Richard Phillips Feynman ( ; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American
physicist known for his work in the
path integral formulation of
quantum mechanics, the theory of
quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the
superfluidity of supercooled
liquid helium, as well as in
particle physics (he proposed the
parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with
Julian Schwinger and
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of
subatomic particles, which later became known as
Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world.
He assisted in the development of the
atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of
quantum computing, and introducing the concept of
nanotechnology (creation of devices at the molecular scale).. He held the
Richard Chace Tolman professorship in
theoretical physics at the
California Institute of Technology.
Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, notably a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called
There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and
The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books (
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and
What Do You Care What Other People Think?) and books written about him, such as
Tuva or Bust!
He was regarded as an eccentric and free spirit. He was a prankster,
juggler, safecracker, proud amateur painter, and
bongo player. He liked to pursue a variety of seemingly unrelated interests, such as art,
percussion,
Maya hieroglyphs, and
lock picking.
Feynman also had a deep interest in
biology, and was a friend of the
geneticist and
microbiologist Esther Lederberg, who developed
replica plating and discovered
bacteriophage lambda. They had several mutual physicist friends who, after beginning their careers in nuclear research, moved for moral reasons into
genetics, among them
Leó Szilárd,
Guido Pontecorvo, and
Aaron Novick.
Biography
Richard Phillips Feynman was born on May 11, 1918,. in
Far Rockaway, Queens, New York. His family originated from
Russia and
Poland; both of his parents were
Jewish, but they were not devout. Feynman (in common with the famous physicists
Edward Teller and
Albert Einstein) was a
late talker; by his third birthday he had yet to utter a single word. The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, Melville, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking. From his mother, Lucille, he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he delighted in repairing radios and had a talent for
engineering. His sister
Joan also became a professional physicist., An account on Joan Feynman by her son.
Education
In high school, his
IQ was determined to be 125: high, but "merely respectable" according to biographer
Gleick. He would later scoff at psychometric testing. By 15, he had learned
differential and
integral calculus. Before entering college, he was experimenting with and re-creating mathematical topics, such as the
half-derivative, utilizing his own notation. In high school, he was developing the mathematical intuition behind his
Taylor series of
mathematical operators.
His habit of direct characterization would sometimes rattle more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions when learning feline anatomy was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart).
Feynman attended
Far Rockaway High School, a school that also produced fellow laureates
Burton Richter and
Baruch Samuel Blumberg.Schwach, Howard.
"Museum Tracks Down FRHS Nobel Laureates",
The Wave (newspaper), April 15, 2005. Accessed October 2, 2007. A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his last year in high school, Feynman won the New York University Math Championship; the large difference between his score and those of his closest competitors shocked the judges.
He applied to
Columbia University, but was not accepted. Instead he attended the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a
bachelor's degree in 1939, and in the same year was named a
Putnam Fellow. While there, Feynman took every physics course offered, including a graduate course on
theoretical physics while only in his second year.
He obtained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to
Princeton University in mathematics and physics — an unprecedented feat — but did rather poorly on the history and English portions. Attendees at Feynman's first seminar included Albert Einstein,
Wolfgang Pauli, and
John von Neumann. He received a
Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942; his thesis advisor was
John Archibald Wheeler. Feynman's thesis applied the
principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, laying the ground work for the "path integral" approach and Feynman diagrams, and was entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics".