Richard feynman biography video on george

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

"Feynman" redirects in attendance. For other uses, see Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was proposal American theoretical physicist. He is superb known for his work in rendering path integral formulation of quantum mechanism, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, position physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to integrity development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman old hat the Nobel Prize in Physics bind 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger added Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed a extensively used pictorial representation scheme for say publicly mathematical expressions describing the behavior longed-for subatomic particles, which later became darken as Feynman diagrams. During his period, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In trim 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He assisted rejoinder the development of the atomic pod during World War II and became known to the wider public tear the 1980s as a member have a high regard for the Rogers Commission, the panel zigzag investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger catastrophe. Along with his work in unworkable non-naturali physics, Feynman has been credited peer having pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept try to be like nanotechnology. He held the Richard Maxim. Tolmanprofessorship in theoretical physics at distinction California Institute of Technology.

Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics vindicate both books and lectures, including swell 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology baptized There's Plenty of Room at say publicly Bottom and the three-volume publication most recent his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became acknowledged through his autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Swap You Care What Other People Think?, and books written about him much as Tuva or Bust! by Ralph Leighton and the biography Genius: Integrity Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, give it some thought New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, and Melville Character Feynman (1890–1946), a sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into a Mortal family in Minsk, Russian Empire, soar immigrated with his parents to prestige United States at the age in this area five. Feynman's mother was born demand the United States into a Human family. Lucille's father had emigrated evacuate Poland, and her mother also came from a family of Polish immigrants. She trained as a primary institution teacher but married Melville in 1917, before taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker and plainspoken not speak until after his tertiary birthday. As an adult, he beam with a New York accent mighty enough to be perceived as erior affectation or exaggeration, so much advantageous that his friends Wolfgang Pauli famous Hans Bethe once commented that Feynman spoke like a "bum".

The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his pop, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother, explicit gained the sense of humor digress he had throughout his life. By reason of a child, he had a gift for engineering, maintained an experimental region in his home, and delighted value repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman difficult, and during this time he showed early signs of an aptitude inform his later career in theoretical physics, when he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at the solutions. When he was in grade grammar, he created a home burglar frighten system while his parents were bully for the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave family to a younger brother, Henry Phillips, who died at age four weeks. Four years later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family pretended to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Though isolated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, and they both joint a curiosity about the world.^[13] Sift through their mother thought women lacked justness capacity to understand such things, Richard encouraged Joan's interest in astronomy, perch Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] vital his family went to the chapel every Friday.^[15] However, by his boyhood, Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist". Many years later, in dinky letter to Tina Levitan, declining dialect trig request for information for her textbook on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, flair stated, "To select, for approbation rectitude peculiar elements that come from sizeable supposedly Jewish heredity is to commence the door to all kinds look up to nonsense on racial theory", adding, "at thirteen I was not only committed to other religious views, but Uncontrolled also stopped believing that the Judaic people are in any way 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, during organized visit to the Jewish Theological Prime, Feynman encountered the Talmud for class first time. He saw that practice contained the original text in uncut little square on each page, see surrounding it were commentaries written condescending time by different people. In that way the Talmud had evolved, stall everything that was discussed was circumspectly recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the lack of bore to tears for nature and the outside environment expressed by the rabbis, who terrible about only those questions which start on from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, which was also teeming by fellow Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Upon primitive high school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math class. Small IQ test administered in high faculty estimated his IQ at 125—high on the other hand "merely respectable", according to biographer Crook Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jokingly purported to an interviewer that she was smarter. Years later he declined finish join Mensa International, saying that circlet IQ was too low.

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trigonometry, modern algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, tell off both differential and integral calculus. Previously entering college, he was experimenting hash up mathematical topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] He actualized special symbols for logarithm, sine, cos and tangent functions so they outspoken not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the derivative, compel to remove the temptation of canceling pleasantsounding the 's in . A partaker of the Arista Honor Society, prank his last year in high college he won the New York Establishing Math Championship. His habit of regulate characterization sometimes rattled more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of high-mindedness cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart).

Feynman applied to Columbia University on the other hand was not accepted because of disloyalty quota for the number of Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended the Colony Institute of Technology, where he connubial the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. Though he originally majored in mathematics, stylishness later switched to electrical engineering, reorganization he considered mathematics to be further abstract. Noticing that he "had departed too far", he then switched go along with physics, which he claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an undergraduate, loosen up published two papers in the Physical Review. One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was honoured "The Scattering of Cosmic Rays chunk the Stars of a Galaxy".^[32]

Vallarta case his student in on a colour of mentor-protégé publishing: the senior scientist's name comes first. Feynman had monarch revenge a few years later, in the way that Heisenberg concluded an entire book fraction cosmic rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not to keep going expected according to Vallarta and Feynman". When they next met, Feynman purposely gleefully whether Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's book. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're integrity last word in cosmic rays."

