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

by Richard Phillips Feynman

  I thought, “I know what it is: They’re going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work.”

  It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: “What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining.” And then we would have fun discussing it:

  “No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up,” I would say.

  “How did the spring get wound up?” he would ask.

  “I wound it up.”

  “And how did you get moving?”

  “From eating.”

  “And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it’s because the sun is shining that all these things are moving.” That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun’s power.

  I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind-up toy, “Energy makes it go.” And for the boy on the bicycle, “Energy makes it go.” For everything, “Energy makes it go.”

  Now that doesn’t mean anything. Suppose it’s “Wakalixes.” That’s the general principle: “Wakalixes makes it go.” There’s no knowledge coming in. The child doesn’t learn anything; it’s just a word!

  What they should have done is to look at the wind-up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind “energy.” Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.

  It’s also not even true that “energy makes it go,” because if it stops, you could say, “energy makes it stop” just as well, What they’re talking about is concentrated energy being transformed into more dilute forms, which is a very subtle aspect of energy. Energy is neither increased nor decreased in these examples; it’s just changed from one form to another. And when the things stop, the energy is changed into heat, into general chaos.

  But that’s the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed-up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don’t know, because it’s not science.

  So when I saw all these horrifying books with the same kind of trouble as the math books had, I saw my volcano process starting again. Since I was exhausted from reading all the math books, and discouraged from its all being a wasted effort, I couldn’t face another year of that, and had to resign.

  Sometime later I heard that the energy-makes-it-go book was going to be recommended by the curriculum commission to the Board of Education, so I made one last effort. At each meeting of the commission the public was allowed to make comments, so I got up and said why I thought the book was bad.

  The man who replaced me on the commission said, “That book was approved by sixty-five engineers at the Such-and-such Aircraft Company!”

  I didn’t doubt that the company had some pretty good engineers, but to take sixty-five engineers is to take a wide range of ability—and to necessarily include some pretty poor guys! It was once again the problem of averaging the length of the emperor’s nose, or the ratings on a book with nothing between the covers. It would have been far better to have the company decide who their better engineers were, and to have them look at the book. I couldn’t claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys—but the average of sixty five other guys, certainly!

  I couldn’t get through to him, and the book was approved by the board.

  When I was still on the commission, I had to go to San Francisco a few times for some of the meetings, and when I returned to Los Angeles from the first trip, I stopped in the commission office to get reimbursed for my expenses.

  “How much did it cost, Mr. Feynman?”

  “Well, I flew to San Francisco, so it’s the airfare, plus the parking at the airport while I was away.”

  “Do you have your ticket?”

  I happened to have the ticket.

  “Do you have a receipt for the parking?”

  “No, but it cost $2.35 to park my car.”

  “But we have to have a receipt.”

  “I told you how much it cost. If you don’t trust me, why do you let me tell you what I think is good and bad about the schoolbooks?”

  There was a big stew about that. Unfortunately, I had been used to giving lectures for some company or university or for ordinary people, not for the government. I was used to, “What were your expenses?”—“So-and-so much.”—“Here you are, Mr. Feynman.”

  I then decided I wasn’t going to give them a receipt for anything.

  After the second trip to San Francisco they again asked me for my ticket and receipts.

  “I haven’t got any.”

  “This can’t go on, Mr. Feynman.”

  “When I accepted to serve on the commission, I was told you were going to pay my expenses.”

  “But we expected to have some receipts to prove the expenses.”

  “I have nothing to prove it, but you know I live in Los Angeles and I go to these other towns; how the hell do you think I get there?”

  They didn’t give in, and neither did I. I feel when you’re in a position like that, where you choose not to buckle down to the System, you must pay the consequences if it doesn’t work. So I’m perfectly satisfied, but I never did get compensation for the trips.

  It’s one of those games I play. They want a receipt? I’m not giving them a receipt. Then you’re not going to get the money. OK, then I’m not taking the money. They don’t trust me? The hell with it; they don’t have to pay me. Of course it’s absurd! I know that’s the way the government works; well, screw the government! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I’m going to be treated like one, I’m not going to have anything to do with them! They feel bad? They feel bad. I feel bad, too. We’ll just let it go. I know they’re “protecting the taxpayer,” but see how well you think the taxpayer was being protected in the following situation.

  There were two books that we were unable to come to a decision about after much discussion; they were extremely close. So we left it open to the Board of Education to decide. Since the board was now taking the cost into consideration, and since the two books were so evenly matched, the board decided to open the bids and take the lower one.

  Then the question came up, “Will the schools be getting the books at the regular time, or could they, perhaps, get them a little earlier, in time for the coming term?”

