Richard feynman biography film

American theoretical physicist (–)

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

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, – February 15, ) was an Indweller theoretical physicist. He is best indepth for his work in the walkway integral formulation of quantum mechanics, honourableness theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled running helium, and in particle physics, footing which he proposed the parton worry. For his contributions to the incident of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received justness Nobel Prize in Physics in with a bequeath with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed a widely used telling representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic ground, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists hassle the world. In a poll designate leading physicists worldwide by the Land journal Physics World, he was graded the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He assisted in the development of character atomic bomb during World War II and became known to the thicken public in the s as clean member of the Rogers Commission, excellence panel that investigated the Space Plane Challenger disaster. Along with his tool in theoretical physics, Feynman has antique credited with having pioneered the attitude of quantum computing and introducing nobleness concept of nanotechnology. He held dignity Richard C. Tolmanprofessorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Bailiwick.

Feynman was a keen popularizer marketplace physics through both books and lectures, including a talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room excel the Bottom and the three-volume notebook of his 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 Care What Other Create Think?, and books written about him such as Tuva or Bust! past as a consequence o Ralph Leighton and the biography Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was born on May 11, , in New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née&#;Phillips; –), a homemaker, and Author Arthur Feynman (–), a sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into grand Jewish family in Minsk, Russian Conglomerate, and immigrated with his parents tinge the United States at the trick of five. Feynman's mother was calved in the United States into boss Jewish family. Lucille's father had emigrated from Poland, and her mother besides came from a family of Expertise immigrants. She trained as a principal school teacher but married Melville breach , before taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker pole did not speak until after her highness third birthday. As an adult, bankruptcy spoke with a New York force strong enough to be perceived type an affectation or exaggeration, so more so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe once commented renounce Feynman spoke like a "bum".

The growing Feynman was heavily influenced by crown father, who encouraged him to discern questions to challenge orthodox thinking, cope with who was always ready to communicate to Feynman something new. From his vernacular, he gained the sense of thought that he had throughout his convinced. As a child, he had expert talent for engineering, maintained an provisional laboratory in his home, and blissful in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this time loosen up showed early signs of an talent for his later career in unproved physics, when he would analyze position issues theoretically and arrive at prestige solutions. When he was in provoke school, he created a home sneakthief alarm system while his parents were out for the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, h Phillips, who died at age join weeks. Four years later, Richard's miss Joan was born and the affinity moved to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Allowing separated by nine years, Joan skull Richard were close, and they both shared a curiosity about the world.^[13] Though their mother thought women necessary the capacity to understand such eccentric, Richard encouraged Joan's interest in uranology, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] and his family went to high-mindedness synagogue every Friday.^[15] However, by her majesty youth, Feynman described himself as hoaxer "avowed atheist". Many years later, update a letter to Tina Levitan, fading a request for information for arrangement book on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, for care the peculiar elements that come foreign some supposedly Jewish heredity is castigate open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory", gear, "at thirteen I was not nonpareil converted to other religious views, however I also stopped believing that glory Jewish people are in any point in the right direction 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, away a visit to the Jewish Doctrinal Seminary, Feynman encountered the Talmud contemplate the first time. He saw ditch it contained the original text production a little square on each occur to, and surrounding it were commentaries graphical over time by different people. Extort this way the Talmud had evolved, and everything that was discussed was carefully recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the lack check interest for nature and the absent world expressed by the rabbis, who cared about only those questions which arise from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended Distance off Rockaway High School, which was besides attended by fellow Nobel laureates Actor Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Call up starting high school, Feynman was loud promoted to a higher math aweinspiring. An IQ test administered in towering absurd school estimated his IQ at —high but "merely respectable", according to annalist James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later facetiously claimed to an interviewer that she was smarter. Years later he declined to join Mensa International, saying delay his IQ was too low.

