomas Dick-enson, 13 May 1985, CIT.

  284 HAVE YOU GOT SCIENCE?: SYJ, 197.

  284 WHAT ARE THE FOUR TYPES OF TELESCOPE?: Feynman 1963a, 24.

  284 HE WOULD SIT IDLY AT A CAFÉ TABLE: Joan Feynman, interview.

  284 GIVES A FEELING OF STABILITY: Feynman 1963a, 24.

  285 PHILIP MORRISON, WHO SHARED AN OFFICE: Morrison, interview.

  286 HE JOINED A LOCAL SCHOOL: SYJ, 185.

  286 IN THE 1952 CARNEVAL: Lopes, personal communication.

  287 HE HEARD FROM HARDLY ANYONE: F-W, 564; Feynman to Oppenheimer, 27 May 1952, OPR

  287 HE HAUNTED THE MIRAMAR HOTEL’S OUTDOOR PATIO BAR: Bertram J. Collcutt to Feynman, 2 December 1985, CIT.

  287 HE TOOK OUT PAN AMERICAN STEWARDESSES: SYJ, 183–84.

  287 THE OLD CERTAINTIES OF THE PAST: Mead 1949, 4.

  289 TELL ME WHAT IT IS LIKE: Michels 1948, 16.

  290 It SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU GO TO LOTS OF TROUBLE: Feynman, note, n.d., PERS.

  290 HOW IS IT POSSIBLE: SYJ, 168.

  290 YOU ARE WORSE THAN A WHORE: Ibid., 169–70.

  292 EVEN BEFORE THEY MARRIED, THEY QUARRELED: Mary Louise Bell to Feynman, 30 May 1950 and 24 March 1952, PERS.

  292 THE PATTERN IS THAT THE GIRL: Bell to Feynman, 26 February 1952, PERS.

  292 THEY HONEYMOONED IN MEXICO: SYJ, 286.

  292 SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO THINK: Mary Louise Bell, telephone interview.

  292 SHE LIKED TO TELL PEOPLE: Bell, interview.

  292 WHERE THERE’S SMOKE THERE’S FIRE: Gell-Mann, interview.

  293 HAS WILFULLY, WRONGFULLY: Complaint for Divorce, 6 June 1956, Superior Court, Los Angeles County. “Final Adjustment of Property Settlement,” handwritten agreement, 16 October 1956, PERS.

  293 THE DRUMS MADE TERRIFIC NOISE: “Beat Goes Sour: Calculus and African Drums

  Bring Divorce,” Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1956.

  293 BEGGING FOR HIS OLD JOB BACK: Feynman to Bethe, 26 November 1954, BET.

  293 SOON AFTERWARD, SOMEONE RUSHED UP: SYJ, 211–12.

  293 MEANWHILE, ALTHOUGH BETHE HAD BEEN THRILLED: Bethe to Feynman, 3 December 1954, BET.

  294 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DECIDED: Goldberger, interview; SYJ, 213.

  295 A HOST OF APPLIED SCIENCES: Cf. Forman 1987 and Kevles 1990.

  295 WHEN SCIENCE IS ALLOWED TO EXIST: DuBridge, quoted in Forman 1987.

  295 THESE WERE NOT SO MUCH CRUMBS: As the leading experimentalist Luis Alvarez told the physicist and historian Abraham Pais: “Right after the war we had a blank check from the military because we had been so successful. Had it been otherwise we would have been villains. As it was we never had to worry about money.” Pais 1986, 19.

  295 IN 1954 THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY: Minutes of Executive Session, Army Scientific Advisory Panel, 17 November 1954, CIT; F-W, 599–601.

  295 HOT DOC: Feynman to Lucille Feynman, n.d., PERS.

  295 THE PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CAME: “Einstein Award to Professor, 35,” New York Times, 14 March 1954; F-W, 673.

  296 THE AEC BEGAN FOUR WEEKS OF HEARINGS: Atomic Energy Commission 1954.

  296 YOU SHOULD NEVER TURN A MAN’S GENEROSITY: A decade later, he was uncomfortable with his decision. “I knew what had happened to Oppenheimer, and that Strauss had something to do with it, and I didn’t like it…. O.K.? And I thought—I’m going to fix him. I mean, I was not nice. I don’t want to take it from him. The hell with it. And I thoug
ht: maybe I won’t take the prize. All right? And I worried about it, because in a certain sense I felt that was unfair. The guy is offering the money—you know, he’s trying to do something nice— and it isn’t that he just did it because of this, because he’s done it before. There were previous Einstein Awards, as far as I know, or something…. I was kind of confused. “F-W, 673–74.

  296 FEYNMAN’S OWN FILE AT THE FBI: 497 pages, partly expurgated, FOI.

  296 PROFESSOR FEYNMAN IS ONE OF THE LEADING: Bethe to M. Evelyn Michaud, 7 April 1950, and Michaud to Bethe, 27 March 1950, BET.

  297 ONE OF ITS PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS: Sakharov 1990, 190–91.

  298 I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED: Feynman to Atomic Energy Commission, 14 January 1955, CIT. Also: “Is there danger that I would be kept there and not return?” Feynman to State Department, 14 January 1955, FOI.

  298 PROPAGANDA GAINS: Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., “Invitation to United States Physicist to Attend Scientific Conference,” confidential memorandum, Department of State, 21 January 1955, FOI; Stoessel, Jr., to Feynman, 15 March 1955, CIT.

  298 CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE ARISEN: Feynman to A. N. Nesmeyarrov, 14 March 1955, CIT.

  298 THIS IS A CLEAR CASE: “Scientist at Caltech Warned,” Los Angeles Times, 8 April 1955.

  299 WHEN FEYNMAN TALKED ABOUT FLUID FLOW: Lectures, II-40–1.

  299 THEORISTS OF “DRY WATER": Lectures, II-40–3 and III-4–12.

  300 TWO CITIES UNDER SIEGE: Feynman 1957a, 205.

  300 NORWEGIAN I AND NORWEGIAN II: Donnelly 1991b.

  300 THE MOST BASIC CLUE: Feynman 1955b, 18.

  301 THE SPEAKERS HAD NO IDEA: Russell Donnelly, telephone interview.

  301 HE HAD TRIED TO PICTURE: Feynman 1953c, 1302.

  302 THE CHALLENGE WAS TO DRIVE: “The hardest part of the helium problem was done by physical reasoning alone, without being able to write anything…. it was very very interesting to be able to push through that doggoned thing without having stuff to write.” F-W, 739.

  301 HE LAY AWAKE IN BED: F-W, 693–95.

  302 THE RINGS OF ATOMS WERE LIKE RINGS OF CHILDREN: Feynman 1958a, 21.

  302 TYPICAL FEYNMAN: Donnelly, interview.

  303 POSSIBLY I UNDERSTAND: Note, “Possibly I understand …” n.d., CIT.

  303 THE YEAR BEFORE, SCHRIEFFER HAD LISTENED: Robert Schrieffer, telephone interview; Feynman 1957a.