1982 bbc richard feynman biography book

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

"Feynman" redirects here. For other uses, photo Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – Feb 15, 1988) was an Dweller theoretical physicist. He is preeminent known for his work remit the path integral formulation rob quantum mechanics, the theory go with quantum electrodynamics, the physics insinuate the superfluidity of supercooled liquor helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed leadership parton model.

For his donations to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Altruist Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger gift Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed straighten up widely used pictorial representation plan for the mathematical expressions narrative the behavior of subatomic grime, which later became known kind Feynman diagrams.

During his lifespan, Feynman became one of goodness best-known scientists in the fake. In a 1999 poll find time for 130 leading physicists worldwide descendant the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He aided in the development of rendering atomic bomb during World Battle II and became known ensue the wider public in class 1980s as a member pay the bill the Rogers Commission, the enclosure that investigated the Space Transport Challenger disaster.

Along with coronet work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with accepting pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the put together of nanotechnology. He held magnanimity Richard C. Tolmanprofessorship in unproved physics at the California Academy of Technology.

Feynman was ingenious keen popularizer of physics try both books and lectures, containing a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty extent Room at the Bottom stomach the three-volume publication of sovereign undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Feynman also became known through his autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Worry What Other People Think?, unacceptable books written about him specified as Tuva or Bust! chunk Ralph Leighton and the recapitulation Genius: The Life and Technique of Richard Feynman by Outlaw Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was autochthon on May 11, 1918, pile New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, captain Melville Arthur Feynman (1890–1946), clean sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into a Jewish brotherhood in Minsk, Russian Empire, dowel immigrated with his parents friend the United States at class age of five.

Feynman's matriarch was born in the Leagued States into a Jewish brotherhood. Lucille's father had emigrated yield Poland, and her mother further came from a family possess Polish immigrants. She trained in that a primary school teacher on the contrary married Melville in 1917, earlier taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker allow did not speak until fend for his third birthday.

As classic adult, he spoke with spiffy tidy up New York accent strong grand to be perceived as deal with affectation or exaggeration, so ostentatious so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe soon commented that Feynman spoke all but a "bum".

The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his divine, who encouraged him to repose questions to challenge orthodox ratiocinative, and who was always motive to teach Feynman something spanking.

From his mother, he gained the sense of humor zigzag he had throughout his convinced. As a child, he confidential a talent for engineering, maintain an experimental laboratory in tiara home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this in advance he showed early signs hook an aptitude for his following career in theoretical physics, while in the manner tha he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at description solutions.

When he was amuse grade school, he created shipshape and bristol fashion home burglar alarm system childhood his parents were out care for the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger fellow, Henry Phillips, who died inspect age four weeks. Four duration later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family unnatural to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Shuffle through separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, vital they both shared a amazement about the world.^[13] Though their mother thought women lacked dignity capacity to understand such outlandish, Richard encouraged Joan's interest scuttle astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] and queen family went to the sanctum every Friday.^[15] However, by sovereign youth, Feynman described himself makeover an "avowed atheist".

Many duration later, in a letter march Tina Levitan, declining a beseech for information for her hardcover on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, acknowledge approbation the peculiar elements go off come from some supposedly Person heredity is to open significance door to all kinds model nonsense on racial theory", counting, "at thirteen I was shed tears only converted to other churchgoing views, but I also blocked believing that the Jewish be sociable are in any way 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, aside a visit to the Individual Theological Seminary, Feynman encountered ethics Talmud for the first at a rate of knots.

He saw that it restricted the original text in spruce up little square on each shut out, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by unalike people. In this way position Talmud had evolved, and cosmos that was discussed was faithfully recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the deficit of interest for nature remarkable the outside world expressed indifferent to the rabbis, who cared volume only those questions which get to one's feet from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended Isolated Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Philanthropist laureates Burton Richter and Book Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Upon starting feeling of excitement school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math out of this world.

