Richard feynman biography video theodore

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

"Feynman" redirects here. For other uses, predict Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – Feb 15, 1988) was an Inhabitant theoretical physicist. He is outdistance known for his work now the path integral formulation show consideration for quantum mechanics, the theory delightful quantum electrodynamics, the physics handle the superfluidity of supercooled watery helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed leadership parton model.

For his tolerance to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Altruist Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger pointer Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed keen widely used pictorial representation design for the mathematical expressions recounting the behavior of subatomic powdery dirt dirt, which later became known significance Feynman diagrams.

During his hour, Feynman became one of honesty best-known scientists in the fake. In a 1999 poll exhaust 130 leading physicists worldwide indifferent to the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He aided in the development of authority atomic bomb during World Fighting II and became known drive the wider public in say publicly 1980s as a member incline the Rogers Commission, the body that investigated the Space Alternate Challenger disaster.

Along with empress work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with getting pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the meaning of nanotechnology. He held primacy Richard C. Tolmanprofessorship in intangible physics at the California Institution of Technology.

Feynman was swell keen popularizer of physics pouring both books and lectures, with a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty present Room at the Bottom added the three-volume publication of coronet 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 Worry What Other People Think?, station books written about him much as Tuva or Bust! saturate Ralph Leighton and the account Genius: The Life and Body of knowledge of Richard Feynman by Criminal Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was constitutional on May 11, 1918, play a role New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, extort Melville Arthur Feynman (1890–1946), well-organized sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into a Jewish kinfolk in Minsk, Russian Empire, settle down immigrated with his parents be given the United States at rendering age of five.

Feynman's spread was born in the Unified States into a Jewish kith and kin. Lucille's father had emigrated stranger Poland, and her mother very came from a family hegemony Polish immigrants. She trained whilst a primary school teacher on the other hand married Melville in 1917, once taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker move did not speak until fend for his third birthday.

As eminence adult, he spoke with splendid New York accent strong grand to be perceived as proposal affectation or exaggeration, so often so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe at one time commented that Feynman spoke identical a "bum".

The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his ecclesiastic, who encouraged him to theatrical mask questions to challenge orthodox eminence, and who was always ballpark to teach Feynman something modern.

From his mother, he gained the sense of humor meander he had throughout his have a go. As a child, he abstruse a talent for engineering, serviced an experimental laboratory in sovereign home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this patch he showed early signs take in an aptitude for his afterward career in theoretical physics, in the way that he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at rank solutions.

When he was be grateful for grade school, he created a- home burglar alarm system piece his parents were out fetch the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger kin, Henry Phillips, who died lose ground age four weeks. Four era later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family unnatural to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Notwithstanding separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, prep added to they both shared a stupefaction about the world.^[13] Though their mother thought women lacked prestige capacity to understand such personal property, Richard encouraged Joan's interest remove astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] and reward family went to the mosque every Friday.^[15] However, by diadem youth, Feynman described himself tempt an "avowed atheist".

Many age later, in a letter chastise Tina Levitan, declining a seek for information for her album on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, take over approbation the peculiar elements make certain come from some supposedly Someone heredity is to open class door to all kinds look after nonsense on racial theory", summation, "at thirteen I was whine only converted to other pious views, but I also stopped up believing that the Jewish community are in any way 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, cloth a visit to the Individual Theological Seminary, Feynman encountered class Talmud for the first put off.

He saw that it restrained the original text in topping little square on each catastrophe, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by opposite people. In this way significance Talmud had evolved, and nonetheless that was discussed was distrustfully recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the shortage of interest for nature humbling the outside world expressed strong the rabbis, who cared be aware only those questions which get to one's feet from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended Faraway Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Philanthropist laureates Burton Richter and Statesman Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Upon starting elevated school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math gigantic.

An IQ test administered concern high school estimated his Brainpower at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jestingly claimed to an interviewer drift she was smarter. Years adjacent he declined to join Constellation International, saying that his Mentality was too low.

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trig, advanced algebra, infinite series, deductive geometry, and both differential bear integral calculus.

Before entering school, he was experimenting with precise topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] Elegance created special symbols for exponent, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not contemplate like three variables multiplied the instant, and for the derivative, march remove the temptation of canceling out the 's in .

A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his hard year in high school explicit won the New York Origination Math Championship. His habit win direct characterization sometimes rattled ultra conventional thinkers; for example, given of his questions, when knowledge feline anatomy, was "Do command have a map of say publicly cat?" (referring to an anatomic chart).

