Classic Posts: Science 2009

TW: Continuing the best of 2009 with Sciences. Ms. Blogger put me onto Feynman, he was brilliant but more importantly able and willing to articulate complexity for us mere mortals, a true gift.

I mentioned the physicist Richard Feynman a couple weeks ago - his 1959 lecture at CalTech
"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" was the first to describe the possibility of molecular engineering, the science we now know as nanotechnology.

Feynman had an amazing career - at 25 he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos New Mexico, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (with 2 others) for his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics in 1965, and he participated on the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

The man was brilliant and held in very high regard in the scientific community.

"There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the
'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre."
~ Mark Kac, Mathematician

But what Feynman was best known for, and most proud of, was his role as a teacher. He taught first at Cornell (1945 - 1950) and then at Cal Tech (from 1950 until his death in 1988) although he was offered a position at the Institue for Advanced Study at Princeton
- apparently, the opportunity to work in sunny California was of higher priority than working at an institution that counted Albert Einstein amongst its faculty.

He had a passion and a special skill for teaching - called "The Great Explainer", Feynman was able to communicate complex ideas in a way that made students compete to get into his classes.

In addition to teaching and doing physicist stuff (development of the Feynman diagrams used to conceptualize and predict interactions between particles, research into superconductivity, assisting in the development of the first massively parallel computer, that kind of stuff), Feynman also did some writing. I highly recommend Surely You Must be Joking, Mr. Feynman, a recounting of some of his efforts and exploits and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a posthumous publication of some of his best pieces. Both are very entertaining and you'll likely learn something too.

From March, 2009:
The audio clip below is a perfect example of his 'explaining' skills - see the sites below for more on the amazing Mr. Feynman.

The Universe in a Glass of Wine


http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/feynman.html
http://www.feynmanonline.com/

You can also type 'Richard Feynman' into YouTube and see plenty of video clips from interviews and presentations.