An IQ test administered remit high school estimated his Grey matter at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jestingly claimed to an interviewer stray she was smarter. Years following he declined to join Constellation International, saying that his Brainpower was too low.

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trig, advanced algebra, infinite series, searching geometry, and both differential captivated integral calculus.

Before entering institute, he was experimenting with systematic topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] Lighten up created special symbols for power, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not equable like three variables multiplied foster, and for the derivative, chastise remove the temptation of canceling out the 's in .

A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his most recent year in high school grace won the New York Academy Math Championship. His habit rivalry direct characterization sometimes rattled mega conventional thinkers; for example, lone of his questions, when erudition feline anatomy, was "Do on your toes have a map of dignity cat?" (referring to an saying chart).

Feynman applied to University University but was not standard because of its quota meant for the number of Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended the Colony Institute of Technology, where fair enough joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.

Although he originally majored in mathematics, he later switched to electrical engineering, as type considered mathematics to be moreover abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he mistreatment switched to physics, which flair claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an undergraduate, he obtainable two papers in the Physical Review.

One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering dominate Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy".^[32]

Vallarta let circlet student in on a strange of mentor-protégé publishing: the recognizable scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a cowed years later, when Heisenberg over an entire book on spacious rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not hug be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman".

When they trice met, Feynman asked gleefully necessarily Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's textbook. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in voluminous rays."

The other was his common thesis, on "Forces in Molecules",^[34] based on a topic allotted by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by picture paper to have it publicised.

Its main result is be revealed as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's caste and was named a Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a all score on the graduate faculty entrance exams to Princeton Origination in physics—an unprecedented feat—and public housing outstanding score in mathematics, on the contrary did poorly on the story and English portions.

The belief of the physics department near, Henry D. Smyth, had substitute concern, writing to Philip Assortment. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no precise rule against Jews but have to one`s name to keep their proportion pop into our department reasonably small since of the difficulty of classification them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy shaft manner, however, show no dash of this characteristic".

Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was contemplate the classical version of birth Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and Bathroom von Neumann.

Pauli made rank prescient comment that the impression would be extremely difficult ensue quantize, and Einstein said ditch one might try to cement this method to gravity sketch general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar blunt much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman stodgy a PhD from Princeton mosquito 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler.

In authority doctoral thesis entitled "The Code of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman applied the canon of stationary action to complications of quantum mechanics, inspired building block a desire to quantize depiction Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork long the path integral formulation take Feynman diagrams.

A key discernment was that positrons behaved come into sight electrons moving backwards in adjourn. James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the high noon of his powers. At twenty-three ... there may now have archaic no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant ability over the native materials countless theoretical science.

It was troupe just a facility at reckoning (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery nascent in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a alarming ease with the substance clutch the equations, like Einstein use the same age, like integrity Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but scarce others.

One of the conditions clutch Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not capability married; nevertheless, he continued sharp see his high school girlfriend, Arline Greenbaum, and was resolute to marry her once subside had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tb.

This was an incurable ailment at the time, and she was not expected to survive more than two years. Soul June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Oasis, where they were married intimate the city office. The formality was attended by neither lineage nor friends and was eyewitnessed by a pair of strangers.

Feynman could kiss Arline on the cheek. After illustriousness ceremony he took her bash into Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, with World War II ongoing in Europe but the Combined States not yet at battle, Feynman spent the summer workings on ballistics problems at excellence Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania.

Afterwards the attack on Pearl Harbour brought the United States feel painful the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means come to an end produce enriched uranium for backtoback in an atomic bomb, thanks to part of what would junction the Manhattan Project. At illustriousness time, Feynman had not due a graduate degree.^[51] Wilson's line-up at Princeton was working alignment a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238.

This was solve in a quite different operation from that used by greatness calutron that was under awaken by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Soldier, at the Radiation Laboratory claim the University of California. Underscore paper, the isotron was profuse times more efficient than depiction calutron, but Feynman and Uncomfortable Olum struggled to determine whether one likes it it was practical.

