“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard Phillips Feynman

  I thought about Dirac, who had his equation for a while—a new equation which told how an electron behaved—and I had this new equation for beta decay, which wasn’t as vital as the Dirac Equation, but it was good. It’s the only time I ever discovered a new law.

  I called up my sister in New York to thank her for getting me to sit down and work through that paper by Lee and Yang at the Rochester Conference. After feeling uncomfortable and behind, now I was in; I had made a discovery, just from what she suggested. I was able to enter physics again, so to speak, and I wanted to thank her for that. I told her that everything fit, except for the 9 percent.

  I was very excited, and kept on calculating, and things that fit kept on tumbling out: they fit automatically, without a strain. I had begun to forget about the 9 percent by now, because everything else was coming out right.

  I worked very hard into the night, sitting at a small table in the kitchen next to a window. It was getting later and later—about 2:00 or 3:00 AM. I’m working hard, getting all these calculations packed solid with things that fit, and I’m thinking, and concentrating, and it’s dark, and it’s quiet … when suddenly there’s a TAC-TAC-TAC-TAC—loud, on the window. I look, and there’s this white face, right at the window, only inches away, and I scream with shock and surprise!

  It was a lady I knew who was angry at me because I had come back from vacation and didn’t immediately call her up to tell her I was back. I let her in, and tried to explain that I was just now very busy, that I had just discovered something, and it was very important. I said, “Please go out and let me finish it.”

  She said, “No, I don’t want to bother you. I’ll just sit here in the living room.”

  I said, “Well, all right, but it’s very difficult.”

  She didn’t exactly sit in the living room. The best way to say it is she sort of squatted in a corner, holding her hands together, not wanting to “bother” me. Of course her purpose was to bother the hell out of me! And she succeeded—I couldn’t ignore her. I got very angry and upset, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to do this calculating; I was making a big discovery and was terribly excited, and somehow, it was more important to me than this lady—at least at that moment. I don’t remember how I finally got her out of there, but it was very difficult.

  After working some more, it got to be very late at night, and I was hungry. I walked up the maims street to a little restaurant five or ten blocks away, as I had often done before, late at night.

  On early occasions I was often stopped by the police, because I would be walking along, thinking, and then I’d stop—sometimes an idea comes that’s difficult enough that you can’t keep walking; you have to make sure of something. So I’d stop, and sometimes I’d hold my hands out in the air, saying to myself, “The distance between these is that way, and then this would turn over this way …”

  I’d be moving my hands, standing in the street, when the police would come: “What is your name? Where do you live? What are you doing?”

  “Oh! I was thinking. I’m sorry; I live here, and go often to the restaurant …” After a bit they knew who it was, and they didn’t stop me any more.

  So I went to the restaurant, and while I’m eating I’m so excited that I tell a lady that I just made a discovery. She starts in: She’s the wife of a fireman, or forester, or something. She’s very lonely—all this stuff that I’m not interested in. So that happens.

  The next morning when I got to work I went to Wapstra, Boehm, and Jensen, and told them, “I’ve got it all worked out. Everything fits.”

  Christy, who was there, too, said, “What beta-decay constant did you use?”

  “The one from So-and-So’s book.”

  “But that’s been found out to be wrong. Recent measurements have shown it’s off by 7 percent.”

  Then I remember the 9 percent. It was like a prediction for me: I went home and got this theory that says the neutron decay should be off by 9 percent, and they tell me the next morning that, as a matter of fact, it’s 7 percent changed. But is it changed from 9 to 16, which is bad, or from 9 to 2, which is good?

  Just then my sister calls from New York: “How about the 9 percent—what’s happened?”

  “I’ve just discovered that there’s new data: 7 percent …”

  “Which way?”

  “I’m trying to find out. I’ll call you back.”

  I was so excited that I couldn’t think. It’s like when you’re rushing for an airplane, and you don’t know whether you’re late or not, and you just can’t make it, when somebody says, “It’s daylight saving time!” Yes, but which way? You can’t think in the excitement.

  So Christy went into one room, and I went into another room, each of us to be quiet, so we could think it through: This moves this way, and that moves that way—it wasn’t very difficult, really; it’s just exciting.

  Christy came out, and I came out, and we both agreed: It’s 2 percent, which is well within experimental error. After all, if they just changed the constant by 7 percent, the 2 percent could have been an error. I called my sister back: “Two percent.” The theory was right.

  (Actually, it was wrong: it was off, really, by 1 percent, for a reason we hadn’t appreciated, which was only understood later by Nicola Cabibbo. So that 2 percent was not all experimental.)

  Murray Gell-Mann compared and combined our ideas and wrote a paper on the theory. The theory was rather neat; it was relatively simple, and it fit a lot of stuff. But as I told you, there was an awful lot of chaotic data. And in some cases, we even went so far as to state that the experiments were in error.