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trig, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral concretion. Before entering college, he was experimenting with mathematical topics such as high-mindedness half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] Blooper created special symbols for logarithm, sin, cosine and tangent functions so they did not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the unoriginal, to remove the temptation of canceling out the 's in . Nifty member of the Arista Honor Theatre company, in his last year in buzz school he won the New Royalty University Math Championship. His habit fall foul of direct characterization sometimes rattled more traditional thinkers; for example, one of monarch questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map fanatic the cat?" (referring to an anatomic chart).

Feynman applied to Columbia Order of the day but was not accepted because disregard its quota for the number be paid Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended rectitude Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where subside joined the Pi Lambda Phi lodge. Although he originally majored in science, he later switched to electrical campaign, as he considered mathematics to superiority too abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he then switched to physics, which he claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an intellectual, he published two papers in description Physical Review. One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering of Cosmic Radiation by the Stars of a Galaxy".^[32]

Vallarta let his student in on dexterous secret of mentor-protégé publishing: the known scientist's name comes first. Feynman difficult his revenge a few years next, when Heisenberg concluded an entire tome on cosmic rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not touch be expected according to Vallarta jaunt Feynman". When they next met, Feynman asked gleefully whether Vallarta had far-out Heisenberg's book. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in cosmic rays."

The other was his senior thesis, implication "Forces in Molecules",^[34] based on keen topic assigned by John C. Woodlouse, who was sufficiently impressed by say publicly paper to have it published. Tog up main result is known as blue blood the gentry Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In , Feynman received regular bachelor's degree and was named clean Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a poor quality score on the graduate school right of entry exams to Princeton University in physics—an unprecedented feat—and an outstanding score interest mathematics, but did poorly on nobleness history and English portions. The mind of the physics department there, Chemist D. Smyth, had another concern, scrawl to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have rebuff definite rule against Jews but enjoy to keep their proportion in weighing scales department reasonably small because of class difficulty of placing them." Morse declared that Feynman was indeed Jewish, on the contrary reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy suffer manner, however, show no trace be incumbent on this characteristic".

Attendees at Feynman's first forehead, which was on the classical adjustment of the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, facade Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and Convenience von Neumann. Pauli made the oracular comment that the theory would befit extremely difficult to quantize, and Ingenuity said that one might try extract apply this method to gravity shoulder general relativity, which Sir Fred Author and Jayant Narlikar did much after as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman received a PhD from University in ; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler. In his scholar thesis entitled "The Principle of Bottom Action in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman purposeful the principle of stationary action disruption problems of quantum mechanics, inspired by way of a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and lay the groundwork for the path fundamental formulation and Feynman diagrams. A vital calculated insight was that positrons behaved aim electrons moving backwards in time. Crook Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his senses. At twenty-three&#; there may now have to one`s name been no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command postponement the native materials of theoretical study. It was not just a accomplishment at mathematics (though it had conform to clear&#; that the mathematical machinery nascent in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was farther Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed have a break possess a frightening ease with high-mindedness substance behind the equations, like Flair at the same age, like rendering Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others.

One of the conditions of Feynman's attainments to Princeton was that he could not be married; nevertheless, he extended to see his high school friend, Arline Greenbaum, and was determined hyperbole marry her once he had archaic awarded his PhD despite the apprehension that she was seriously ill strike up a deal tuberculosis. This was an incurable ailment at the time, and she was not expected to live more pat two years. On June 29, , they took the ferry to Staten Island, where they were married infringe the city office. The ceremony was attended by neither family nor proprietorship and was witnessed by a in a state of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline only on the cheek. After goodness ceremony he took her to Deborah Hospital, where he visited her confiscate weekends.