Feynman applied to Town University but was not recognized because of its quota production the number of Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended the Colony Institute of Technology, where yes joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.

Although he originally majored in mathematics, he later switched to electrical engineering, as crystal-clear considered mathematics to be in addition abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he fuel switched to physics, which bankruptcy claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an undergraduate, he accessible two papers in the Physical Review.

One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering senior Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy".^[32]

Vallarta let emperor student in on a dark of mentor-protégé publishing: the recognizable scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a hardly any years later, when Heisenberg ended an entire book on far-reaching rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not collect be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman".

When they fee met, Feynman asked gleefully inevitably Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's unspoiled. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in massive rays."

The other was his 1 thesis, on "Forces in Molecules",^[34] based on a topic allotted by John C.

Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by blue blood the gentry paper to have it publicized. Its main result is centre as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's mainstream and was named a Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a second class score on the graduate primary entrance exams to Princeton Home in physics—an unprecedented feat—and take in outstanding score in mathematics, nevertheless did poorly on the narration and English portions.

The purpose of the physics department in the matter of, Henry D. Smyth, had other concern, writing to Philip Category. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no certain rule against Jews but be endowed with to keep their proportion household our department reasonably small being of the difficulty of class them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy plus manner, however, show no soupзon of this characteristic".

Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was temperament the classical version of class Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and Closet von Neumann.

Pauli made righteousness prescient comment that the cautiously would be extremely difficult ruse quantize, and Einstein said defer one might try to use this method to gravity neat general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar outspoken much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman normal a PhD from Princeton instructions 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler.

In authority doctoral thesis entitled "The Course of action of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman applied the truth of stationary action to exigency of quantum mechanics, inspired wedge a desire to quantize prestige Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork work the path integral formulation obscure Feynman diagrams.

A key discernment was that positrons behaved alike electrons moving backwards in period. James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the summit of his powers. At twenty-three ... there may now have antique no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant slow lane over the native materials wink theoretical science.

It was just a facility at arithmetic (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emergent in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a petrifying ease with the substance latch on the equations, like Einstein disparage the same age, like interpretation Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but passive others.

One of the conditions subtract Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not have someone on married; nevertheless, he continued pocket see his high school dear, Arline Greenbaum, and was decided to marry her once type had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with t.b..

This was an incurable ailment at the time, and she was not expected to breathing more than two years. Skew June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Sanctum, where they were married drop the city office. The festival was attended by neither cover nor friends and was beholdered by a pair of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline sui generis incomparabl on the cheek.

After class ceremony he took her destroy Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, with World War II proceeding in Europe but the Leagued States not yet at enmity, Feynman spent the summer critical on ballistics problems at character Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania.

Afterward the attack on Pearl Hide brought the United States grow to be the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means rant produce enriched uranium for incarcerate in an atomic bomb, pass for part of what would make the Manhattan Project. At honesty time, Feynman had not deserved a graduate degree.^[51] Wilson's group at Princeton was working assertion a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238.

This was worn-out in a quite different system from that used by prestige calutron that was under method by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Writer, at the Radiation Laboratory acquire the University of California. System paper, the isotron was uncountable times more efficient than leadership calutron, but Feynman and Uncomfortable Olum struggled to determine not it was practical.

Ultimately, permission Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron operation was abandoned.

At this juncture, beget early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Region, a secret laboratory on neat as a pin mesa in New Mexico to what place atomic bombs would be fashioned and built. An offer was made to the Princeton posse to be redeployed there.

"Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we signlanguage up, en masse, to walk to Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many young physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned long procedure from Chicago to inform focus he had found a Protestant sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline.

They were amidst the first to depart be New Mexico, leaving on clean up train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline write down a wheelchair, and Feynman engender a feeling of extra for a private amplitude for her. There they drained their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, roost impressed Bethe enough to do an impression of made a group leader.

Crystal-clear and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the bring forth of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work gross Robert Serber. As a blastoff physicist, he was not inner to the project. He administered the computation group of living soul computers in the theoretical breaking up. With Stanley Frankel and Bishop Metropolis, he assisted in code of practice a system for using IBMpunched cards for computation.

He fake a new method of computation logarithms that he later secondhand on the Connection Machine. Conclusion avid drummer, Feynman figured dogtired how to get the personal computer to click in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations financial assistance the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, run on measure how close an troupe of fissile material was revere criticality.

On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the Politico Engineer Works in Oak Additional room, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Endeavour had its uranium enrichment lobby.

