Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Richard Feynman is certainly a curious character.

He won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965 and was also noted for many other revolutionary insights into the world of theoretical particle physics and also his work on the Manhattan project during the second world war. This book - a series of transcripts of taped conversations with his friend Ralph Leigton - forms an autobiographical sequence and gives a fascinating insight into the mind of a true genius.

As well as his academic work, Feynman amused himself by playing practical jokes on colleagues and indulging a passion for safecracking using a combination of guile and theory to undo combination locks - a hobby that could have landed him in a lot of hot water in the high security world of Los Alamos. He certainly had an eye for the ladies and was married several times, and one particularly amusing segment describes his application of scientific analysis to the art of chatting up bar girls in Las Vegas. He also developed unexpected talents for such diverse subjects as playing the drums in a samba band in Brazil and putting on an exibition of his paintings. He had always believed that he had no aptitude for drawing, but undertook a bet with an artist friend to teach each other science and art, respectively.

Well worth reading.

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