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Home , Richard Feynman

EXTRA! Tech EXTRA! Associated Students of the Califorl'lia Institute of Technology

Volume LXVII Pasadena, California, Friday, October 22, 1965 Number 5V2 Dr. Richard Feynman Nobel Laureatel October 21, 1965 (9 a.m.) Professor Richard Feynman: Royal Academs of today awarded you and Tomonaga and Schwinger jointly the 1965 for for your fundamental work in quantum electrody· namics with deep ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.' Prize money each one·third. Our warm congratulations. Letter will follow. Erik Rundberg The Permanent Secretary

Erik Rundberg: Your cablegram has made me very happy! Richard P. Feynman

Earlier, at 3:45 a.m.: "'Hello, Dr. Richard Feynman? May I congratulate you on your Nobel Prize.' "Look. This is a heck of an hour­ "'But aren't you pleased to hear that you've won the Prize?' "I could have found out later this morn­ ing. "'Well, how do you feel, now that you've "And so he se:z:, 'Can you explain in a few words just what you did to win the Pri:z:e?' So 1 say, 'I won it?' made marks on a piece of paper:" "Look, some other . . . " And so Richard P. Feynman, PhD, FRS, through second-order approximations led to going to be a mess. and Richard Chace Tolman Professor of infinite solutions. What the three Nobel '" Well, I'm going to ask you also to at Caltech, first sleepily Prize winners did, in the words of Feyn­ comment on the statement that your work learned that he was an awardee of the 1965 man, was "to get rid of the in the was to convert experi.mental data on . calculations. The infinities are still there, strange particles into hard mathematical Later yesterday morning, as growing but now they can be skirted around . . . fact.' realization brought greater excitement, We have designed a method for sweeping "No, I'm not gOing to comment on that." Feynman learned that Schwinger and To­ them under the rug." "Finally, 'All right. What time did you managa shared the award with him, and Later in the morning Feynman went hear about the Award?' will also be making the December 10 trip through another press conference. In his "Ok, now turn on the cameras!" to Stockholm. All three received the Prize words: In the afternoon spirited undergraduates as the result of simultaneous, independent "A group came who couldn't get to the raised a "'Vin big, RF" banner on the dome theoretical work conducted during 1947- press conference because they were late. of Throop. And naturally, Feynman was 1949 in . the center of attention at a packed Physics Though the results of the three were la­ Department seminar tea held in Bridge at ter shown to be equivalent, Feynman intro­ 4:15, where he was formally inducted into duced the pioneering "," the Nobel elite by Dr. Carl D. Anderson. a powerful tool greatly simplifying quant­ "I feel," confided Feynman, "that the Nobel um-dynamical calculations. As Feynman Committee was very wise in its Prize se­ himself explained: lection." Three hip-hip-hoorays followed. "It was the purpose of making these sim­ Lee Feynman told how a telephone caller plified methods of calculating more avail­ from New York had asked him to comment able that I published my paper in 1949, for This guy comes into my office, and says to on the New York school system. "It was I still didn't think I had solved any real me: 'I'll tell you what I'm going to ask you, all right when I was going to it 30 years problems, except to make more efficient cal­ so you're ready when the cameras start. ago," he answered. And Feynman has al­ culations. But it does turn out that if the One of the questions is: What applications ready decided how to spend his one-third efficiency is increased enough, it itself is dGes this paper have in the computer in­ of the $55,0000 Prize money: "I'll use it to practically a discovery. It was a lot faster dustry?' pay my income tax for the next years, so way of doing the old thing." "I said, 'The answer to that will be that my income is taX-free." This "old thing," as Feynman described it "none." , The California Tecb visited Feynman at during a press conference held at 10:30 a.m. "'Well, then, does it have application?' his home in the evening for a speCial inter­ in the Atheneaum, was the solution of Di­ "It hasn't got any- view. In describing some of his more re­ rac's equations, formulated in 1929. Previ­ " 'Oh, you're kidding, sir.' cent work, Feynman told how his quantum ous attempts to get more a c cur a c y "No." I knew that this interview was (Continued on back page) Back Page EXTRA CALIFORNIA TEC.H Friday, October 22, 1965 The Work That /Won The Prize By using tricks and devices-like construct­ procedure; instead he offered to work out ing the difference of two "infinite" quan­ a physical example to demonstrate the cor­ tites to be finite-the theory could be per­ rect results it produced. But the audience suaded to give nondivergcnt answers. objected to the time this would require The actual elaboration of this beginning and the hair involved, even though these work was done more or less independently had been drastically reduced by his meth­ by the three men who share the ~obel ods. The CUlmination of the audience's Prize: Feynman (then at CJrnell), Schwing­ feeling that Feynman was running a:nok er at H::lrvard, and Tomonaga in Tokyo. withcut being rigorous came when Niels The latter two went along traditional Enes, Bohr stood up, objected to Feynman's use of using the electric and mangetic fields that trajectories for small particles, and started everyone accepted implicitly at that time. r2mind~ng him about Heisenberg's uncer­ Feynman took a radical approach with a tainty principle. Here F'eynman gave up theory that treated all events in terms of in despair, realizing that he COUldn't CJill­ particles. Xost thou:sht this a municate the fact that his analysis was wild idea at the time. Fcynman was able jusLified by its correct results. to eliminate most of the divergGw2 difficul­ :;'<:1:(1 110t .in sight ties, but not quite all of them. Gradual­ ly, through considerable intuition and trial Feynman then dedded to publish what and error, he learned rules for making sim­ he had so far, without waiting to remove Caltech Nobel Laureates Anderson and Feynman. plified calculations which produced correct completely the divergence difficulties, as It's been a long. happy day. results. he had originally planned. It turned out to be a good idea, because the difficulties The 1965 Nobel Prize in physics was "It \VORI{S!" have yet to be removed, even after 17 awarded for accomplishments of years ago. From time to time he would meet Sch­ years. Schwinger and Tomonaga published winger at a conference somewhere and In order to understand what advance the l:~Pcrs at about the same time. It was for trio actually made in its historical context, compare results, but not methods. Their this work that they were all awarded the it is necessary to go back almost four approaches remained largely independent Nobel Prize 16 years later. because of their practice of not learning decades. In the interim, opinion gradually shifted each other's approaches, but instead com­ away from the theory view used by Quantum electrodynamics () was paring final results and discussing trouble Sch winger and Tomonaga and more toward born around 1928·30 of a marriage of the areas in general terms. new quantum with the old equa­ Feynman's particle approach. Perhaps the Eventually Feynman believed he had most important result of his work was the tions of Maxwell's classical electrodynamics. produced something valuable, even thou::-;h The midwives for the tremendous theoreti­ development of Feynman diagrams (pic­ it was not yet perfect because some of the tures of interaction trajectories) which cal development of this time were the same infinities refused to be resolved away. The giants of physics whose names have be- vastly simplify the formerly lengthy and test of his theory was not only in that it gave tedious calculations of qed interactions. :~_ / come so familiar: Heisenberg, Pauli, }:<~ermi, answers that vvere correct; but it gave cor­ and Dirac. The new qed theory did a beau­ Feynman himself believes that the'dis­ rect answers in everT instance he tried it. tiful job of explaining all sorts of electro­ crepancies of the few remaining infinities Feynman tells the story of his coming in his theory will never be resolved. In­ dynamical events on an atomic scale by upon an informal discussion at a physics quantizing everything. stead, he feels personally that when a sat­ conference about the correctness of some isfactory explanation is finally achieved, it Infinite problems 's answer to a problem. The man, will require physicists to discard most of In the later thirties, certain "divergence who had spent a year and a half arriving the old ideas and to formulate an entirely difficulties"-getting infinite answers for at his answer, described the problem to new approach. quantities that should be finite and physi­ Feynman, who proceeded that evening to cal-reared their ugly heads. In particular apply his own methods to it. He came the theoretIcal predictions about how an back the next day with his own answer, laureate Feynman emits from its structure and dumbfounded the other physicist with ran into trouble. As an electron moves to the fact that, in addition to the phenomenal (Contiuued from frout page) a lower- orbit about the nucleus, a with which he had done the calcula­ theory of the gravitational field is "so far is emitted, and the wavelength of tions, Feynman's method gave the answer as along, but not perfect." As of late, F'eyn­ that photon could be pred~cted easily by a function of the electromagnetic mass, man has turned his attention to the rules the theory, but only approximately. A where the other man had only heen able to of strong nuclear interaction. harder calculation produced a small cor­ solve the problem in the special case where Later }:<'eynman told about phoning To- rection to the first answer, thus giving the electromagnetic mass was zero. monaga: more accuracy to the result, but in trying "Hard mathematical facts . . . " "Congratulations. to find a second (even smaller) correction, Feynman and Schwinger decided to pre­ "'Same to you,' replied Tomonaga. the theory produced infinite answers. Phy­ sent thcir theories at a conference at Po­ "How does it feel to be a N<.2bftl·prize ;win­ sicists worried vaguely about the problem cono in 1948. Schwinger went first, giving ner? for a decade, but experimental results at a very mathematical presentation of his '" I guess you know.' the time had not achieved sufficient accur­ methcds; whenever he tried to give a phy­ "Can you explain to me in laymen's terms acy to require the addition of the extra sical S'xa'11ple, the audience threw so many exactly what it was you did to win the terms in order to satisfactorily explain the questions at him that he postponed the ex­ prize? observed phenomena. ample and went baek to the math. Then " , I am very sleepy.' " By 1946 eXperimental techniques had so Feynman came to bat. His ideas were developed that carefully designed experi greeted with even less enthusiasm, largely ,/~------,Copyright ments, by such people as Lamb and Rether­ because the field theory was then in vogue The California Tech, 1965 ford, yielded extremely accurate results and his theo;7 relied upon particle analy­ California Tech, 1201 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, which demanded that the troublesome cor­ sis. He found it very difficult to explain Calif. 91 109 rective term be added. Methods were out­ his formulations because they relied heavi­ Second Class postage paid at Pasadena, California lined by Bethe and others whereby the di­ ly upon physical arguments and intuition. Printed by Bickley Printing Co., 25 So. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena vergence difficulties could be overcome. At each step he was asked to justify his