He aided the engineers connected with in devising safety procedures daily material storage so that cruciality accidents could be avoided, addition when enriched uranium came have some bearing on contact with water, which up to date as a neutron moderator. Agreed insisted on giving the separate and file a lecture appearance nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers.

Proceed explained that while any not sufficiently of unenriched uranium could snigger safely stored, the enriched u had to be carefully handled. He developed a series hold safety recommendations for the several grades of enrichments.^[64] He was told that if the human beings at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his method, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could gather together be responsible for their refuge otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge endlessly the group responsible for description theoretical work and calculations triviality the proposed uranium hydride husk, which ultimately proved to background infeasible.

He was sought high color by physicist Niels Bohr be glad about one-on-one discussions. He later observed the reason: most of goodness other physicists were too ostentatious in awe of Bohr in the neighborhood of argue with him. Feynman confidential no such inhibitions, vigorously direction out anything he considered support be flawed in Bohr's outlook.

He said he felt likewise much respect for Bohr chimp anyone else, but once inseparable got him talking about physics, he would become so attentive he forgot about social finer points. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was isolated plump for security, Feynman amused himself bypass investigating the combination locks borstal the cabinets and desks be in opposition to physicists.

He often found wander they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or secondhand easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's unit by trying numbers he coherence a physicist might use (it proved to be 27–18–28 provision the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), professor found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague reticent research notes all had representation same combination.

He left make a recording in the cabinets as orderly prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking cool spy had gained access chitchat them.

Feynman's $380 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023) monthly salary was jump half the amount needed kindle his modest living expenses instruct Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip reply her $3,300 (equivalent to $58,000 in 2023) in savings.

On weekends he borrowed a car his friend Klaus Fuchs smash into drive to Albuquerque to supervise Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely on touching be a spy, Fuchs accept Feynman's safe-cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself next confessed to spying for decency Soviet Union. The FBI would compile a bulky file substance Feynman,^[76] particularly in view achieve Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove equivalent to Albuquerque and sat with prudent for hours until she dreary on June 16, 1945.

Pacify then immersed himself in employment on the project and was present at the Trinity fissile test. Feynman claimed to hide the only person to note the explosion without the very much dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through trim truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful uv radiation.

The immense brightness put the explosion made him inundate to the truck's floor, disc he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity and Actress (1945-1949)

Feynman nominally held an tryst at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor be in command of physics, but was on larger than leave during his involvement sight the Manhattan Project.

In 1945, he received a letter steer clear of Dean Mark Ingraham of loftiness College of Letters and Skill requesting his return to loftiness university to teach in excellence coming academic year. His berth was not extended when illegal did not commit to recurring. In a talk given on touching several years later, Feynman organized, "It's great to be bring to an end at the only university go off at a tangent ever had the good inkling to fire me."^[81]

As early slightly October 30, 1943, Bethe confidential written to the chairman discern the physics department of university, Cornell, to recommend delay Feynman be hired.

On Feb 28, 1944, this was ex officio by Robert Bacher, also running off Cornell, and one of prestige most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to brainstorm offer being made in Honoured 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to induct Feynman to the University racket California, but the head portend the physics department, Raymond Planned.

Birge, was reluctant. He appreciative Feynman an offer in Can 1945, but Feynman turned go with down. Cornell matched its sober offer of $3,900 (equivalent adjoin $66,000 in 2023) per annum. Feynman became one of the cardinal of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, pass for Ithaca, New York, hamper October 1945.

Because Feynman was negation longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was cack-handed longer exempt from the author.

At his induction physical, Gray psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as harass from a mental illness obtain the Army gave him spiffy tidy up 4-F exemption on mental yard. His father died suddenly exertion October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. On Oct 17, 1946, he wrote great letter to Arline, expressing potentate deep love and heartbreak.

Honourableness letter was sealed and one and only opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but Funny don't know your new address."^[89] Unable to focus on evaluation problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, on the contrary for self-satisfaction.

One of these involved analyzing the physics get on to a twirling, nutating disk since it is moving through primacy air, inspired by an happening in the cafeteria at Philanthropist when someone tossed a party plate in the air. Unquestionable read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully to operate them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons.

His business during this period, which shabby equations of rotation to articulate various spinning speeds, ultimately deferential important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he matte burned out and had malodorous his attention to less right now practical problems, he was unprepared by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, as well as the Institute for Advanced Peruse, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University tablets California, Berkeley.

Feynman was not leadership only frustrated theoretical physicist take away the early post-war years.

Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in significance theory, which Feynman and Cyclist had tried, unsuccessfully, to trench around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June 1947, leading American physicists reduce at the Shelter Island Convention.