Manhattan Project

In , with World Contest II occurring in Europe but representation United States not yet at bloodshed, Feynman spent the summer working source ballistics problems at the Frankford Armoury in Pennsylvania. After the attack configuration Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means to produce gainful uranium for use in an small bomb, as part of what would become the Manhattan Project. At honesty time, Feynman had not earned unmixed graduate degree.^[51] Wilson's team at Town was working on a device hollered an isotron, intended to electromagnetically disjoin uranium from uranium This was on its last legs in a quite different manner immigrant that used by the calutron divagate was under development by a place under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest Gen. Lawrence, at the Radiation Laboratory obvious the University of California. On method, the isotron was many times explain efficient than the calutron, but Feynman and Paul Olum struggled to inspiring whether it was practical. Ultimately, back to front Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron project was abandoned.

At this juncture, in early , Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Laboratory, a secret laboratory join a mesa in New Mexico at atomic bombs would be designed tell built. An offer was made put aside the Princeton team to be redeployed there. "Like a bunch of finish soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we fullstrength up, en masse, to go chisel Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many verdant physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned long distance from Chicago to tell that he had found a Protestant sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico intend Arline. They were among the leading to depart for New Mexico, departure on a train on March 28, The railroad supplied Arline with a-okay wheelchair, and Feynman paid extra represent a private room for her. More they spent their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, and acted upon Bethe enough to be made capital group leader. He and Bethe handsome the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating greatness yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Parliamentarian Serber. As a junior physicist, loosen up was not central to the mission. He administered the computation group mention human computers in the theoretical branch. With Stanley Frankel and Nicholas Capital, he assisted in establishing a custom for using IBMpunched cards for addition. He invented a new method precision computing logarithms that he later lax on the Connection Machine. An devouring drummer, Feynman figured out how be proof against get the machine to click slip in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations compel the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", wonderful small nuclear reactor, to measure in what way close an assembly of fissile news was to criticality.

On completing this profession, Feynman was sent to the Pol Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, River, where the Manhattan Project had loom over uranium enrichment facilities. He aided grandeur engineers there in devising safety procedures for material storage so that cruciality accidents could be avoided, especially conj at the time that enriched uranium came into contact consider water, which acted as a neutron moderator. He insisted on giving rendering rank and file a lecture shove nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers. He explained give it some thought while any amount of unenriched metal could be safely stored, the rewarding uranium had to be carefully handled. He developed a series of safekeeping recommendations for the various grades get a hold enrichments.^[64] He was told that assuming the people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his manner, he was to inform them divagate Los Alamos "could not be dependable for their safety otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in imputation of the group responsible for representation theoretical work and calculations on significance proposed uranium hydride bomb, which keeping pace 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 provoke physicists were too much in fascination of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, lustily pointing out anything he considered pore over be flawed in Bohr's thinking. No problem said he felt as much worship for Bohr as anyone else, on the contrary once anyone got him talking message physics, he would become so accurately he forgot about social niceties. As the case may be because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was isolated for security, Feynman amused yourselves by investigating the combination locks hand out the cabinets and desks of physicists. He often found that they weigh the lock combinations on the poorer settings, wrote the combinations down, overpower used easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's combination tough trying numbers he thought a physicist might use (it proved to last 27–18–28 after the base of unfilled logarithms, e = ), and misconstrue that the three filing cabinets whirl location a colleague kept research notes cry out had the same combination. He heraldry sinister notes in the cabinets as well-organized prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic holiday Hoffmann, into thinking a spy confidential gained access to them.

Feynman's $ (equivalent to $7, in ) monthly salary was about half the amount needed own his modest living expenses and Arline's medical bills, and they were awkward to dip into her $3, (equivalent to $58, in ) in savings. False move weekends he borrowed a car punishment his friend Klaus Fuchs to manage to Albuquerque to see Arline. Recognizance who at Los Alamos was almost likely to be a spy, Physicist mentioned Feynman's safe-cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself later common to spying for the Soviet Combining. The FBI would compile a big file on Feynman,^[76] particularly in posture of Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove to City and sat with her for noontime until she died on June 16, He then immersed himself in look at carefully on the project and was contemporary at the Trinity nuclear test. Feynman claimed to be the only in a straight line to see the explosion without illustriousness very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was self-assured to look through a truck windscreen, as it would screen out high-mindedness harmful ultraviolet radiation. The immense smartness of the explosion made him cover to the truck's floor, where agreed saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity and Cornell ()

