Feynman, Richard P

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Feynman, Richard P.

American Physicist
1918–1988

Richard P. Feynman was born in 1918 in Far Rockaway, New York. He graduated with a bachelor of science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1935, and he received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1942. It was during this time that he began working on the Manhattan Project at New Mexico's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, which resulted in the development of the first atomic bomb. While working on this team, he had his first experience with computers.

The project required many implosion calculations, which had to be done quickly and correctly. At the start, the group used Marchand hand calculators, but the devices kept breaking down and were very cumbersome. To speed up the process, one of the group's members, Stanley Frankel, decided to order some IBM business machines—adding machines called tabulators, for listing sums, and a multiplier, which used cards for input. This scheme would have worked out just fine if Frankel had not succumbed to the "disease" that afflicts many who work extensively with computers. Feynman described it in these words, as noted in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! "It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches—if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that—and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine."

After a while Frankel spent less time doing his job and more time playing with the computers. Those who have worked with computers have probably experienced the feeling of delight in being able to do just one more thing with the computer; hence, they can understand the "disease." However, this situation was delaying the final results, so Feynman was put in charge of the group that worked with the computers. To speed things up and meet deadlines, he devised a way to work out two problems in parallel. His group also realized that errors made in one of the program cycles would affect nearby data values, so they used smaller sets of data to test the program and correct the errors as they occurred, making the work go faster. Feynman never contracted the computer disease.

Feynman was known for his irreverent nature and general disregard for official rules and regulations. During his years with the Manhattan Project, he learned how to break into filing cabinets where classified information was stored. Although he never took any of the secret documents, he left behind notes and evidence that made it clear to those responsible for the files that someone had managed to bypass their security efforts.

After Los Alamos, Feynman never worked with the military again, but taught physics at Cornell University where he worked on reconstructing and restating quantum mechanics and electrodynamics in terms of particles. In 1951 he left Cornell for the California Institute of Technology, where he continued to teach until shortly before his death.

Feynman received the Albert Einstein Award in 1954, and the Lawrence Award in 1962. In 1965 he was one of three scientists to receive the Nobel Prize for work done on the theory of quantum electrodynamics. His contributions to the field included simplification of the rules of calculation and a diagrammatic approach to analyzing atomic interactions, both of which became standard tools of theoretical analysis.

In addition to his work in teaching and research, Feynman was an author. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, published in 1963, remained a favorite textbook for physics students for more than three decades. A writer in The Economist magazine called it "one of the best physics texts, as well as the most readable." In 1985 his popular book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, began a 15-week run on the New York Times list of bestselling non-fiction titles. In 1986 he wrote QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter to introduce the theory of quantum electrodynamics to a general, non-academic audience.

His fame in the scientific and academic world as a teacher, theoretician, and author expanded when in 1986 he was appointed to the President's Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. Feynman's impatience with the bureaucracy of the hearings process led him to offer a simple, but dramatic illustration of the effect of cold on the ill-fated space shuttle's O-rings , which were supposed to seal the joints of the shuttle's rocket booster segments. During televised testimony, he used ice and water to show that a piece of the O-ring material would rapidly harden when submerged in low temperatures. Typical of his direct approach to explaining the properties and behavior of physical matter, this simple experiment crystallized a key point of the commission's investigative conclusions.

Feynman, who is remembered by students and peers as a man who was curious about everything and light-hearted in his dealings with others, died on February 15, 1988 of abdominal cancer. His legacy includes his innovative approach to problem solving and his ability and desire to make the study of complex science accessible to students and the general public alike.

see also Physics; Programming.

Ida M. Flynn