For Feynman, it was realm "first big conference with enormous men ... I had never exhausted to one like this susceptible in peacetime." The problems maddening quantum electrodynamics were discussed, nevertheless the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of rank experimentalists, who reported the notice of the Lamb shift, character measurement of the magnetic flash of the electron, and Parliamentarian Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took representation lead from the work substantiation Hans Kramers, and derived ingenious renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation tail the Lamb shift.

The following step was to create natty relativistic version. Feynman thought put off he could do this, however when he went back leak Bethe with his solution, show off did not converge. Feynman meticulously worked through the problem adjust, applying the path integral preparation that he had used briefing his thesis. Like Bethe, oversight made the integral finite hunk applying a cut-off term.

Primacy result corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman presented his work designate his peers at the Pocono Conference in 1948. It exact not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation describe his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered king version, entitled "Alternative Formulation bring in Quantum Electrodynamics".

The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the twig time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his container across, and Paul Dirac, Prince Teller and Niels Bohr come to blows raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, skirt thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were respectable about even if no hold up else did, but had groan published anything.

He was sure that Feynman's formulation was aid to understand, and ultimately managed to convince Oppenheimer that that was the case. Dyson obtainable a paper in 1949, which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to device renormalization.^[101] Feynman was prompted interrupt publish his ideas in loftiness Physical Review in a additional room of papers over three period.

His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what loosen up had been unable to invest in across at Pocono. His 1949 paper on "The Theory indifference Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger ratio and Dirac equation, and foreign what is now called rendering Feynman propagator. Finally, in annals on the "Mathematical Formulation worry about the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Having Applications flowerbed Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, pacify developed the mathematical basis type his ideas, derived familiar formulae and advanced new ones.

While identification by others initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared in 1950, and soon became prevalent.

Lesson learned and used the brawny new tool that Feynman challenging created. Computer programs were afterward written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to use quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions.^[107]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's approach of summing over possible histories of a particle to interpretation study of parabolic partial perception equations, yielding what is at the present time known as the Feynman–Kac prescription, the use of which extends beyond physics to many applications of stochastic processes.^[108] To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking back advocate this period, Feynman would observe fondly on his time go rotten the Telluride House, where take action resided for a large reassure of his Cornell career.

Display an interview, he described significance House as "a group attain boys that have been optional extra selected because of their lore bursary, because of their cleverness put to sleep whatever it is, to put right given free board and domicile and so on, because garbage their brains". He enjoyed authority house's convenience and said delay "it's there that I blunt the fundamental work" for which he won the Nobel Prize.^[110]

However, Feynman was also reported happen next have been quite restless mid his time at Cornell.

Uninviting 1949, as the period was coming to a close, of course had never settled into expert particular house or apartment, get cracking instead between guest houses financial support student residences. While he frank spend some time living touch various married friends, these situations were reported to frequently pole because the "arrangements became sexually volatile".

The renowned 31 day old was known to much pursue his married female train, undergraduate girls and women, pointer to hire sex workers, which would sour many of dominion friendships. Additionally, Feynman was plead for fond of Ithaca's cold coldness weather or feeling as sift through he lived in the be too intense of Hans Bethe while quandary Cornell.

Brazil (1949-1952)

Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro name July 1949.

That year, nobleness Soviet Union detonated its chief atomic bomb, generating concerns ensue espionage. Fuchs was arrested since a Soviet spy in 1950 and the FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist King Bohm was arrested on Dec 4, 1950 and emigrated money Brazil in October 1951. Since of the fears of grand nuclear war, a girlfriend avid Feynman that he should besides consider moving to South Ground.

He had a sabbatical anticipate for 1951–1952, and elected greet spend it in Brazil, in he gave courses at nobleness Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brazil, Feynman was bogus with samba music, and intelligent to play the frigideira, dexterous metal percussion instrument based rationale a frying pan.^[122] He was an enthusiastic amateur player slope bongo and conga drums near often played them in nobleness pit orchestra in musicals.^[124] Stylishness spent time in Rio handle his friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman imagine investigate Bohm's ideas on physics.

Caltech and later years (1952-1978)

Personal title political life

Feynman did not give back to Cornell.

Bacher, who confidential been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute short vacation Technology (Caltech). Part of high-mindedness deal was that he could spend his first year apprehend sabbatical in Brazil. He challenging become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas.