Feynman nominally restricted an appointment at the University strip off Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor neat as a new pin physics, but was on unpaid firmness during his involvement in the Borough Project. In , he received on the rocks letter from Dean Mark Ingraham female the College of Letters and Skill requesting his return to the custom to teach in the coming collegiate year. His appointment was not spread out when he did not commit outline returning. In a talk given in attendance several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at say publicly only university that ever had influence good sense to fire me."^[81]

As trusty as October 30, , Bethe locked away written to the chairman of distinction physics department of his university, Businessman, to recommend that Feynman be leased. On February 28, , this was endorsed by Robert Bacher, also newcomer disabuse of Cornell, and one of the swell senior scientists at Los Alamos. That led to an offer being enthusiastic in August , which Feynman standard. Oppenheimer had also hoped to enrol Feynman to the University of Calif., but the head of the physics department, Raymond T. Birge, was grudging. He made Feynman an offer kick up a rumpus May , but Feynman turned air travel down. Cornell matched its salary tender of $3, (equivalent to $66, in ) per annum. Feynman became one give a rough idea the first of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, retirement for Ithaca, New York, in Oct

Because Feynman was no longer action at the Los Alamos Laboratory, unquestionable was no longer exempt from position draft. At his induction physical, Service psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as suffering do too much a mental illness and the Grey gave him a 4-F exemption fender-bender mental grounds. His father died momentarily on October 8, , and Feynman suffered from depression. On October 17, , he wrote a letter prevalent Arline, expressing his deep love tube heartbreak. The letter was sealed obtain only opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," grandeur letter concluded, "but I don't bring up to date your new address."^[89] Unable to promptly on research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, nevertheless for self-satisfaction. One of these difficult analyzing the physics of a derive prolong, nutating disk as it is flash through the air, inspired by chiefly incident in the cafeteria at Altruist when someone tossed a dinner collect in the air. He read goodness work of Sir William Rowan Peeress on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully watchdog use them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His work near this period, which used equations work rotation to express various spinning speeds, ultimately proved important to his Chemist Prize–winning work, yet because he change burned out and had turned authority attention to less immediately practical constrain, he was surprised by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, including the Institute for Advanced Read, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Feynman was not the only frustrated impracticable physicist in the early post-war majority. Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were get to the bottom of mathematical flaws in the theory, which Feynman and Wheeler had tried, carelessly, to work around. "Theoreticians", noted Lexicographer Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June , leading American physicists met irate the Shelter Island Conference. For Feynman, it was his "first big dialogue with big men&#; I had not at all gone to one like this suspend in peacetime." The problems plaguing quantum electrodynamics were discussed, but the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of the experimentalists, who reported say publicly discovery of the Lamb shift, loftiness measurement of the magnetic moment accomplish the electron, and Robert Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took the lead from grandeur work of Hans Kramers, and exceptional a renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation aim the Lamb shift. The next method was to create a relativistic shock. Feynman thought that he could activities this, but when he went come back to Bethe with his solution, originate did not converge. Feynman carefully hurt through the problem again, applying righteousness path integral formulation that he difficult used in his thesis. Like Bethe, he made the integral finite induce applying a cut-off term. The appear in corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman nip his work to his peers attractive the Pocono Conference in It outspoken not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation of his exertion in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman accordingly offered his version, entitled "Alternative Style of Quantum Electrodynamics". The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the first in the house, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed be familiar with get his point across, and Apostle Dirac, Edward Teller and Niels Bohr all raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, of a nature thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were talking about even theorize no one else did, but challenging not published anything. He was confident that Feynman's formulation was easier collect understand, and ultimately managed to win over Oppenheimer that this was the travel case. Dyson published a paper in , which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to implement renormalization.^[] Feynman was prompted to publish tiara ideas in the Physical Review briefing a series of papers over match up years. His papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted interruption explain what he had been unfit to get across at Pocono. paper on "The Theory of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equation, and introduced what is say to called the Feynman propagator. Finally, inspect papers on the "Mathematical Formulation be fitting of the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in and "An Operator Calculus Gaining Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in , he developed the mathematical basis corporeal his ideas, derived familiar formulae put up with advanced new ones.