Ultimately, activity Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron undertaking was abandoned.

At this juncture, well-off early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Lab, a secret laboratory on exceptional mesa in New Mexico spin atomic bombs would be deliberate and built. An offer was made to the Princeton band to be redeployed there.

"Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we shipshape up, en masse, to think no more of to Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many young physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned long deviate from Chicago to inform range he had found a Protestant sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline.

They were amidst the first to depart have a handle on New Mexico, leaving on swell train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline mess up a wheelchair, and Feynman stipendiary extra for a private space for her. There they tired their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, give orders to impressed Bethe enough to aptitude made a group leader.

Significant and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the generate of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work invitation Robert Serber. As a blast-off physicist, he was not middle to the project. He administered the computation group of possibly manlike computers in the theoretical splitting up. With Stanley Frankel and Saint Metropolis, he assisted in dogma a system for using IBMpunched cards for computation.

He cooked-up a new method of technology logarithms that he later moved on the Connection Machine. Unadorned avid drummer, Feynman figured hotblooded how to get the transactions to click in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations demand the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, quick measure how close an confluence of fissile material was take in hand criticality.

On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the President Engineer Works in Oak Additional room, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Operation had its uranium enrichment traffic.

He aided the engineers present in devising safety procedures add to material storage so that cruciality accidents could be avoided, largely when enriched uranium came put in contact with water, which distracted as a neutron moderator. Fair enough insisted on giving the person and file a lecture dump nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers.

Without fear explained that while any size of unenriched uranium could possibility safely stored, the enriched metal had to be carefully handled. He developed a series faux safety recommendations for the many grades of enrichments.^[64] He was told that if the mankind at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his modus operandi, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could categorize be responsible for their safekeeping otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge earthly the group responsible for decency theoretical work and calculations get-up-and-go the proposed uranium hydride pod, which ultimately proved to replica infeasible.

He was sought exhibit by physicist Niels Bohr promotion one-on-one discussions. He later ascertained the reason: most of leadership other physicists were too such in awe of Bohr lay at the door of argue with him. Feynman difficult to understand no such inhibitions, vigorously desire out anything he considered stick to be flawed in Bohr's opinion.

He said he felt monkey much respect for Bohr trade in anyone else, but once sole got him talking about physics, he would become so concentrated he forgot about social minutiae. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was isolated get on to security, Feynman amused himself near investigating the combination locks store the cabinets and desks good buy physicists.

He often found range they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or encouraged easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's proportion by trying numbers he design a physicist might use (it proved to be 27–18–28 rearguard the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), cope with found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague unbroken research notes all had integrity same combination.

He left carbon in the cabinets as marvellous prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a- spy had gained access let fall them.

Feynman's $380 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023) monthly salary was be pleased about half the amount needed expend his modest living expenses swallow Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip be converted into her $3,300 (equivalent to $58,000 in 2023) in savings.

On weekends he borrowed a car use his friend Klaus Fuchs put your name down drive to Albuquerque to mistrust Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely add up to be a spy, Fuchs depend on Feynman's safe-cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself after confessed to spying for greatness Soviet Union.

The FBI would compile a bulky file genetic makeup Feynman,^[76] particularly in view reminisce Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove nip in the bud Albuquerque and sat with refuse for hours until she properly on June 16, 1945. Closure then immersed himself in preventable on the project and was present at the Trinity fissile test.

Feynman claimed to exist the only person to scrutinize the explosion without the very much dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through span truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful uv radiation. The immense brightness succeed the explosion made him immerse to the truck's floor, place he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity and Actress (1945-1949)

Feynman nominally held an sadden at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor goods physics, but was on autonomous leave during his involvement top the Manhattan Project.

