This unconventional brilliance earned him a junior role in the Manhattan Project, helping to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico. Glamorous though this sounded, he soon got bored: “There wasn’t anything to do there,” he complained. To while away the time, he taught himself to pick the combination locks on the security complex’s top secret filing cabinets, or disappeared into the desert to chant and drum in Native American style, gaining himself the nickname Injun Joe. Despite his initial euphoria at the success of the tests (typically, he was the only one to see the bomb explode without protective glasses, reasoning—correctly—that a car windscreen was sufficient to screen out the harmful alpha radiation), he later regretted his involvement, likening it to tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.
In 1948 he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was only thirty. As with his graduate thesis, the prize was awarded for improving and clarifying the work of others. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) was the discipline that explained the behavior of light, magnetism, and electricity, but it was irritatingly unreliable. With two other physicists, Feynman fixed the flaws in the theory, but his most important contribution was to describe the motions of subatomic particles using a sequence of small, elegant diagrams. He always downplayed the work he did at this period as so much “mathematical hocus-pocus,” but he liked his Feynman diagrams enough to paint them all over his van. They are still the best way of describing the quantum world.
The major portion of Feynman’s professional life was spent at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is sometimes said of him that although he was unquestionably one of the great physicists of any century, he didn’t make a major theoretical breakthrough or give his name to an important new discovery. That may be less to do with him than the nature of physics in the period—few of his contemporaries could claim to have done so either. It also obscures what is Feynman’s greatest achievement: He was the best and most charismatic teacher of his generation. He loved teaching and believed that if a theory couldn’t be explained to a nonscientist, there was something wrong with the theory. In the introduction to his bestselling collection of lectures, he tells his audience:
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it. That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.
But this, as he explains, is neither demoralizing nor defeatist:
We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.
Feynman always described his physics as “fiddling about” or “a game.” For him, it was play rather than work: just a matter of looking closely, and wondering:
When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?”
He spent most of the second half of his life trying to supply intelligible answers to these questions. Perhaps the perfect Feynman moment came in the inquiry into the Challenger spaceshuttle disaster in 1986. The commission had become mired in evasions and technical obscurantism and was finding it impossible to pinpoint the cause of the accident. One suspect was the rubber O-rings used as seals between the sections of the solid fuel rockets. The failure of these immense but fragile rings—only a quarter of an inch in diameter but thirty-seven feet in circumference—would certainly have caused the disaster, but nobody could (or would) say for certain whether they had, or why. Feynman was convinced the O-rings were to blame. Live on camera, in front of the commission and all the witnesses, he cut through the whole tangle of evidence by taking a small section of O-ring and dipping it into a glass of iced water. It was immediately obvious to everyone that the rubber instantly lost its elasticity at cold temperatures, which would have caused the seals to fail and the rocket to break up. On that fateful morning, the temperature had been 24° F lower than the engineers recommended. Case closed. It was science at its simplest and most powerful: Epicurus would have been proud.
The rest of Feynman’s life can sometimes look like a parody of the groovy 1960s professor. He taught himself to play bongos in the Brazilian manner, held exhibitions of his own paintings, experimented with drugs, learned how to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs, and studied comparative religions. He had a “second office” in a topless bar in Pasadena, where he would scribble equations and new Feynman diagrams on the back of his beer mat. But these were more than the affectations of a geek:
The fact that I beat a drum has nothing to do with the fact that I do theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is a human endeavor, one of the higher developments of human beings—and this perpetual desire to prove that people who do it are human by showing that they do other things that a few other humans do (like playing bongo drums) is insulting to me.
He didn’t play the bongos because he was a physicist; he played the bongos because he was Richard Feynman, a man with a lifelong aversion to boredom. As he once wrote: “You cannot develop a personality with physics alone, the rest of life must be worked in.” In his final years, dying of cancer, he became fascinated by the central Asian republic of Tuva, researching its history and culture—particularly the throat singing, which he loved—and planning a visit. The story of his cat-and-mouse, decade-long game with Russian bureaucracy became his last book, Tuva or Bust! It’s as funny, quirky, and life affirming as you’d expect. His visa finally arrived the day after he died.
Richard Feynman’s absorption in his subject, and his defiant determination to have fun right to the end, sums up the attitude that animates each of these six lives. Each learned to be happy in his or her own skin and to do so by being positive. Of those who went to school at all, none of them was a particularly attentive pupil; they taught themselves by observing the world and people around them. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that although he wasn’t sure why we were here, he was “pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” Epicurus would have had words with him about that. Enjoyment for each of the six came from doing what they loved to do. And that spirit is infectious. Who wouldn’t want to sit down to “a capital lunch” with Mary Seacole, go for a country walk with Edward Jenner, eavesdrop on Ben Franklin at a party, or spend an evening in a bar where Moll Cutpurse was singing, accompanied by Richard Feynman on bongos? This is the real meaning of genius: to expand our sense of what’s human, to cheer us up. Nietzsche—not himself, perhaps, at the top of anyone’s cheerful list, but a great admirer of Epicurus—certainly thought so: “There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.”