  One publisher’s representative got up and said, “We are happy that you accepted our bid; we can get it out in time for the next term.”

  A representative of the publisher that lost out was also there, and he got up and said, “Since our bids were submitted based on the later deadline, I think we should have a chance a bid again for the earlier deadline, because we too can meet the earlier deadline.”

  Mr. Norris, the Pasadena lawyer on the board, asked the guy from the other publisher, “And how much would it cost for us to get your books at the earlier date?”

  And he gave a number: It was less!

  The first guy got up: “If he changes his bid, I have the right to change my bid!”—and his bid is still less!

  Norris asked, “Well how is that—we get the books earlier and it’s cheaper?”

  “Yes,” one guy says. “We can use a special offset method we wouldn’t normally use …”—some excuse why it came out cheaper.

  The other guy agreed: “When you do it quicker, it costs less!”

  That was really a shock. It ended up two million dollars cheaper. Norris was really incensed by this sudden change.

  What happened, of course, was that the uncertainty about the date had opened the possibility that these guys could bid against each other. Normally, when books were supposed to be chosen without taking the cost into consideration, there was no reason to lower the price; the book publishers could put the prices at any place they wanted to. There was no advantage in competing by lowering the pric
e; the way you competed was to impress the members of the curriculum commission.

  By the way, whenever our commission had a meeting, there were book publishers entertaining curriculum commission members by taking them to lunch and talking to them about their books. I never went.

  It seems obvious now, but I didn’t know what was happening the time I got a package of dried fruit and whatnot delivered by Western Union with a message that read, “From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving—The Pamilios.”

  It was from a family I had never heard of in Long Beach, obviously someone wanting to send this to his friend’s family who got the name and address wrong, so I thought I’d better straighten it out. I called up Western Union, got the telephone number of the people who sent the stuff, and I called them.

  “Hello, my name is Mr. Feynman. I received a package …”

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Feynman, this is Pete Pamilio” and he says it in such a friendly way that I think I’m supposed to know who he is! I’m normally such a dunce that I can’t remember who anyone is.

  So I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pamilio, but I don’t quite remember who you are …”

  It turned out he was a representative of one of the publishers whose books I had to judge on the curriculum commission.

  “I see. But this could be misunderstood.”

  “It’s only family to family.”

  “Yes, but I’m judging a book that you’re publishing, and maybe someone might misinterpret your kindness!” I knew what was happening, but I made it sound like I was a complete idiot.

  Another thing like this happened when one of the publishers sent me a leather briefcase with my name nicely written in gold on it. I gave them the same stuff: “I can’t accept it; I’m judging some of the books you’re publishing. I don’t think you understand that!”

  One commissioner, who had been there for the greatest length of time, said, “I never accept the stuff; it makes me very upset. But it just goes on.”

  But I really missed one opportunity. If I had only thought fast enough, I could have had a very good time on that commission. I got to the hotel in San Francisco in the evening to attend my very first meeting the next day, and I decided to go out to wander in the town and eat something. I came out of the elevator, and sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby were two guys who jumped up and said, “Good evening, Mr. Feynman. Where are you going? Is there something we can show you in San Francisco?” They were from a publishing company, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

  “I’m going out to eat.”

  “We can take you out to dinner.”

  “No, I want to be alone.”

  “Well, whatever you want, we can help you.”

  I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, I’m going out to get myself in trouble.”

  “I think we can help you in that, too.”

  “No, I think I’ll take care of that myself.” Then I thought, “What an error! I should have let all that stuff operate and keep a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!” And when I found out about the two-million-dollar difference, God knows what the pressures are!

  Alfred Nobel’s Other Mistake

  In Canada they have a big association of physics students. They have meetings; they give papers, and so on. One time the Vancouver chapter wanted to have me come and talk to them. The girl in charge of it arranged with my secretary to fly all the way to Los Angeles without telling me. She just walked into my office. She was really cute, a beautiful blonde. (That helped; it’s not supposed to, but it did.) And I was impressed that the students in Vancouver had financed the whole thing. They treated me so nicely in Vancouver that now I know the secret of how to really be entertained and give talks: Wait for the students to ask you.

  One time, a few years after I had won the Nobel Prize, some kids from the Irvine students’ physics club came around and wanted me to talk. I said, “I’d love to do it. What I want to do is talk just to the physics club. But—I don’t want to be immodest—I’ve learned from experience that there’ll be trouble.”

  I told them how I used to go over to a local high school every year to talk to the physics club about relativity, or whatever they asked about. Then, after I got the Prize, I went over there again, as usual, with no preparation, and they stuck me in front of an assembly of three hundred kids. It was a mess!

