"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard Phillips Feynman

Bantam, 1986 - Biography & Autobiography - 322 pages

For use in schools and libraries only. The Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist talks about his adventure-filled life in a series of transcribed taped discussions

Contents

• He Fixes Radios by Thinking 3: 2
• String Beans: 12
• Latin or Italian?: 28

About the author

Richard Feynman, an American theoretical physicist, received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1942 and worked at Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the atomic bomb during World War II. From 1945 to 1950, he taught at Cornell University and became professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1950. Feynman made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics (QED) and electromagnetic interactions, such as interactions among electrons. In Feynman's approach, interactions are considered exchanges of virtual particles. For example, Feynman explained the interaction of two electrons as an exchange of virtual photons. Feynman's theory has proved to be accurate in its predictions. In 1965 the Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to three pioneers in quantum electrodynamics: Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Feynman was an outspoken critic of NASA for its failure to notice flaws in the design of the Challenger space shuttle, which resulted in its tragic explosion.

Bibliographic information

• Title: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character; A Bantam Bokk
• Author: Richard Phillips Feynman
• Editors: Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Bantam, 1986
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Oct 21, 2010
• ISBN: 0553256491, 9780553256499
• Length: 322 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology