|
|
| word looked up : | home / archive |
Richard FeynmanRichard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 - February 15, 1988) last name pronounced "fine-man", was one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century, expanding greatly the knowledge of quantum electrodynamics. As well as being an inspiring lecturer and musician, he helped in the development of the atomic bomb and was later a member of the panel which investigated the space shuttle Challenger disaster. For his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1965. He is also famous for his many adventures, detailed in the books Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?.Feynman was born in Far Rockaway[?], Queens, New York; his parents were Jewish, although they did not practice Judaism as a religion. The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father who encouraged him to ask questions in order to challenge orthodox thinking. His mother instilled in him a powerful sense of humour which he kept all his life. Feynman attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before moving on to Princeton as a graduate. While researching his Ph.D, he married his first wife, Arlene Greenbaum, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, a terminal illness at that time. Still at Princeton, the physicist Robert Wilson[?] encouraged Feynman to participate in the Manhattan Project--the wartime U.S. Army project at Los Alamos developing the atomic bomb. He visited his wife in hospital on weekends, right up until her death in July 1945. Immersing himself in work on the project, it was finished a few months later and he was present at the Trinity bomb test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to look at the explosion without the dark glasses provided, looking through a truck windshield to screen out the harmful ultraviolet frequencies. After the project, Feynman started working as a professor at Cornell University. However he was unhappy there, feeling uninspired. He was therefore surprised to be offered professorships from competing universities, eventually choosing to work at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which included at that time such distinguished faculty as Albert Einstein. Feynman did much of his best work at this time, including research in:
He also developed Feynman diagrams, which helped in conceptualising and calculating of interactions between particles. From 1950s, Feynman was professor of physics with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). At this time he was asked to help in the teaching of undergraduates. After three years devoted to the task a series of lectures (eventually becoming the famous The Feynman Lectures on Physics) was produced. Feynman later won the Oersted medal for teaching, which he seemed to be especially proud of. Feynman was a keen and influential popularizer of physics in both his lectures and books. Notably a talk on nanotechnology called Plenty of Room at the Bottom. He was also one of the first scientists to realise the possibility of quantum computers. Books written by him include The Character of Physical Law and QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Feynman married twice more, first to Mary Louise Bell of Neodesha, Kansas in June, 1952, which turned out to be unsuccessful and brief, and secondly to the British Gweneth Howarth, who shared his enthusiasm for life. They remained married for life, and had a child of their own, Carl, and adopted a daughter, Michelle. Feynman travelled a lot at this period in his life, for example to Brazil and schemed to visit the obscure Russian land of Tuva, but, due to Cold War bureacratic problems, never succeeded. During this period he discovered that he had a form of cancer, but, thanks to surgery, he managed to hold it off. Feynman was requested to serve on the presidential commission which investigated the Challenger disaster of 1986, and after some reflection, agreed to do so. Tactfully fed clues from a source with inside information, Feynman famously showed on television the crucial role in the disaster played by the booster's o-ring seals with a simple demonstration using a glass of ice water and a sample of the o-ring material. His opinion of the cause of the accident differed from the official findings, and were considerably more critical of the role of management in sidelining the concerns of engineers. After much petitioning, Feynman's minority report was included as an appendix to the official document. The cancer returned in 1987, with Feynman entering hospital a year later. Complications with surgery worsened his condition, whereupon Feynman decided to die with dignity and not accept any more treatment. He died on February 15, 1988.
| |||
A movie was made about Feynman's life in 1996. Called Infinity and starring Matthew Broderick, the movie focused on Feynman's relationship with his first wife, Arlene, with his work on the Manhattan Project serving as a backdrop for what was essentially a love story. The film received mixed reviews, however, and did poorly at the box office.
Finally, the character of Feynman was portrayed by Alan Alda in a play called QED in 2001. The play was essentially a one-man show, with only brief appearances by other characters, portraying Feynman in his office at Caltech and covering many of the stories and anecdotes included in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
I will think.html">think.html">think of you as I descend the stair.
Vine leaves tap my window.html">window,
Dew-drops flash.html">flash from the chinaberry tree.html">tree
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
I am/am.html">am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
Unconcerned, and tie.html">tie my tie.
There are horses neighing on far-off hills
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
And depart on the winds of space for I know.html">know not where,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
And a go/god.html">god among the stars; and I will go
And humming a tune I know . . .
Vine-leaves tap at the window,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Good Company. [Karle Wilson Baker]
To-day I have grown taller from walking with the trees,
And I think my heart is whiter for its parley with a star
Woke his happy mate within me to an answer free and fine;
~Lord, who am I that they should stoop -- these holy folk of thine?~
The fields run over with it, and this hill,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.
Such golden fires, such yellow -- lo, how good
This fringe of wood,
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
And all the trembling world -- and you -- were white.
Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
And you become
Birches. [Robert Frost]
When I see birches bend to left and right
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
.
On
wordlookup.net
All is still licensed under the GNU FDL.
It uses material from the wikipedia.
|
|