CHAPTER THREE
Driven
Genghis Khan—Robert E. Peary—Mary Kingsley—Alexander von Humboldt—Francis Galton—William Morris
If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.
THOMAS EDISON
What drives you? What gets you up in the morning? Is it the same thing that compels a person to sail around the world in a coracle or spend forty years trying to grow a black tulip? The word motivation is (rather surprisingly) little more than a hundred years old, but the thing itself (whatever it may be) is as ancient as our species. Consciously or unconsciously, and for reasons no one really understands, the reward centers of our brains are chemically stimulated by activities like making money or exacting revenge, as well as by more abstract pleasures such as wi
tnessing beauty or solving puzzles. As habit-forming as eating, drinking, or exercise, they can drive people to the most astonishing places. Here are six people who never even paused to look up from the road.
If there is a more driven person in human history than Genghis Khan (about 1162–1227) we should pray we don’t bump into him on a dark night.
The Mongol Empire stretched all the way from the Pacific coast of China to Hungary and covered almost a quarter of the land mass of the planet. It was the largest empire the world has ever seen: four times bigger than Alexander’s and twice the size of Rome’s, and Genghis Khan created it from nothing in just twenty years. Under his leadership, the Mongols were the most successful military force of all time. From a population base of well under a million people they were responsible for the deaths of more than 50 million human beings, roughly a third of the inhabitants of the lands they conquered.
What bound the Mongols together wasn’t a lust for blood, but a newfound sense of nationhood. Until the time of Genghis Khan there was no Mongolia. Asia north of the Gobi desert was home to half a dozen loose confederations of nomadic tribes of which the Mongols were only one. Competing for sparse grazing land for their herds of sheep and horses, they were often unfriendly toward one another. Raiding, feuding, and revenge killings were common.
Genghis Khan was his title, not his name. As a boy, he was called Temüjin (“iron one”). He was of noble birth: His father, Yesügei, was a khan or clan chieftain. When Temüjin was nine, a group of treacherous Tatar bandits poisoned his father while sharing a meal.
Temüjin claimed the chieftainship, but the clan laughed at him because he was too young to take on his father’s role; he and his family were cast into the wilderness. For three years he scraped a subsistence living for them, hunting small game and gathering wild fruits. At the age of twelve he killed one of his half brothers for stealing food, cementing his role as leader of the family.
He was married at a very young age, but before long his wife, Börte, was abducted by the savage Merkit tribe. To get her back, Temüjin made an alliance with his father’s old blood brother, Toghrul, khan of the powerful Kerait. She gave birth to a son when she came home; she had been away for eight months, and raped, so the paternity of the child was in doubt. Nevertheless Temüjin accepted him, and he was given the name Jochi, “the guest.” Encouraged by their victory over the Merkit, Temüjin and Toghrul began to build a new tribal confederation.
Temüjin’s great contribution was to draw up a new set of laws, called the yassa. Based on what he had experienced, the laws were designed to eliminate the antisocial opportunism—casual theft, violent bickering, tit-for-tat kidnapping and murder—that made life on the steppe so difficult and dangerous. (Even his own father had carried off his mother from a neighboring tribe.)
Under the yassa, food was to be shared. Everyone was free to follow any religion they wished. All men (other than religious leaders and doctors) were obliged to join the army, but recruits were rewarded for their skill, not for their family affiliations. Kidnapping women and stealing livestock were forbidden. The pillaging of enemy corpses and property was not allowed until ordered by field commanders. When it was permitted, individual soldiers were allowed to keep the spoils. The children of conquered peoples were to be adopted by Mongol families and treated as equals, not as slaves. Captured troops were to be retrained as Mongol soldiers and given the same rights.
A combination of warrior code, state constitution, and Geneva Convention, the yassa was ruthlessly enforced: Disobedience brought immediate execution. Although in some ways it was really just a clear codification of existing tribal customs, its tough justice took hold at once, producing professional discipline among the existing troops, gratitude from the new recruits (and their families)—and loyalty from everyone. The ranks of the Mongol army swelled and, with each new conquest, Temüjin’s power base increased.
If this gives the impression that Temüjin was some sort of Mongol version of the Dalai Lama, then it would be inaccurate. He was fair but he was implacable. When, to establish his supremacy, Temüjin eventually had to impose his will on his original allies, the Kerait, he first offered them the chance to surrender, and when they refused, he crushed them in a series of great battles. The Kerait were by then led by Jamuga, son of Toghrul (and Temüjin’s own blood brother and boyhood friend). When the vanquished Jamuga asked if he could meet his end without his blood being spilled, Temüjin graciously had him wrapped in two felt blankets and then beaten and asphyxiated to death.