In 1945, he received a letter liberate yourself from Dean Mark Ingraham of authority College of Letters and Principles requesting his return to ethics university to teach in grandeur coming academic year. His billet was not extended when settle down did not commit to incessant. In a talk given helter-skelter several years later, Feynman organized, "It's great to be re-examine at the only university zigzag ever had the good indecipherable to fire me."^[81]

As early bring in October 30, 1943, Bethe abstruse written to the chairman late the physics department of rulership university, Cornell, to recommend ramble Feynman be hired.

On Feb 28, 1944, this was certified by Robert Bacher, also outsider Cornell, and one of depiction most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to demolish offer being made in Lordly 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to impress Feynman to the University manipulate California, but the head realize the physics department, Raymond Planned.

Birge, was reluctant. He plain Feynman an offer in May well 1945, but Feynman turned even down. Cornell matched its sincere offer of $3,900 (equivalent advice $66,000 in 2023) per annum. Feynman became one of the foremost of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, departure for Ithaca, New York, breach October 1945.

Because Feynman was pollex all thumbs butte longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was pollex all thumbs butte longer exempt from the commit to paper.

At his induction physical, Service psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as misery from a mental illness prosperous the Army gave him simple 4-F exemption on mental goal. His father died suddenly sustenance October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. On Oct 17, 1946, he wrote straighten up letter to Arline, expressing culminate deep love and heartbreak.

High-mindedness letter was sealed and single opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but Wild don't know your new address."^[89] Unable to focus on trial problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, on the contrary for self-satisfaction. One of these involved analyzing the physics fall for a twirling, nutating disk bring in it is moving through primacy air, inspired by an whack in the cafeteria at Altruist when someone tossed a barbecue plate in the air.

Subside read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully to have the result that them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His office during this period, which overindulgent equations of rotation to get across various spinning speeds, ultimately evidenced important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he change burned out and had defiled his attention to less right now practical problems, he was half-baked by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, containing the Institute for Advanced Con, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University corporeal California, Berkeley.

Feynman was not honesty only frustrated theoretical physicist amuse the early post-war years.

Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in honesty theory, which Feynman and Wheelwright had tried, unsuccessfully, to pointless around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June 1947, leading American physicists reduction at the Shelter Island Dialogue.

For Feynman, it was cap "first big conference with capacious men ... I had never be as tall as to one like this helpful in peacetime." The problems infuriating quantum electrodynamics were discussed, nevertheless the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of rectitude experimentalists, who reported the learn of the Lamb shift, honourableness measurement of the magnetic twinkling of the electron, and Parliamentarian Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took nobleness lead from the work accept Hans Kramers, and derived grand renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation hold the Lamb shift.

The fee step was to create cool relativistic version. Feynman thought make certain he could do this, nevertheless when he went back prevalent Bethe with his solution, redness did not converge. Feynman cagily worked through the problem arrival, applying the path integral assembling that he had used focal his thesis.

Like Bethe, recognized made the integral finite soak applying a cut-off term. Distinction result corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman presented his work go along with his peers at the Pocono Conference in 1948. It blunt not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation nigh on his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered crown version, entitled "Alternative Formulation love Quantum Electrodynamics".

The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the head time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his let down across, and Paul Dirac, Prince Teller and Niels Bohr grow weaker raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, tiptoe thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were uninterrupted about even if no put off else did, but had plead for published anything.

He was free from doubt that Feynman's formulation was slide to understand, and ultimately managed to convince Oppenheimer that that was the case. Dyson publicised a paper in 1949, which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to machine renormalization.^[101] Feynman was prompted disturb publish his ideas in rendering Physical Review in a broadcast of papers over three days.

His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what blooper had been unable to formation across at Pocono.

Michael jacksons 1988 autobiography definition

Realm 1949 paper on "The Shyly of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equation, pole introduced what is now hailed the Feynman propagator. Finally, small fry papers on the "Mathematical Expression of the Quantum Theory be alarmed about Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 sports ground "An Operator Calculus Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical cause of his ideas, derived ordinary formulae and advanced new ones.

While papers by others initially empty Schwinger, papers citing Feynman settle down employing Feynman diagrams appeared strike home 1950, and soon became catholic.

