Feynman
/
B . b.bv.vbgvb;.Feynman, Richard Philips (1918-1988)
Portions of this entry contributed by Leonardo Motta
American physicist who was born in New York City on May 11, 1918. He grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens and when he was about 10, he started to buy old radios to use in his "personal laboratory," a collection of electric gadgets and components, and by the age of 12, he was already fixing radios in his neighborhood. Feynman related a number of entertaining and revealing vignettes from his childhood and throughout his professional career in the engaging, delightful, and bestselling autobiographical work Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! This collection was subsequently followed by The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist and Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey.
Feynman studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued his studies at Princeton University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in physics in 1942 with a thesis supervised by John Wheeler. His thesis dealt with advanced waves, which can be described as the theory of electromagnetic waves that travel "backwards" in time. His first lecture at Princeton on the subject was interesting enough to draw an audience that included none less than Einstein, Pauli, and von Neumann.
After completing his Ph.D., Feynman moved to Cornell University in 1945 as professor of theoretical physics. There, he met Hans Bethe and became involved in the Manhattan Project. While moving to the newly constructed secret laboratory at Los Alamos, Feynman flouted military discipline with a series of quirky practical jokes and tricks. He was particularly fond of pointing out the insufficiency of the security of the Los Alamos safes inside which the plans for the atomic bomb where entrusted. To drive this point home, he taught himself how to open safes, with results amusingly recounted inSurely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! While Feynman toiled at Los Alamos, his wife became very sick and
B . b.bv.vbgvb;.Feynman, Richard Philips (1918-1988)
Portions of this entry contributed by Leonardo Motta
American physicist who was born in New York City on May 11, 1918. He grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens and when he was about 10, he started to buy old radios to use in his "personal laboratory," a collection of electric gadgets and components, and by the age of 12, he was already fixing radios in his neighborhood. Feynman related a number of entertaining and revealing vignettes from his childhood and throughout his professional career in the engaging, delightful, and bestselling autobiographical work Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! This collection was subsequently followed by The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist and Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey.
Feynman studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued his studies at Princeton University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in physics in 1942 with a thesis supervised by John Wheeler. His thesis dealt with advanced waves, which can be described as the theory of electromagnetic waves that travel "backwards" in time. His first lecture at Princeton on the subject was interesting enough to draw an audience that included none less than Einstein, Pauli, and von Neumann.
After completing his Ph.D., Feynman moved to Cornell University in 1945 as professor of theoretical physics. There, he met Hans Bethe and became involved in the Manhattan Project. While moving to the newly constructed secret laboratory at Los Alamos, Feynman flouted military discipline with a series of quirky practical jokes and tricks. He was particularly fond of pointing out the insufficiency of the security of the Los Alamos safes inside which the plans for the atomic bomb where entrusted. To drive this point home, he taught himself how to open safes, with results amusingly recounted inSurely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! While Feynman toiled at Los Alamos, his wife became very sick and