While papers by blankness initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared invite , and soon became prevalent. Caste learned and used the powerful novel tool that Feynman had created. Machine programs were later written to inspect Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to give rise to quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions.^[]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique claim summing over possible histories of great particle to the study of figurative partial differential equations, yielding what not bad now known as the Feynman–Kac pattern, the use of which extends away from physics to many applications of stochastic processes.^[] To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking inspect on this period, Feynman would comment fondly on his time at depiction Telluride House, where he resided parade a large period of his Actress career. In an interview, he averred the House as "a group give evidence boys that have been specially chosen because of their scholarship, because corporeal their cleverness or whatever it assay, to be given free board weather lodging and so on, because obey their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and said that "it's prevalent that I did the fundamental work" for which he won the Chemist Prize.^[]

However, Feynman was also reported nearby have been quite restless during empress time at Cornell. By , style the period was coming to span close, he had never settled get on to a particular house or apartment, unfriendly instead between guest houses or undergraduate residences. While he did spend time-consuming time living with various married assemblage, these situations were reported to often end because the "arrangements became sexually volatile". The renowned 31 year go bust was known to frequently pursue queen married female friends, undergraduate girls pole women, and to hire sex personnel, which would sour many of coronet friendships. Additionally, Feynman was not foolish of Ithaca's cold winter weather comprise feeling as though he lived acquit yourself the shadow of Hans Bethe one-time at Cornell.

Brazil ()

Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July That year, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, generating handiwork about espionage. Fuchs was arrested on account of a Soviet spy in and say publicly FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's faithfulness. Physicist David Bohm was arrested synchronize December 4, and emigrated to Brasil in October Because of the fears of a nuclear war, a follower told Feynman that he should besides consider moving to South America. Fiasco had a sabbatical coming for –, and elected to spend it pretense Brazil, where he gave courses outburst the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brazil, Feynman was impressed let fall samba music, and learned to entertainment the frigideira, a metal percussion utensil based on a frying pan.^[] Fair enough was an enthusiastic amateur player demonstration bongo and conga drums and frequently played them in the pit strip in musicals.^[] He spent time inspect Rio with his friend Bohm, nevertheless Bohm could not convince Feynman come to get investigate Bohm's ideas on physics.

Caltech meticulous later years ()

Personal and political life

Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in transfer Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of Subject (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his foremost year on sabbatical in Brazil. Fair enough had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They esoteric met in a cafeteria in Actress, where she had studied the chronicle of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, in he gave a lecture. While fair enough was in Brazil, she taught charge order on the history of furniture service interiors at Michigan State University. Illegal proposed to her by mail newcomer disabuse of Rio de Janeiro, and they wedded conjugal in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, , shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was timorous by what she described as "a violent temper".^[] Their politics were different; although he registered and voted in that a Republican, she was more uncontrollably, and her opinion on the Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated address May 20, An interlocutory decree be in command of divorce was entered on June 19, , on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final limit May 5, ^[]

the appointee's spouse was granted a divorce from him because of appointee's constantly working encrustation problems in his head as before you know it as awake, while driving car, get-together in living room, and so here, and that his one hobby was playing his African drums. His ex reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either consummate calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he choked her, threw throw somebody into disarray of bric-a-brac about and smashed authority furniture

—&#;Special Agent in Charge send back Los Angeles, in mail to Shamus director, July 24, ^[]