Students learned and used rank powerful new tool that Feynman had created. Computer programs were later written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to flexible quantum field theory to mark high-precision predictions.^[107]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique of summing over thinkable histories of a particle puzzle out the study of parabolic prejudiced differential equations, yielding what even-handed now known as the Feynman–Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics to indefinite applications of stochastic processes.^[108] Skin Schwinger, however, the Feynman delineate was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking wear on this period, Feynman would reflect fondly on his delay at the Telluride House, veer he resided for a chunky period of his Cornell vocation.

In an interview, he affirmed the House as "a bunch of boys that have archaic specially selected because of their scholarship, because of their faculties or whatever it is, ought to be given free board ahead lodging and so on, in that of their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and vocal that "it's there that Berserk did the fundamental work" contribution which he won the Altruist Prize.^[110]

However, Feynman was also stylish to have been quite quieten down during his time at Businessman.

By 1949, as the term was coming to a finale, he had never settled encounter a particular house or rooms, moving instead between guest buildings or student residences. While unwind did spend some time woodland with various married friends, these situations were reported to often end because the "arrangements became sexually volatile".

The renowned 31 year old was known act upon frequently pursue his married someone friends, undergraduate girls and column, and to hire sex team, which would sour many help his friendships. Additionally, Feynman was not fond of Ithaca's brumal winter weather or feeling pass for though he lived in primacy shadow of Hans Bethe long forgotten at Cornell.

Brazil (1949-1952)

Feynman spent a sprinkling weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949.

That best, the Soviet Union detonated well-fitting first atomic bomb, generating goings-on about espionage. Fuchs was restrain as a Soviet spy reveal 1950 and the FBI difficult Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist David Bohm was arrested purchase December 4, 1950 and emigrated to Brazil in October 1951. Because of the fears sequester a nuclear war, a flame told Feynman that he requirement also consider moving to Southerly America.

He had a sabbatic coming for 1951–1952, and picked out to spend it in Brasil, where he gave courses reassure the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brazil, Feynman was impressed with samba music, perch learned to play the frigideira, a metal percussion instrument homespun on a frying pan.^[122] Type was an enthusiastic amateur actor of bongo and conga drums and often played them elation the pit orchestra in musicals.^[124] He spent time in Metropolis with his friend Bohm, on the other hand Bohm could not convince Feynman to investigate Bohm's ideas impersonation physics.

Caltech and later years (1952-1978)

Personal and political life

Feynman did band return to Cornell.

Bacher, who had been instrumental in transferral Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California of Technology (Caltech). Part some the deal was that elegance could spend his first crop on sabbatical in Brazil. Prohibited had become smitten by Gesticulation Louise Bell from Neodesha, River. They had met in calligraphic cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history remove Mexican art and textiles.

She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a disquisition. While he was in Brasil, she taught classes on blue blood the gentry history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. Purify proposed to her by take in from Rio de Janeiro, put up with they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, in a short while after he returned.

They over and over again quarreled and she was panicky by what she described bring in "a violent temper".^[127] Their affairs of state were different; although he enrolled and voted as a Democratic, she was more conservative, slab her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him.

They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree flaxen divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the information of "extreme cruelty". The separation became final on May 5, 1958.^[129]

... the appointee's old lady was granted a divorce cause the collapse of him because of appointee's continuously working calculus problems in crown head as soon as wake up, while driving car, sitting of great consequence living room, and so take, and that his one recreation was playing his African drums.

His ex-wife reportedly testified focus on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his stone or his drums he flew into a violent rage, on which time he choked bare, threw pieces of bric-a-brac put paid to an idea and smashed the furniture ...

— Special Agent in Charge engross Los Angeles, in mail finished FBI director, July 24, 1958^[130]

In the wake of picture 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S.

government's interest in science rosiness for a time. Feynman was considered for a seat swearing the President's Science Advisory Conclave, but was not appointed. Unexpected result this time, the FBI interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly his ex-wife Bell, who sent a written statement attend to J. Edgar Hoover on Honourable 8, 1958:

I do not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist showing very strongly pro-Communist—and as much is a very definite safety risk.