The provoke was his senior thesis, on "Forces in Molecules",^[34] based on a activity assigned by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by the innovation to have it published. Its clue result is known as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's degree and was named a Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a perfect record on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in physics—an extraordinary feat—and an outstanding score in sums, but did poorly on the narration and English portions. The head line of attack the physics department there, Henry Rotate. Smyth, had another concern, writing determination Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no explicit rule against Jews but have defile keep their proportion in our organizartion reasonably small because of the mistake of placing them." Morse conceded go off Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and system, however, show no trace of that characteristic".

Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was on the classical version detect the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Pauli made the prescient letter that the theory would be amazing difficult to quantize, and Einstein supposed that one might try to handle this method to gravity in popular relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle become calm Jayant Narlikar did much later little the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman received a PhD from Princeton do 1942; his thesis advisor was Toilet Archibald Wheeler. In his doctoral pamphlet entitled "The Principle of Least Sparkle in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman applied influence principle of stationary action to compression of quantum mechanics, inspired by unembellished desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid depiction groundwork for the path integral coordination and Feynman diagrams. A key enlightenment was that positrons behaved like electrons moving backwards in time. James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman appeal the crest of his powers. Trouble twenty-three ... there may now have antique no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over primacy native materials of theoretical science. Stage set was not just a facility force mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging behave the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to own acquire a frightening ease with the grounds behind the equations, like Einstein split the same age, like the Council physicist Lev Landau—but few others.

One chastisement the conditions of Feynman's scholarship give somebody no option but to Princeton was that he could not quite be married; nevertheless, he continued kind-hearted see his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum, and was determined to wife her once he had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge zigzag she was seriously ill with t.b.. This was an incurable disease squabble the time, and she was party expected to live more than bend over years. On June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Cay, where they were married in position city office. The ceremony was abundant in by neither family nor friends reprove was witnessed by a pair waning strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline sui generis incomparabl on the cheek. After the ceremonial he took her to Deborah Haven, where he visited her on weekends.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, with World War II occurring in Europe but the Pooled States not yet at war, Feynman spent the summer working on flight problems at the Frankford Arsenal appearance Pennsylvania. After the attack on Gem Harbor brought the United States bump into the war, Feynman was recruited because of Robert R. Wilson, who was critical on means to produce enriched metal for use in an atomic blitz, as part of what would move the Manhattan Project. At the in the house, Feynman had not earned a set degree.^[51] Wilson's team at Princeton was working on a device called iron out isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238. This was done play in a quite different manner from put off used by the calutron that was under development by a team foul up Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Actress, at the Radiation Laboratory of magnanimity University of California. On paper, honesty isotron was many times more efficacious than the calutron, but Feynman gain Paul Olum struggled to determine willy-nilly it was practical. Ultimately, on Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron project was abandoned.

At this juncture, in early 1943, Parliamentarian Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Laboratory, a secret laboratory on spiffy tidy up mesa in New Mexico where minuscule bombs would be designed and visualize. An offer was made to dignity Princeton team to be redeployed near. "Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we signed language, en masse, to go to Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many young physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned extensive distance from Chicago to inform stray he had found a Presbyterian sickbay in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline. They were among the first prove depart for New Mexico, leaving look over a train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline with unembellished wheelchair, and Feynman paid extra beseech a private room for her. Up they spent their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, and insincere Bethe enough to be made neat group leader. He and Bethe handsome the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating honesty yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Parliamentarian Serber. As a junior physicist, subside was not central to the undertaking. He administered the computation group behove human computers in the theoretical share. With Stanley Frankel and Nicholas 1 he assisted in establishing a plan for using IBMpunched cards for calculation. He invented a new method obey computing logarithms that he later tattered on the Connection Machine. An esurient drummer, Feynman figured out how add up to get the machine to click ideal musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations perform the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", dexterous small nuclear reactor, to measure achieve something close an assembly of fissile topic was to criticality.

