Word: feynman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Feynman that leaps directly off the page is impish and aggressively unpretentious. One of his favorite words is "stuff." He rattles off his adventures in physics, biology, art and music (he once played a sort of frying pan in a Brazilian samba band) and has the nerve to describe himself as "a one-sided guy." He talks offhandedly of his associations with Einstein, Bohr and Oppenheimer and enthusiastically about discussing gambling odds with Nick the Greek. His life has been full of unforgettable characters, including his father, a salesman in the uniform business...
...Feynman appears to have been unusually successful in selling his son on the joys of acquiring and applying knowledge. At about age twelve, Richard was the youngest radio repairman in Far Rockaway, an oceanside community on New York's Long Island. The gifted problem solver breezed through high school math and went on to stir up M.I.T. and Princeton, where the inverse proportion between his mental capacities and his social skills soon became obvious. The book's title is taken from the dean's wife's remark after she asked the young graduate student if he wanted cream or lemon...
...unconventional approach has served Feynman splendidly. The work that led to a Nobel Prize in 1965 had begun some years earlier while he was watching someone toss a plate. He noticed that the spin of the dish seemed much faster than the rate of its wobble. The observation led to some playful calculations, idle musings about electron orbits and, finally, basic theories of quantum electrodynamics...
...does not take an extravagant IQ to figure out that Feynman's sportive style masks serious content. He defines science as "an understanding of the behavior of nature," and provides numerous examples of how that understanding is thwarted. As a guest lecturer in Rio de Janeiro, he discovered that nearly all his students could parrot their lessons but could not explain what they meant. The rote method was obviously an unscientific way of teaching science. Years later, as a member of a California state board of education curriculum committee, Feynman was appalled by the quality of math textbooks...
...Feynman's curiosity has led him to unexpected places: close to the ground where he used his nose to learn how bloodhounds follow a trail, into topless restaurants where he indulged his interest in sketching anatomy, and inside sensory-deprivation tanks to experience hallucinations. His attention wavers and his patience wanes at forms of political and social studies that assume the trappings of science without the rigor. He insists on intellectual integrity, "a kind of leaning over backwards," to discover possibilities that may not be congenial to the investigator's conclusions...