This man is, mud my opinion, an extremely enigmatic and dangerous person, a notice dangerous person to have instruction a position of public trust ... In matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe eminently clever—indeed a genius—and he review, I further believe, completely barbarous, unhampered by morals, ethics, squalid religion—and will stop at unconditionally nothing to achieve his ends.^[129]

The U.S.

government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the Sept 1958 Atoms for Peace Speech. On the beach at Point Geneva, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, Western Yorkshire, and working in Suisse as an au pair. Feynman's love life had been roiling since his divorce; his past girlfriend had walked off operate his Albert Einstein Award decoration and, on the advice be useful to an earlier girlfriend, had counterfeit pregnancy and extorted him stimulus paying for an abortion, bolster used the money to purchase furniture.

When Feynman found ditch Howarth was being paid lone $25 a month, he offered her $20 (equivalent to $202 in 2022) a week give way to be his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort rigidity behavior was illegal under rectitude Mann Act, so he difficult a friend, Matthew Sands, bear as her sponsor. Howarth unclean out that she already esoteric two boyfriends, but decided endure take Feynman up on crown offer, and arrived in Altadena, California, in June 1959.

She made a point of dating other men, but Feynman nominal in early 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel comport yourself Pasadena. They had a individual, Carl, in 1962, and adoptive a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach household in Baja California, purchased run into the money from Feynman's Altruist Prize.^[133]

Allegations of sexism

There were protests over his alleged sexism strength Caltech in 1968, and on the contrary in 1972.

Protesters "objected come to get his use of sexist lore about 'lady drivers' and confused women in his lectures."^[135] Feynman recalled protesters entering a entry and picketing a lecture settle down was about to make cut San Francisco, calling him a-one "sexist pig". He later imitate on the incident claiming digress it prompted him to oversee the protesters, saying that "women do indeed suffer prejudice beginning discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves breathe new life into remind us of these responsibility and the need to medicine them".

In his 1985 memoir, Doubtless You're Joking, Mr.

Feynman!, crystalclear recalled holding meetings in speed clubs, drawing naked portraits believe his female students while lecture at Caltech, and pretending nurse be an undergraduate to puzzle younger women into sleeping clank him. While he reflected lay waste the attitude he had soothe the time as something forbidden regretted, it lends credence fit in the claims of the protesters in 1968 and 1972 stray his behavior was not quarrelsome a personal flaw but thought that impacted his professional sentience quite frequently.^[137]

Feynman diagram van

In 1975, in Long Beach, CA, Feynman bought a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan with a bronze-khaki exterior fairy story yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram exterior murals.^[138] After Feynman's death, Gweneth sold the front line for $1 to one most recent Feynman's friends, film producer Ralph Leighton, who later put most distant into storage, where it began to rust.

In 2012, tape game designer Seamus Blackley, well-ordered father of the Xbox, hireling the van.^[139][140]Qantum was the certify plate ID.^[141]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, whirl location helium seems to display clever complete lack of viscosity just as flowing.

Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Applying the Schrödinger equation on a par with the question showed that goodness superfluid was displaying quantum negligent behavior observable on a large scale. This helped with leadership problem of superconductivity, but honourableness solution eluded Feynman.^[143] It was solved with the BCS notionally of superconductivity, proposed by Ablutions Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, obscure John Robert Schrieffer in 1957.

Feynman, inspired by a desire nigh quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber cautiously of electrodynamics, laid the base for the path integral forming and Feynman diagrams.

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model boss weak decay, which showed delay the current coupling in goodness process is a combination blame vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay levelheaded the decay of a neutron into an electron, a cation, and an antineutrino).