On completing this have an effect, Feynman was sent to the Politico Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, River, where the Manhattan Project had loom over uranium enrichment facilities. He aided rectitude engineers there in devising safety procedures for material storage so that cruciality accidents could be avoided, especially like that which enriched uranium came into contact swop water, which acted as a neutron moderator. He insisted on giving picture rank and file a lecture settle on nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers. He explained go wool-gathering while any amount of unenriched metal could be safely stored, the gratifying uranium had to be carefully handled. He developed a series of aegis recommendations for the various grades possession enrichments.^[64] He was told that supposing the people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his approach, he was to inform them lapse Los Alamos "could not be reliable for their safety otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in expertise of the group responsible for grandeur theoretical work and calculations on distinction proposed uranium hydride bomb, which finally proved to be infeasible. He was sought out by physicist Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He later observed the reason: most of the burden physicists were too much in surprise of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, briskly pointing out anything he considered weather be flawed in Bohr's thinking. Powder said he felt as much worship for Bohr as anyone else, on the contrary once anyone got him talking subject physics, he would become so just he forgot about social niceties. because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was isolated for security, Feynman amused person by investigating the combination locks expand the cabinets and desks of physicists. He often found that they residue the lock combinations on the middling settings, wrote the combinations down, imperfection used easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's combination via trying numbers he thought a physicist might use (it proved to befall 27–18–28 after the base of enchanting logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), dominant found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept research familiarize yourself all had the same combination. Significant left notes in the cabinets whereas a prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a double agent had gained access to them.

Feynman's $380 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023) monthly takings was about half the amount desirable for his modest living expenses put forward Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip into her $3,300 (equivalent to $58,000 in 2023) in store. On weekends he borrowed a automobile from his friend Klaus Fuchs commence drive to Albuquerque to see Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely to be a secret service agent, Fuchs mentioned Feynman's safe-cracking and extensive trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself adjacent confessed to spying for the State Union. The FBI would compile a- bulky file on Feynman,^[76] particularly remark view of Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed mosey Arline was dying, Feynman drove identify Albuquerque and sat with her go allout for hours until she died on June 16, 1945. He then immersed personally in work on the project stake was present at the Trinity atomic test. Feynman claimed to be goodness only person to see the postmortem without the very dark glasses qualify welder's lenses provided, reasoning that elation was safe to look through clever truck windshield, as it would partition out the harmful ultraviolet radiation. Authority immense brightness of the explosion thought him duck to the truck's planking, where he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity and Cornell (1945-1949)

Feynman nominally held an appointment at magnanimity University of Wisconsin–Madison as an report professor of physics, but was persist in unpaid leave during his involvement impede the Manhattan Project. In 1945, filth received a letter from Dean Brand Ingraham of the College of Writing book and Science requesting his return practice the university to teach in significance coming academic year. His appointment was not extended when he did call for commit to returning. In a cajole given there several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be put off at the only university that by any chance had the good sense to blazing me."^[81]

As early as October 30, 1943, Bethe had written to the leader of the physics department of monarch university, Cornell, to recommend that Feynman be hired. On February 28, 1944, this was endorsed by Robert Bacher, also from Cornell, and one signify the most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to an let oneself in for being made in August 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to recruit Feynman to the Institution of California, but the head assault the physics department, Raymond T. Birge, was reluctant. He made Feynman harangue offer in May 1945, but Feynman turned it down. Cornell matched tog up salary offer of $3,900 (equivalent dirty $66,000 in 2023) per annum. Feynman became one of the first of grandeur Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders slant depart, leaving for Ithaca, New Dynasty, in October 1945.

Because Feynman was thumb longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was no longer free from the draft. At his launch physical, Army psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman trade in suffering from a mental illness presentday the Army gave him a 4-F exemption on mental grounds. His clergyman died suddenly on October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. Stoppage October 17, 1946, he wrote marvellous letter to Arline, expressing his curved love and heartbreak. The letter was sealed and only opened after coronate death. "Please excuse my not transmittal this," the letter concluded, "but Farcical don't know your new address."^[89] 1 to focus on research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not en route for utility, but for self-satisfaction. One break into these involved analyzing the physics bequest a twirling, nutating disk as unfilled is moving through the air, of genius by an incident in the coffee bar at Cornell when someone tossed dexterous dinner plate in the air. Flair read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and well-tried unsuccessfully to use them to codify a relativistic theory of electrons. Coronate work during this period, which tattered equations of rotation to express a number of spinning speeds, ultimately proved important appreciation his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet being he felt burned out and challenging turned his attention to less now practical problems, he was surprised by means of the offers of professorships from bug renowned universities, including the Institute cargo space Advanced Study, the University of Calif., Los Angeles, and the University attention to detail California, Berkeley.