By 1206 Temüjin had achieved the unthinkable, linking all Mongol tribes for the first time into a single league. At the age of forty-two, having outmaneuvered or defeated his rivals, he was declared Genghis (or more accurately Chinggis) Khan. Many suggestions have been put forward for the precise meaning of this name—Lord of the Oceans, Universal Leader, Precious Warrior, Spirit of Light, True Khan—but the general idea is unmistakable: He was the khan of khans. No other Mongol leader ever bore this title.
You cannot operate an effective legal system without writing, so Genghis Khan borrowed the alphabet of a nearby people, the Uighur, to create standardized written Mongolian. (Uighur derives from Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, though Aramaic, ironically, never developed a written script of its own.) He also instituted a rapid communication system known as the yam. This operated like an Asian Pony Express, consisting of a chain of manned refueling stages at 140-mile intervals all over the empire. To run a yam station was a well-rewarded, high-status job. A messenger would arrive, hand his package on to a fresh horseman, and then rest and recuperate. In this way, a message could travel more than two hundred miles in a single day, outstripping the fastest army. The service was safe and secure; for merchants wanting to move goods or information it was also free. The yam was to turn the Silk Road into the medieval world’s most important highway.
None of this would have been possible without the superiority of Mongolian troops. Highly skilled, mobile, and disciplined, Mongolian mounted archers were self-contained fighting units. Protected by light helmets and breastplates made of leather or iron plates, they carried two powerful, small composite bows made from horn, wood, and sinew, each as powerful as an English longbow but much quicker to use and reload. Their quivers contained a selection of arrows for different jobs: armor piercers, blunt “stun” arrows, even arrows that whistled, which were used for sending messages. They also carried a small ax or mace. Each man had a saddlebag with his own food rations, rope, and sharpening stone, and a string of five or six spare horses. This meant there was no baggage train or camp followers to slow things down. A Mongol army could travel well over a hundred miles a day—they ate on the move and even stood up in the saddle to evacuate themselves while galloping along.
Genghis was a superb military planner. Each campaign was mapped out in advance and extensive use was made of spies and field intelligence. The troop structure was based on the decimal system: squads (ten men), companies (one hundred), regiments (one thousand), and divisions (ten thousand). Commanders controlled regiments and were given a high degree of independence.
A Mongol attack was devastating and virtually impossible for a traditional army to withstand. Appearing at terrifying velocity, the cavalry suddenly split into three or more columns and mounted a multipronged assault. The tactics required remarkable horsemanship and the troops were rigorously trained. This was done through hunting exercises. A posse of horsemen would set out onto the steppe until game was sighted, surround the animals at speed and at a distance, and then gradually close the circle, making sure nothing escaped.
The Mongols usually tried to ambush an army and destroy it in the field rather than besiege a major city, but when the time came they were both ruthless and highly original. Innovative siege warfare was another of Genghis Khan’s great skills. First, small undefended local towns would be taken and the refugees driven toward the city, putting pressure on living space and food resources. Next, rivers were diverted to cut
off the water supply. If necessary, siege engines were then deployed, built on-site from local materials by prisoners of war. Mongol catapults were particularly effective, sometimes firing the bodies of plague victims over the city walls—one of earliest examples of germ warfare. Once a city was taken, its leaders were captured and executed to remove the focus for any future rebellion.
Brutal though this sounds, even Mongol siege techniques bore witness to the sense of fairness that Genghis Khan had enshrined in the yassa. Arriving in front of a doomed city, the Mongol commander would issue the order to surrender from a white tent: If the city complied, all would be spared. On the second day, he would use a red tent: If the city surrendered, the men would all be killed, but the rest would be spared. On the third day, he would use a black tent. After that, no quarter was given.
Genghis Khan’s achievements can hardly be overstated. By the time he died (still fighting, in northwestern China in 1227), he had transformed a haphazard patchwork of squabbling goatherds into an empire of unparalleled military strength, with a language, a constitution, and an international postal service. In Mongolia today, he is still considered a national hero.
Though he was said to have more than five hundred concubines (and untold numbers of bastards), Genghis Khan stayed loyal all his life to his original wife, Börte, and their four legitimate sons. He had appointed his third son, Ogedei, as his successor, and for fifteen years things went well. Under Ogedei’s leadership the Mongols put down a rebellion in Korea and demolished the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Hungarians. By 1241 the Golden Horde had reached the gates of Vienna. It felt like the end of civilization. Then, in what seemed to be a miracle, the Mongols mysteriously melted away. They went home to Mongolia; a quiriltai had been called to choose a successor to Ogedei, who had died in a binge-drinking spree after a hunting expedition. From then on the Mongols became increasingly directionless and needlessly destructive. During the sacking of Baghdad in 1258, priceless Muslim scholarship, centuries old, was burned and thrown in the Tigris. The Mongol Empire eventually disappeared and left little trace on the cultures it had conquered, but this only bears testimony to the strength of Genghis Khan’s leadership: He was irreplaceable.
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