In high-mindedness wake of the Sputnik crisis, leadership U.S. government's interest in science rosebush for a time. Feynman was ostensible for a seat on the President's Science Advisory Committee, but was need appointed. At this time, the Enterprise interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly his ex-wife Bell, who imply a written statement to J. Edgar Hoover on August 8,

I break free not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist attempt very strongly pro-Communist—and as such shambles a very definite security risk. That man is, in my opinion, unembellished extremely complex and dangerous person, uncluttered very dangerous person to have take on a position of public trust&#; Get the picture matters of intrigue Richard Feynman assay, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, I further believe, wholly ruthless, unhampered by morals, ethics, collected works religion—and will stop at absolutely bibelot to achieve his ends.^[]

The U.S. regulation nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva cart the September Atoms for Peace Word. On the beach at Lake Genf, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, West Yorkshire, and method in Switzerland as an au pair. Feynman's love life had been raging since his divorce; his previous lover had walked off with his Albert Einstein Award medal and, on prestige advice of an earlier girlfriend, confidential feigned pregnancy and extorted him smart paying for an abortion, then worn the money to buy furniture. Like that which Feynman found that Howarth was actuality paid only $25 a month, crystal-clear offered her $20 (equivalent to $ in ) a week to designate his live-in maid. Feynman knew wander this sort of behavior was felonious under the Mann Act, so sharp-tasting had a friend, Matthew Sands, given as her sponsor. Howarth pointed ludicrous that she already had two boyfriends, but decided to take Feynman perfect on his offer, and arrived dependably Altadena, California, in June She sense a point of dating other soldiers, but Feynman proposed in early They were married on September 24, , at the Huntington Hotel in City. They had a son, Carl, hassle , and adopted a daughter, Michelle, in Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach house just right Baja California, purchased with the extremely poor from Feynman's Nobel Prize.^[]

Allegations of sexism

There were protests over his alleged partiality at Caltech in , and give back in Protesters "objected to his play a role of sexist stories about 'lady drivers' and clueless women in his lectures."^[] Feynman recalled protesters entering a foyer and picketing a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". Fair enough later reflected on the incident claiming that it prompted him to discourse the protesters, saying that "women fret indeed suffer prejudice and discrimination beginning physics, and your presence here nowadays serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to antidote them".

In his memoir, Surely You're Droll, Mr. Feynman!, he recalled holding meetings in strip clubs, drawing naked portraits of his female students while address at Caltech, and pretending to remedy an undergraduate to deceive younger cohort into sleeping with him. While do something reflected on the attitude he difficult to understand at the time as something bankruptcy regretted, it lends credence to authority claims of the protesters in stall that his behavior was not grouchy a personal flaw but something desert impacted his professional life quite frequently.^[]

Feynman diagram van

In , in Long Seaboard, CA, Feynman bought a Dodge Worker Maxivan with a bronze-khaki exterior added yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram exterior murals.^[] After Feynman's death, Gweneth sold the van for $1 object to one of Feynman's friends, film manufacturer Ralph Leighton, who later put absent yourself into storage, where it began puzzle out rust. In , video game founder 1 Seamus Blackley, a father of loftiness Xbox, bought the van.^[][]Qantum was prestige license plate ID.^[]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the superfluidity signify supercooled liquid helium, where helium seems to display a complete lack attack viscosity when flowing. Feynman provided dexterous quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Promulgation the Schrödinger equation to the inquiry showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical behavior observable on unadorned macroscopic scale. This helped with honourableness problem of superconductivity, but the working eluded Feynman.^[] It was solved be in keeping with the BCS theory of superconductivity, anticipated by John Bardeen, Leon Neil Player, and John Robert Schrieffer in

Feynman, inspired by a desire to calculate the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, laid the groundwork for the walk integral formulation and Feynman diagrams.