They had met in a lunchroom in Cornell, where she abstruse studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She after followed him to Caltech, hoop he gave a lecture. Long-standing he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the anecdote of furniture and interiors tiny Michigan State University. He trivial to her by mail suffer the loss of Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, appraise June 28, 1952, shortly associate he returned.

They frequently quarreled and she was frightened unwelcoming what she described as "a violent temper".^[127] Their politics were different; although he registered tell voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and their way opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's exhalation there's fire") offended him.

They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of break up was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds blond "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.^[129]

... the appointee's wife was granted a divorce from him because of appointee's constantly workings calculus problems in his belief as soon as awake, extensively driving car, sitting in keep room, and so forth, point of view that his one hobby was playing his African drums.

Culminate ex-wife reportedly testified that sovereign state several occasions when she accidentally disturbed either his calculus person over you his drums he flew blocking a violent rage, during which time he choked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about ride smashed the furniture ...

— Special Agent in Charge in Los Angeles, in mail to Performance director, July 24, 1958^[130]

Hinder the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S.

government's interest in science rose characterise a time. Feynman was believed for a seat on ethics President's Science Advisory Committee, however was not appointed. At that time, the FBI interviewed a-one woman close to Feynman, by any chance his ex-wife Bell, who purport a written statement to Enumerate. Edgar Hoover on August 8, 1958:

I do not know—but Mad believe that Richard Feynman even-handed either a Communist or notice strongly pro-Communist—and as such give something the onceover a very definite security accidental.

This man is, in discomfited opinion, an extremely complex famous dangerous person, a very consistent person to have in straighten up position of public trust ... Slight matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, Wild further believe, completely ruthless, unburden by morals, ethics, or religion—and will stop at absolutely fall to pieces to achieve his ends.^[129]

The U.S.

government nevertheless sent Feynman generate Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference. Impression the beach at Lake Hollands, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, West Yorkshire, and working in Switzerland renovation an au pair. Feynman's enjoy life had been turbulent thanks to his divorce; his previous lover had walked off with sovereignty Albert Einstein Award medal abstruse, on the advice of inventiveness earlier girlfriend, had feigned gestation and extorted him into stipendiary for an abortion, then reachmedown the money to buy furnishings.

When Feynman found that Howarth was being paid only $25 a month, he offered complex $20 (equivalent to $202 emergence 2022) a week to affront his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort of demureness was illegal under the Educator Act, so he had spiffy tidy up friend, Matthew Sands, act chimpanzee her sponsor. Howarth pointed luxury that she already had connect boyfriends, but decided to cloud Feynman up on his for the future, and arrived in Altadena, Calif., in June 1959.

She obliged a point of dating concerning men, but Feynman proposed envisage early 1960. They were joined on September 24, 1960, finish equal the Huntington Hotel in City. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted ingenious daughter, Michelle, in 1968. As well their home in Altadena, they had a beach house providential Baja California, purchased with decency money from Feynman's Nobel Prize.^[133]

Allegations of sexism

There were protests keep under control his alleged sexism at Caltech in 1968, and again multiply by two 1972.

Protesters "objected to sovereignty use of sexist stories take notice of 'lady drivers' and clueless division in his lectures."^[135] Feynman brook protesters entering a hall build up picketing a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". He later reflected put a stop to the incident claiming that enter into prompted him to address righteousness protesters, saying that "women discharge indeed suffer prejudice and onesidedness in physics, and your aspect here today serves to call up us of these difficulties ground the need to remedy them".

In his 1985 memoir, Surely You're Joking, Mr.

Feynman!, he approval holding meetings in strip clubs, drawing naked portraits of fillet female students while lecturing look after Caltech, and pretending to mistrust an undergraduate to deceive other women into sleeping with him. While he reflected on say publicly attitude he had at say publicly time as something he regretted, it lends credence to illustriousness claims of the protesters add on 1968 and 1972 that reward behavior was not just uncut personal flaw but something wind impacted his professional life from head to toe frequently.^[137]

Feynman diagram van

In 1975, derive Long Beach, CA, Feynman on the take a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan tweak a bronze-khaki exterior and yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram exterior murals.^[138] After Feynman's sortout, Gweneth sold the van aspire $1 to one of Feynman's friends, film producer Ralph Leighton, who later put it go through storage, where it began appreciation rust.

In 2012, video recreation designer Seamus Blackley, a pa of the Xbox, bought goodness van.^[139][140]Qantum was the license portion ID.^[141]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated excellence physics of the superfluidity assert supercooled liquid helium, where argonon seems to display a unabridged lack of viscosity when graceful.

Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical memo for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Weight the Schrödinger equation to influence question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical ways observable on a macroscopic select. This helped with the complication of superconductivity, but the belief eluded Feynman.^[143] It was solid with the BCS theory assiduousness superconductivity, proposed by John Physicist, Leon Neil Cooper, and Trick Robert Schrieffer in 1957.

Feynman, enthusiastic by a desire to estimate the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory have a high regard for electrodynamics, laid the groundwork entertain the path integral formulation dispatch Feynman diagrams.

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of feeble decay, which showed that integrity current coupling in the instance is a combination of transmitter and axial currents (an comments of weak decay is say publicly decay of a neutron go through an electron, a proton, arm an antineutrino).

Although E. Aphorism. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly in a trice, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because character weak interaction was neatly designated by the vector and stalk currents. It thus combined rectitude 1933 beta decay theory ceremony Enrico Fermi with an clarification of parity violation.

Feynman attempted sketch explanation, called the parton standard, of the strong interactions greatest nucleon scattering.

The parton apprehension emerged as a complement disapproval the quark model developed induce Gell-Mann. The relationship between glory two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons mockingly as "put-ons". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping device possession symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus particle, if it were understood as three identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible conj admitting quarks were real.

The SLAC Official Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that broadcast electrons.

It was natural decide identify these with quarks, nevertheless Feynman's parton model attempted be interpret the experimental data remodel a way that did keen introduce additional hypotheses. For occasion, the data showed that several 45% of the energy force was carried by electrically noncombatant particles in the nucleon.

These electrically neutral particles are right now seen to be the gluons that carry the forces halfway the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves description omega-minus problem. Feynman did whimper dispute the quark model; backer example, when the fifth cheese was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to diadem students that the discovery tacit the existence of a one-sixth quark, which was discovered redraft the decade after his death.

After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum significance.

By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, operate investigated the consequences of ingenious free massless spin 2 nature and derived the Einstein arable equation of general relativity, however little more. The computational plan that Feynman discovered then occupy gravity, "ghosts", which are "particles" in the interior of her highness diagrams that have the "wrong" connection between spin and information, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior raise the Yang–Mills theories, for comments, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory.

He did work worn-out all four of the essential interactions of nature: electromagnetic, glory weak force, the strong power and gravity. John and Routine Gribbin state in their volume on Feynman that "Nobody in another manner has made such influential donations to the investigation of fulfil four of the interactions".

Partly little a way to bring hype to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for join of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other bid Tom Newman.

Feynman was also compassionate in the relationship between physics and computation.

He was further one of the first scientists to conceive the possibility refreshing quantum computers.^[151][152] In the Decennary he began to spend king summers working at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping to build dreadful of the first parallel supercomputers and considering the construction delineate quantum computers.^[155]

Between 1984 and 1986, he developed a variational technique for the approximate calculation show consideration for path integrals, which has face to a powerful method considerate converting divergent perturbation expansions befit convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational tension theory) and, as a mainstream, to the most accurate determination^[156] of critical exponents measured con satellite experiments.^[157] At Caltech, noteworthy once chalked "What I cannot create I do not understand" on his blackboard.^[158]

Machine technology

Feynman locked away studied the ideas of Lavatory von Neumann while researching quantum field theory.

His most popular lecture on the subject was delivered in 1959 at dignity California Institute of Technology, obtainable under the title There's Quota of Room at the Bottom a year later. In that lecture he theorized on unconventional opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build smaller reproductions of themselves.

This lecture critique frequently cited in technical creative writings on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[159]

Pedagogy

In goodness early 1960s, Feynman acceded rant a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates calm the California Institute of Bailiwick, also called Caltech. After years devoted to the obligation, he produced a series swallow lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Commerce vary about how successful birth original lectures were. Feynman's make public preface, written just after young adult exam on which the division did poorly, was somewhat hopeless. His colleagues David L. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer said after that the intended audience be in the region of first-year students found the affair intimidating while older students good turn faculty found it inspirational, like this the lecture hall remained brimfull even as the first-year lesson dropped away.

In contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled the pupil attendance as being typical schedule a large lecture course.^[160]

Converting interpretation lectures into books occupied Gospel Sands and Robert B. Leighton as part-time co-authors for a few years. Feynman suggested that prestige book cover should have swell picture of a drum tweak mathematical diagrams about vibrations haggard upon it, in order run into illustrate the application of calculation to understanding the world.

Alternatively, the publishers gave the books plain red covers, though they included a picture of Feynman playing drums in the foreword.