Feynman was not the one and only frustrated theoretical physicist in the steady post-war years. Quantum electrodynamics suffered evacuate infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in loftiness theory, which Feynman and Wheeler esoteric tried, unsuccessfully, to work around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June 1947, leading American physicists met at the Shelter Island Congress. For Feynman, it was his "first big conference with big men ... Uncontrolled had never gone to one comparable this one in peacetime." The pressure plaguing quantum electrodynamics were discussed, on the contrary the theoreticians were completely overshadowed fail to notice the achievements of the experimentalists, who reported the discovery of the Essayist shift, the measurement of the charismatic moment of the electron, and Parliamentarian Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took the main attraction from the work of Hans Kramers, and derived a renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation for the Lamb shift. Description next step was to create efficient relativistic version. Feynman thought that explicit could do this, but when pacify went back to Bethe with monarch solution, it did not converge. Feynman carefully worked through the problem put back, applying the path integral formulation range he had used in his unfounded information. Like Bethe, he made the conclude finite by applying a cut-off locution. The result corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman presented his work to dominion peers at the Pocono Conference send 1948. It did not go athletic. Julian Schwinger gave a long articulation of his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered his legend, entitled "Alternative Formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics". The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used keep the first time, puzzled the tryst assembly. Feynman failed to get his discouraging across, and Paul Dirac, Edward Treasurer and Niels Bohr all raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, one thing at slightest was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger playing field Feynman understood what they were discussion about even if no one differently did, but had not published anything. He was convinced that Feynman's construction was easier to understand, and in step managed to convince Oppenheimer that that was the case. Dyson published calligraphic paper in 1949, which added creative rules to Feynman's that told anyway to implement renormalization.^[101] Feynman was prompted to publish his ideas in glory Physical Review in a series elect papers over three years. His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off confirm Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what he had been unable to goal across at Pocono. His 1949 article on "The Theory of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equalization, and introduced what is now titled the Feynman propagator. Finally, in documents on the "Mathematical Formulation of rendering Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" bargain 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Acquiring Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical basis close the eyes to his ideas, derived familiar formulae become peaceful advanced new ones.

While papers by remnants initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared strike home 1950, and soon became prevalent. Division learned and used the powerful fresh tool that Feynman had created. Personal computer programs were later written to balance out Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to cloudy quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions.^[107]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique staff summing over possible histories of a-ok particle to the study of symbolic partial differential equations, yielding what critique now known as the Feynman–Kac pigeonhole, the use of which extends at a distance physics to many applications of stochastic processes.^[108] To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking confirm on this period, Feynman would mention fondly on his time at decency Telluride House, where he resided rag a large period of his Philanthropist career. In an interview, he alleged the House as "a group surrounding boys that have been specially select because of their scholarship, because racket their cleverness or whatever it decay, to be given free board keep from lodging and so on, because director their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and said that "it's apropos that I did the fundamental work" for which he won the Altruist Prize.^[110]

However, Feynman was also reported correspond with have been quite restless during dominion time at Cornell. By 1949, pass for the period was coming to simple close, he had never settled interrupt a particular house or apartment, stirring instead between guest houses or devotee residences. While he did spend suitable time living with various married companions, these situations were reported to regularly end because the "arrangements became sexually volatile". The renowned 31 year all-round was known to frequently pursue consummate married female friends, undergraduate girls unthinkable women, and to hire sex lecturers, which would sour many of authority friendships. Additionally, Feynman was not sloppy of Ithaca's cold winter weather person over you feeling as though he lived fake the shadow of Hans Bethe onetime at Cornell.

Brazil (1949-1952)

Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949. That year, the Soviet Entity detonated its first atomic bomb, generating concerns about espionage. Fuchs was under legal restraint as a Soviet spy in 1950 and the FBI questioned Bethe fail to differentiate Feynman's loyalty. Physicist David Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950 enthralled emigrated to Brazil in October 1951. Because of the fears of skilful nuclear war, a girlfriend told Feynman that he should also consider heart-rending to South America. He had unembellished sabbatical coming for 1951–1952, and elect to spend it in Brazil, disc he gave courses at the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brasil, Feynman was impressed with samba air, and learned to play the frigideira, a metal percussion instrument based put on the air a frying pan.^[122] He was sketch enthusiastic amateur player of bongo esoteric conga drums and often played them in the pit orchestra in musicals.^[124] He spent time in Rio sound out his friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman to investigate Bohm's ideas on physics.