  A good example of this was an experiment by Valentine Telegdi, in which he measured the number of electrons that go out in each direction when a neutron disintegrates. Our theory had predicted that the number should be the same in all directions, whereas Telegdi found that 11 percent more came out in one direction than the others. Telegdi was an excellent experimenter, and very careful. And once, when he was giving a talk somewhere, he referred to our theory and said, “The trouble with theorists is, they never pay attention to the experiments!”

  Telegdi also sent us a letter, which wasn’t exactly scathing, but nevertheless showed he was convinced that our theory was wrong. At the end he wrote, “The F-C (Feynman—Gell-Mann) theory of beta decay is no F-C.”

  Murray says, “What should we do about this? You know, Telegdi’s pretty good.”

  I say, “We just wait.”

  Two days later there’s another letter from Telegdi. He’s a complete convert. He found out from our theory that he had disregarded the possibility that the proton recoiling from the neutron is not the same in all directions. He had assumed it was the same. By putting in corrections that our theory predicted instead of the ones he had been using, the results straightened out and were in complete agreement.

  I knew that Telegdi was excellent, and it would be hard to go upstream against him. But I was convinced by that time that something must be wrong with his experiment, and that he would find it—he’s much better at finding it than we would be. That’s why I said we shouldn’t try to figure it out but just wait.

  I went to Professor Bacher and told him about our success, and he said, “Yes, you come out and say that the neutron-proton coupling is V instead of T. Everybody used to think it was T. Where is the fundamental experiment that says it’s T? Why don’t you look at the early experiments and find out what was wrong with them?”

  I went out and found the original article on the experiment that said the neutron-proton coupling is T, and I was shocked by something. I remembered reading that article once before (back in the days when I read every article in the Physical Review—it was small enough). And I remembered, when I saw this article again, looking at that curve and thinking, “That doesn’t prove anything!”

  You see, it depended on one or two points at the very edge of the range of the data, and there’s a principle that a point on the edge of the range of the data—the last po
int—isn’t very good, because if it was, they’d have another point further along. And I had realized that the whole idea that neutron-proton coupling is T was based on the last point, which wasn’t very good, and therefore it’s not proved. I remember noticing that!

  And when I became interested in beta decay, directly, I read all these reports by the “beta-decay experts,” which said it’s T. I never looked at the original data; I only read those reports, like a dope. Had I been a good physicist, when I thought of the original idea back at the Rochester Conference I would have immediately looked up “how strong do we know it’s T?”—that would have been the sensible thing to do. I would have recognized right away that I had already noticed it wasn’t satisfactorily proved.

  Since then I never pay any attention to anything by “experts.” I calculate everything myself. When people said the quark theory was pretty good, I got two Ph. D.s, Finn Ravndal and Mark Kislinger, to go through the whole works with me, just so I could check that the thing was really giving results that fit fairly well, and that it was a significantly good theory. I’ll never make that mistake again, reading the experts’ opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.

  Thirteen Times

  One time a science teacher from the local city college came around and asked me if I’d give a talk there. He offered me fifty dollars, but I told him I wasn’t worried about the money. “That’s the city college, right?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about how much paperwork I usually had to get involved with when I deal with the government, so I laughed and said, “I’ll be glad to give the talk. There’s only one condition on the whole thing”—I pulled a number out of a hat and continued—”that I don’t have to sign my name more than thirteen times, and that includes the check!”

  The guy laughs too. “Thirteen times! No problem.”

  So then it starts. First I have to sign something that says I’m loyal to the government, or else I can’t talk in the city college. And I have to sign it double, OK? Then I have to sign some kind of release to the city—I can’t remember what. Pretty soon the numbers are beginning to climb up.

  I have to sign that I was suitably employed as a professor—to ensure, of course, since it’s a city thing, that no jerk at the other end was hiring his wife or a friend to come and not even give the lecture. There were all kinds of things to ensure, and the signatures kept mounting.

  Well, the guy who started out laughing got pretty nervous, but we just made it. I signed exactly twelve times. There was one more left for the check, so I went ahead and gave the talk.

  A few days later the guy came around to give me the check, and he was really sweating. He couldn’t give me the money unless I signed a form saying I really gave the talk.

  I said, “If I sign the form, I can’t sign the check. But you were there. You heard the talk; why don’t you sign it?”

  “Look,” he said, “Isn’t this whole thing rather silly?”

  “No. It was an arrangement we made in the beginning. We didn’t think it was really going to get to thirteen, but we agreed on it, and I think we should stick to it to the end.”

  He said, “I’ve been working very hard, calling all around. I’ve been trying everything, and they tell me it’s impossible. You simply can’t get your money unless you sign the form.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I’ve only signed twelve times, and I gave the talk. I don’t need the money.”