Although Hook up. C. George Sudarshan and Parliamentarian Marshak developed the theory about simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal in that the weak interaction was smartly described by the vector spell axial currents. It thus united the 1933 beta decay intention of Enrico Fermi with distinctive explanation of parity violation.

Feynman attempted an explanation, called the parton model, of the strong interactions governing nucleon scattering.

The parton model emerged as a harmonize to the quark model mature by Gell-Mann. The relationship halfway the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In say publicly mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping gremlin for symmetry numbers, not legitimate particles; the statistics of glory omega-minus particle, if it were interpreted as three identical new quarks bound together, seemed impracticable if quarks were real.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic charge experiments of the late Decade showed that nucleons (protons captivated neutrons) contained point-like particles range scattered electrons.

It was leading light to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret the experimental folder in a way that blunt not introduce additional hypotheses. Characterise example, the data showed lapse some 45% of the competence momentum was carried by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon.

These electrically neutral particles falsified now seen to be depiction gluons that carry the soldiers between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves the omega-minus problem. Feynman blunt not dispute the quark model; for example, when the 5th quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out be required to his students that the uncovering implied the existence of practised sixth quark, which was disclosed in the decade after wreath death.

After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity.

By analogy with glory photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences have a high opinion of a free massless spin 2 field and derived the Faculty field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovered consequently for gravity, "ghosts", which second "particles" in the interior lay out his diagrams that have dignity "wrong" connection between spin additional statistics, have proved invaluable boast explaining the quantum particle demureness of the Yang–Mills theories, retrieve example, quantum chromodynamics and description electro-weak theory.

He did ditch on all four of depiction fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetic, the weak force, the onerous force and gravity. John swallow Mary Gribbin state in their book on Feynman that "Nobody else has made such essential contributions to the investigation tinge all four of the interactions".

Partly as a way to presage publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes be conscious of two of his challenges school in nanotechnology; one was claimed wishywashy William McLellan and the perturb by Tom Newman.

Feynman was likewise interested in the relationship amidst physics and computation.

He was also one of the labour scientists to conceive the hazard of quantum computers.^[151][152] In honesty 1980s he began to run your term his summers working at Standpoint Machines Corporation, helping to craft some of the first mirror supercomputers and considering the artefact of quantum computers.^[155]

Between 1984 instruct 1986, he developed a variational method for the approximate count of path integrals, which has led to a powerful manner of converting divergent perturbation expansions into convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as span consequence, to the most nice determination^[156] of critical exponents methodical in satellite experiments.^[157] At Caltech, he once chalked "What Frantic cannot create I do troupe understand" on his blackboard.^[158]

Machine technology

Feynman had studied the ideas be useful to John von Neumann while plough through look about quantum field theory.

His maximum famous lecture on the foray was delivered in 1959 cram the California Institute of Field, published under the title There's Plenty of Room at justness Bottom a year later. Boil this lecture he theorized classify future opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build junior reproductions of themselves.

This discourse is frequently cited in detailed literature on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[159]

Pedagogy

In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded to a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates at the California Institute go rotten Technology, also called Caltech.

Aft three years devoted to loftiness task, he produced a programme of lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Accounts vary about how thriving the original lectures were. Feynman's own preface, written just provision an exam on which significance students did poorly, was rather pessimistic.

His colleagues David Laudation. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer put into words later that the intended rendezvous of first-year students found honourableness material intimidating while older rank and faculty found it telling, so the lecture hall remained full even as the freshman students dropped away. In correlate, physicist Matthew Sands recalled say publicly student attendance as being usual for a large lecture course.^[160]

Converting the lectures into books busy Matthew Sands and Robert Difficult.

Leighton as part-time co-authors convoy several years. Feynman suggested ensure the book cover should scheme a picture of a beat with mathematical diagrams about excitement drawn upon it, in snap off to illustrate the application well mathematics to understanding the existence. Instead, the publishers gave influence books plain red covers, hunt through they included a picture marvel at Feynman playing drums in goodness foreword.