Caltech and later time eon (1952-1978)

Personal and political life

Feynman did beg for return to Cornell. Bacher, who difficult to understand been instrumental in bringing Feynman nominate Cornell, had lured him to rank California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Debris of the deal was that noteworthy could spend his first year requisition sabbatical in Brazil. He had die smitten by Mary Louise Bell devour Neodesha, Kansas. They had met scuttle a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was make happen Brazil, she taught classes on honourableness history of furniture and interiors indulgence Michigan State University. He proposed puzzle out her by mail from Rio go along with Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, ere long after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was frightened by what she described as "a violent temper".^[127] Their politics were different; although without fear registered and voted as a Democratic, she was more conservative, and discard opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer consolation hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on Could 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree be incumbent on divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final anarchy May 5, 1958.^[129]

... the appointee's wife was granted a divorce breakout him because of appointee's constantly place calculus problems in his head tempt soon as awake, while driving motor car, sitting in living room, and like so forth, and that his one recreation was playing his African drums. Coronate ex-wife reportedly testified that on a number of occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums without fear flew into a violent rage, over which time he choked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and licked the furniture ...

— Special Agent double up Charge in Los Angeles, in send to FBI director, July 24, 1958^[130]

In the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S. government's bore to death in science rose for a crux. Feynman was considered for a settle on the President's Science Advisory Assembly, but was not appointed. At that time, the FBI interviewed a bride close to Feynman, possibly his ex Bell, who sent a written observer to J. Edgar Hoover on Reverenced 8, 1958:

I do not know—but Comical believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist or very strongly pro-Communist—and as such is a very on the dot security risk. This man is, count on my opinion, an extremely complex last dangerous person, a very dangerous face-to-face to have in a position fend for public trust ... In matters of charm Richard Feynman is, I believe vastly clever—indeed a genius—and he is, Side-splitting further believe, completely ruthless, unhampered toddler morals, ethics, or religion—and will level at absolutely nothing to achieve top ends.^[129]

The U.S. government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference. On illustriousness beach at Lake Geneva, he reduction Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, West Yorkshire, and working in Suisse as an au pair. Feynman's cherish life had been turbulent since culminate divorce; his previous girlfriend had walked off with his Albert Einstein Premium medal and, on the advice bear witness an earlier girlfriend, had feigned gestation and extorted him into paying usher an abortion, then used the pennilessness to buy furniture. When Feynman set up that Howarth was being paid $25 a month, he offered any more $20 (equivalent to $202 in 2022) a week to be his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this imprint of behavior was illegal under character Mann Act, so he had unembellished friend, Matthew Sands, act as decline sponsor. Howarth pointed out that she already had two boyfriends, but certain to take Feynman up on crown offer, and arrived in Altadena, Calif., in June 1959. She made elegant point of dating other men, nevertheless Feynman proposed in early 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel in Metropolis. They had a son, Carl, mark out 1962, and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. Besides their home value Altadena, they had a beach bedsit in Baja California, purchased with dignity money from Feynman's Nobel Prize.^[133]

Allegations nominate sexism

There were protests over his putative sexism at Caltech in 1968, tube again in 1972. Protesters "objected throw up his use of sexist stories go up in price 'lady drivers' and clueless women break off his lectures."^[135] Feynman recalled protesters arrival a hall and picketing a speech he was about to make play a role San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". He later reflected on grandeur incident claiming that it prompted him to address the protesters, saying lose concentration "women do indeed suffer prejudice extra discrimination in physics, and your image here today serves to remind loyal of these difficulties and the entail to remedy them".

In his 1985 profile, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, unwind recalled holding meetings in strip clubs, drawing naked portraits of his individual students while lecturing at Caltech, swallow pretending to be an undergraduate in depth deceive younger women into sleeping fit him. While he reflected on illustriousness attitude he had at the pause as something he regretted, it lends credence to the claims of dignity protesters in 1968 and 1972 dump his behavior was not just copperplate personal flaw but something that compact his professional life quite frequently.^[137]

Feynman draft van

In 1975, in Long Beach, Accountant, Feynman bought a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan with a bronze-khaki exterior and yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram face murals.^[138] After Feynman's death, Gweneth vend the van for $1 to sidle of Feynman's friends, film producer Ralph Leighton, who later put it be concerned with storage, where it began to high. In 2012, video game designer Seamus Blackley, a father of the Xbox, bought the van.^[139][140]Qantum was the sanction plate ID.^[141]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated high-mindedness physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems nurse display a complete lack of carcass when flowing. Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Applying probity Schrödinger equation to the question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on a macroscopical scale. This helped with the attention of superconductivity, but the solution eluded Feynman.^[143] It was solved with integrity BCS theory of superconductivity, proposed alongside John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, be proof against John Robert Schrieffer in 1957.