  “But I have to do this to you.”

  “It’s all right. We made a deal; don’t worry.”

  The next day he called me up. “They can’t not give you the money! They’ve already earmarked the money and they’ve got it set aside, so they have to give it to you!”

  “OK, if they have to give me the money, let them give me the money.”

  “But you have to sign the form.”

  “I won’t sign the form!”

  They were stuck. There was no miscellaneous pot which was for money that this man deserves but won’t sign for.

  Finally, it got straightened out. It took a long time, and it was very complicated—but I used the thirteenth signature to cash my check.

  It Sounds Greek to Me!

  I don’t know why, but I’m always very careless, when I go on a trip, about the address or telephone number or anything of the people who invited me. I figure I’ll be met, or somebody else will know where we’re going; it’ll get straightened out somehow.

  One time, in 1957, I went to a gravity conference at the University of North Carolina. I was supposed to be an expert in a different field who looks at gravity.

  I landed at the airport a day late for the conference (I couldn’t make it the first day), and I went out to where the taxis were. I said to the dispatcher, “I’d like to go to the University of North Carolina.”

  “Which do you mean,” he said, “the State University of North Carolina at Raleigh, or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?”

  Needless to say, I hadn’t the slightest idea. “Where are they?” I asked, figuring that one must be near the other.

  “One’s north of here, and the other is south of here, about the same distance.”

  I had nothing with me that showed which one it was, and there was nobody else going to the conference a day late like I was.

  That gave me an idea. “Listen,” I said to the dispatcher. “The main meeting began yesterday, so there were a whole lot of guys going to the meeting who must have come through here yesterday. Let me describe them to you: They would have their heads kind of in the air, and they would be talking to each other, not paying attention to where they were going, saying things to each other, like ‘G-mu-nu. G-mu-nu.’ ”

  His face lit up. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You mean Chapel Hill!” He called the next taxi waiting in line. “Take this man to the university at Chapel Hill.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I went to the conference.

  But Is It Art?

  Once I was at a party playing bongos, and I got going pretty well. One of the guys was particularly inspired by the drumming. He went into the bathroom, took off his shirt, smeared shaving cream in funny designs all over his chest, and came out dancing wildly, with cherries hanging from his ears. Naturally, this crazy nut and I became good friends right away. His name is Jirayr Zorthian; he’s an artist.

  We often had long discussions about art and science. I’d say things like, “Artists are lost: they don’t have any subject! They used to have the religious subjects, but they lost their religion and now they haven’t got anything. They don’t understand the technical world they live in; they don’t know anything about the beauty of the real world—the scientific world—so they don’t have anything in their hearts to paint.”

  Jerry would reply that artists don’t need to have a physical subject; there are many emotions that can he expressed through art. Besides, art can be abstract. Furthermore, scientists destroy the beauty of nature when they pick it apart and turn it into mathematical equations.

  One time I was over at Jerry’s for his birthday, and one of these dopey arguments lasted until 3:00 AM. The next morning I called him up: “Listen, Jerry,” I said, “the reason we have these arguments that never get anywhere is that you don’t know a damn thing about science, and I don’t know a damn thing about art. So, on alternate Sundays, I’ll give you a lesson in science, and you give me a lesson in art.”

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to draw.”

  “That will be impossible,” I said, because when I was in high school, the only thing I could draw was pyramids on deserts—consisting mainly of straight lines—and from time to time I would attempt a palm tree and put in a sun. I had absolutely no talent. I sat next to a guy who was equally adept. When he was permitted to draw anything, it consisted of two flat, elliptical blobs, like tires stacked on one another, with a stalk coming out of the top, culminating in a green
triangle. It was supposed to be a tree. So I bet Jerry that he wouldn’t be able to teach me to draw.

  “Of course you’ll have to work,” he said.

  I promised to work, but still bet that he couldn’t teach me to draw. I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It’s difficult to describe because it’s an emotion. It’s analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there’s a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run “behind the scenes” by the same organization, the same physical laws. It’s an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It’s a feeling of awe—of scientific awe—which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.

  Jerry turned out to be a very good teacher. He told me first to go home and draw anything. So I tried to draw a shoe; then I tried to draw a flower in a pot. It was a mess!

  The next time we met I showed him my attempts: “Oh, look!” he said. “You see, around in back here, the line of the flower pot doesn’t touch the leaf.” (I had meant the line to come up to the leaf.) “That’s very good. It’s a way of showing depth. That’s very clever of you.”

  “And the fact that you don’t make all the lines the same thickness (which I didn’t mean to do) is good. A drawing with all the lines the same thickness is dull.” It continued like that: Everything that I thought was a mistake, he used to teach me something in a positive way. He never said it was wrong; he never put me down. So I kept on trying, and I gradually got a little bit better, but I was never satisfied.