Quantum Man
Perhaps the greatest physicist of the second half of the twentieth century, Richard Feynman changed the way we think about quantum mechanics, the most perplexing of all physical theories. Here the author, himself a theoretical physicist, offers a scientific biography: a narrative coupled with clear and novel expositions of science at the limits. An immensely colorful persona in and out of the office, Feynman revolutionized our understanding of nature amid a turbulent life. The author presents that life, from the death of Feynman's childhood sweetheart during the Manhattan Project to his reluctant rise as a scientific icon, seen through the science, providing a new understanding of the legacy of a man who has fascinated millions. A reflection on the issues that drive physics today, this work captures the story of a man who was willing to break all the rules to tame a theory that broke all the rules. Traces the colorful, turbulent life of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, from the death of his childhood sweetheart during the Manhattan Project to his rise as an icon in the scientific community.
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What Hacker News says
- Thank you for sharing this, it's a neat little piece of history.
Two side notes:
1) Letters Of Note has some excellent content. Here are a few more letters that have been discussed on HN previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1424324 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045311
2) I'm a big Feynman fan, and several of my several friends are as well. We've read most of his biographies and autobiographies, and were recently surprised to find that a new biography came out a few months ago. It's supposed to be quite good, and has strong focus on Feynman's scientific accomplishments. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Man-Richard-Feynmans-Discoveri...
- My knowledge of it is just through department oral history.
I did some googling though and apparently his time at Cornell is talked about in Lawrence Krauss's biography "Quantum Man". Here's a brief review of it [1]. Apparently as a professor he would pretend to be an undergrad to sleep with students. He also apparently slept with the wives of multiple faculty (I might have remembered it wrong and this was the reason he was rumored to have been forced to leave over).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/quantum-man-...
- Feynman is such an engaging writer in his autobiographies that if you only read stories from him about himself, some of his problematic attitudes can seem just funny quirky stories: https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...
In his biography of Feynman, Lawrence Krauss apparently details incidents in which Feynman had affairs with his colleagues' wives, and even pretended to be a student to chase co-eds. Some biographers have suggested (but not justified) that Feynman's behavior is partly due to the loss of his young wife.
- > covers the science as it develops, if a little too briefly.
Most biographies of scientists focus on their character and personal life rather their work.
There are very few technical biographies, even of highly technical people. Readers won't understand the work of the scientist any better after reading through one of them.
Quantum Man[0] by Lawrence Krauss specifically aims to be a solution to this regarding Richard Feynman. And even in this case the exposition needs to be so terse that only the highly technical reader will fully understand most aspects of Feynman's work in the correct context.
Do you know of any biography of Dirac that edges on "if a little too technical"? I would love to read that.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Man-Richard-Feynmans-Discoveri...
- I was reading the book "Quantum Man" on Richard Feynman recently, when I got the notion that I should like to take on Physics study as a hobby. I figured I would find a lot of people here on HN who belong to either or both groups: 1. knowledgeable on the subject and 2. eager to embark on a similar journey.
Would anyone like to share their reading lists or recommend some good starting points? My background is sophomore-level college physics, though that was over a decade ago now. Specific areas of interest would be particle physics and QED.
- Interview with the author here: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/lawrence_krauss_quantum_man/