Feynman, brilliant by a desire to quantize high-mindedness Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, rest the groundwork for the path unchanged formulation and Feynman diagrams.

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of exhausted decay, which showed that the cup of tea coupling in the process is great combination of vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay research paper the decay of a neutron get tangled an electron, a proton, and come to an end antineutrino). Although E. C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the hesitantly nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because grandeur weak interaction was neatly described disrespect the vector and axial currents. Illustrate thus combined the 1933 beta ebb theory of Enrico Fermi with key explanation of parity violation.

Feynman attempted proscribe explanation, called the parton model, dead weight the strong interactions governing nucleon trifle. The parton model emerged as well-ordered complement to the quark model educated by Gell-Mann. The relationship between distinction two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed desert quarks were just a bookkeeping gimmick for symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus crumb, if it were interpreted as match up identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible if quarks were real.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed wind nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that scattered electrons. It was natural to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted round interpret the experimental data in calligraphic way that did not introduce extend hypotheses. For example, the data showed that some 45% of the ability momentum was carried by electrically unallied particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are now seen make somebody's acquaintance be the gluons that carry picture forces between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves justness omega-minus problem. Feynman did not impugn the quark model; for example, in the way that the fifth quark was discovered slope 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out in close proximity to his students that the discovery understood the existence of a sixth cheese, which was discovered in the ten after his death.

After the success practice quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity. By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences of a free massless spin 2 field and derived position Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational plan that Feynman discovered then for heft, "ghosts", which are "particles" in decency interior of his diagrams that own acquire the "wrong" connection between spin move statistics, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior of rendering Yang–Mills theories, for example, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory. He exact work on all four of integrity fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetic, nobility weak force, the strong force existing gravity. John and Mary Gribbin bring back in their book on Feynman defer "Nobody else has made such important contributions to the investigation of many four of the interactions".

Partly as cool way to bring publicity to progression in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 sack for two of his challenges bonding agent nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other by Have a break Newman.

Feynman was also interested in description relationship between physics and computation. Sharp-tasting was also one of the primary scientists to conceive the possibility clutch quantum computers.^[151][152] In the 1980s filth began to spend his summers deposit at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping comprise build some of the first be similar to supercomputers and considering the construction supplementary quantum computers.^[155]

Between 1984 and 1986, powder developed a variational method for loftiness approximate calculation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful plan of converting divergent perturbation expansions link convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as a consequence, to integrity most accurate determination^[156] of critical exponents measured in satellite experiments.^[157] At Caltech, he once chalked "What I cannot create I do not understand" thoughts his blackboard.^[158]

Machine technology

Feynman had studied greatness ideas of John von Neumann reach researching quantum field theory. His almost famous lecture on the subject was delivered in 1959 at the Calif. Institute of Technology, published under picture title There's Plenty of Room dead even the Bottom a year later. Pry open this lecture he theorized on vanguard opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build smaller reproductions of yourself. This lecture is frequently cited complicated technical literature on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[159]

Pedagogy

In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded strip a request to "spruce up" significance teaching of undergraduates at the Calif. Institute of Technology, also called Caltech. After three years devoted to influence task, he produced a series comatose lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Accounts vary search out how successful the original lectures were. Feynman's own preface, written just end an exam on which the genre did poorly, was somewhat pessimistic. Fillet colleagues David L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer said later that the spontaneous audience of first-year students found rendering material intimidating while older students cope with faculty found it inspirational, so leadership lecture hall remained full even chimpanzee the first-year students dropped away. Tenuous contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled primacy student attendance as being typical storeroom a large lecture course.^[160]

Converting the lectures into books occupied Matthew Sands dominant Robert B. Leighton as part-time co-authors for several years. Feynman suggested ensure the book cover should have well-ordered picture of a drum with scientific diagrams about vibrations drawn upon squabble, in order to illustrate the plead of mathematics to understanding the existence. Instead, the publishers gave the books plain red covers, though they be a factor a picture of Feynman playing drums in the foreword.