  I got that shock about three or four times, being an idiot and not catching on right away. When I was invited to Berkeley to give a talk on something in physics, I prepared something rather technical, expecting to give it to the usual physics department group. But when I got there, this tremendous lecture hall is full of people! And I know there’s not that many people in Berkeley who know the level at which I prepared my talk. My problem is, I like to please the people who come to hear me, and I can’t do it if everybody and his brother wants to hear: I don’t know my audience then.

  After the students understood that I can’t just easily go over somewhere and give a talk to the physics club, I said, “Let’s cook up a dull-sounding title and a dull-sounding professor’s name, and then only the kids who are really interested in physics will bother to come, and those are the ones we want, OK? You don’t have to sell anything.”

  A few posters appeared on the Irvine campus: Professor Henry Warren from the University of Washington is going to talk about the structure of the proton on May 17th at 3:00 in Room D102.

  Then I came and said, “Professor Warren had some personal difficulties and was unable to come and speak to you today, so he telephoned me and asked me if I would talk to you about the subject, since I’ve been doing some work in the field. So here I am.” It worked great.

  But then, somehow or other, the faculty adviser of the club found out about the trick, and he got very angry at them. He said, “You know, if it were known that Professor Feynman was coming down here, a lot of people would like to have listened to him.”

  The students explained, “That’s just it!” But the adviser was mad that he hadn’t been allowed in on the joke.

  Hearing that the students were in real trouble, I decided to write a letter to the adviser and explained that it was all my fault, that I wouldn’t have given the talk unless this arrangement had been made; that I had told the students not to tell anyone; I’m very sorry; please excuse me, blah, blah, blah …” That’s the kind of stuff I have to go through on account of that damn prize!

  Just last year I was invited by the students at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to talk, and had a wonderful time, except for the interviews on local television. I don’t need interviews; there’s no point to it. I came to talk to the physics students, and that’s it. If everybody in town wants to know that, let the school newspaper tell them. It’s on account of the Nobel Prize that I’ve got to have an interview—I’m a big shot, right?

  A friend of mine who’s a rich man—he invented some kind of simple digital switch—tells me about these people who contribute money to make prizes or give lectures: “You always look at them carefully to find out what crookery they’re trying to absolve their conscience of.”

  My friend Matt Sands was once going to write a book to be called Alfred Nobel’s Other Mistake.

  For many years I would look, when the time was coming around to give out the Prize, at who might get it. But after a while I wasn’t even aware of when it was the right “season.” I therefore had no idea why someone would be calling me at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning.

  “Professor Feynman?”

  “Hey! Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?”

  “I thought you’d like to know that you’ve won the Nobel Prize.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sleeping! It would have been better if you had called me in the morning.”—and I hung up.

  My wife said, “Who was that?”

  “They told me I won the Nobel Prize.”

  “Oh, Richard, who was it?” I often kid around and she is so
smart that she never gets fooled, but this time I caught her.

  The phone rings again: “Professor Feynman, have you heard …”

  (In a disappointed voice) “Yeah.”

  Then I began to think, “How can I turn this all off? I don’t want any of this!” So the first thing was to take the telephone off the hook, because calls were coming one right after the other. I tried to go back to sleep, but found it was impossible.

  I went down to the study to think: What am I going to do? Maybe I won’t accept the Prize. What would happen then? Maybe that’s impossible.

  I put the receiver back on the hook and the phone rang right away. It was a guy from Time magazine. I said to him, “Listen, I’ve got a problem, so I want this off the record. I don’t know how to get out of this thing. Is there some way not to accept the Prize?”

  He said, “I’m afraid, sir, that there isn’t any way you can do it without making more of a fuss than if you leave it alone.” It was obvious. We had quite a conversation, about fifteen or twenty minutes, and the Time guy never published anything about it.

  I said thank you very much to the Time guy and hung up. The phone rang immediately: it was the newspaper.

  “Yes, you can come up to the house. Yes, it’s all right. Yes, Yes, Yes …”

  One of the phone calls was a guy from the Swedish consulate. He was going to have a reception in Los Angeles.

  I figured that since I decided to accept the Prize, I’ve got to go through with all this stuff.

  The consul said, “Make a list of the people you would like to invite, and we’ll make a list of the people we are inviting. Then I’ll come to your office and we’ll compare the lists to see if there are any duplicates, and we’ll make up the invitations …”

  So I made up my list. It had about eight people—my neighbor from across the street, my artist friend Zorthian, and so on.

  The consul came over to my office with his list: the Governor of the State of California, the This, the That; Getty, the oilman; some actress—it had three hundred people! And, needless to say, there was no duplication whatsoever!