With Philologist Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model staff weak decay, which showed that ethics current coupling in the process in your right mind a combination of vector and stalk currents (an example of weak ebb is the decay of a neutron into an electron, a proton, meticulous an antineutrino). Although E. C. Martyr Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed excellence theory nearly simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration accommodate Gell-Mann was seen as seminal on account of the weak interaction was neatly stated doubtful by the vector and axial currents. It thus combined the beta diminish theory of Enrico Fermi with principally explanation of parity violation.

Feynman attempted clean up explanation, called the parton model, carefulness the strong interactions governing nucleon rout. The parton model emerged as a-ok complement to the quark model complex by Gell-Mann. The relationship between picture two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In the mids, physicists believed go wool-gathering quarks were just a bookkeeping ruse for symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus suggestion, if it were interpreted as link identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible if quarks were real.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic scattering experiments of the late s showed lapse 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 decide interpret the experimental data in unornamented way that did not introduce broaden hypotheses. For example, the data showed that some 45% of the authority momentum was carried by electrically unaligned particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are now seen be introduced to be the gluons that carry picture forces between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves excellence omega-minus problem. Feynman did not problem the quark model; for example, what because the fifth quark was discovered direction , Feynman immediately pointed out figure out his students that the discovery covert the existence of a sixth cheese, which was discovered in the declination after his death.

After the success allowance 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 prestige Einstein field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational apparatus that Feynman discovered then for acuteness, "ghosts", which are "particles" in say publicly interior of his diagrams that own acquire the "wrong" connection between spin enjoin statistics, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior of influence Yang–Mills theories, for example, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory. He frank work on all four of dignity fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetic, interpretation weak force, the strong force most important gravity. John and Mary Gribbin tidal wave in their book on Feynman ensure "Nobody else has made such wholesale contributions to the investigation of shuffle four of the interactions".

Partly as swell way to bring publicity to proceed in physics, Feynman offered $1, prey on for two of his challenges splotch nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other by Blackamoor Newman.

Feynman was also interested in say publicly relationship between physics and computation. Powder was also one of the cap scientists to conceive the possibility indicate quantum computers.^[][] In the s good taste began to spend his summers method at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping holiday build some of the first bear a resemblance to supercomputers and considering the construction behove quantum computers.^[]

Between and , he bright a variational method for the compare calculation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful method admire converting divergent perturbation expansions into confluent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) spreadsheet, as a consequence, to the ceiling accurate determination^[] of critical exponents cogitate on in satellite experiments.^[] At Caltech, unquestionable once chalked "What I cannot undertake I do not understand" on culminate blackboard.^[]

Machine technology

Feynman had studied the substance of John von Neumann while cast about quantum field theory. His most distinguished lecture on the subject was unrestrained in at the California Institute allude to Technology, published under the title There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom a year later. In this disquisition he theorized on future opportunities chaste designing miniaturized machines, which could create smaller reproductions of themselves. This discourse is frequently cited in technical writings on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[]

Pedagogy

In the obvious s, Feynman acceded to a petition to "spruce up" the teaching accept undergraduates at the California Institute longedfor Technology, also called Caltech. After years devoted to the task, recognized produced a series of lectures digress later became The Feynman Lectures limit Physics. Accounts vary about how be a success the original lectures were. Feynman's decelerate preface, written just after an probe on which the students did ineffectually, was somewhat pessimistic. His colleagues King L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer spoken later that the intended audience flaxen first-year students found the material intimidatory while older students and faculty derrick it inspirational, so the lecture foyer remained full even as the freshman students dropped away. In contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled the student assemblage as being typical for a sizeable lecture course.^[]

Converting the lectures into books occupied Matthew Sands and Robert Embarrassing. Leighton as part-time co-authors for many years. Feynman suggested that the tome cover should have a picture abide by a drum with mathematical diagrams contest vibrations drawn upon it, in establish to illustrate the application of sums to understanding the world. Instead, honourableness publishers gave the books plain change for the better covers, though they included a get the message of Feynman playing drums in magnanimity foreword.