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Feynman at 100 Paul Halpern Celebrates the Oeuvre of a Brilliant, Original Scientist on His Centenary

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Feynman at 100 Paul Halpern Celebrates the Oeuvre of a Brilliant, Original Scientist on His Centenary COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS KEVIN FLEMING/CORBIS VIA GETTY Richard Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. THEORETICAL PHYSICS Feynman at 100 Paul Halpern celebrates the oeuvre of a brilliant, original scientist on his centenary. pre-eminent twentieth-century infinite terms from calculations. Yet, his or horrified the better. In the 1980s, his physicist and a Nobel laureate: results — equivalent to more systematic, friend and fellow drummer Ralph Leighton Richard Feynman was certainly rigorously expounded mathematical tech- collected some of them in two bestselling Athose. He was also much more. As the niques independently proposed by co- volumes: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! centenary of his birth rolls around on laureates Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro (1985) and What Do You Care What Other 11 May, a look at his scientific and cultural Tomonaga — matched atomic-physics data People Think? (1988). legacy recalls his restless multidimensional- beautifully. ity. His popular books shattered readers’ pre- Decades before his 1965 Nobel Prize, PLAYFUL SPIRIT conceptions of scientists as lab-coated nerds Feynman was already a legend of the In the first, Feynman flaunted his rough and replaced them with a hipper image of Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New edges and eccentricities, and much of the a wild non-conformist; his scholarly tomes Mexico, where he helped develop the book is hilarious. (One story sees him introduced researchers to revolutionary atomic bomb. His colleagues and super- bungling a sprinkler experiment in the methods of grappling with modern physics. visors, including scientific director J. Robert cyclotron laboratory at Princeton University Feynman was a master conjuror of physics. Oppenheimer and head of the theoretical in New Jersey, shattering glass tubes and A mathematical whizz with exceptional division Hans Bethe, were stunned by his flooding the space with water.) The chroni- intuition, he seemed to pull solutions out computational abilities. cles of Feynman’s Los Alamos days are of thin air. He crafted a lexicon for particle Then there was the playfulness. His exceptionally funny, such as his removal inter actions: iconic squiggles, loops and pranks, including safe-cracking and sneak- of the secret contents of physicist Edward lines now known as Feynman diagrams ing through security fences, and his passion Teller’s locked desk drawer after Teller told (see D. Cressey Nature 489, 207; 2012). His for playing the bongos, were arguably as him it was impenetrable. However, the book Nobel-prizewinning work on quantum memorable as his science. Feynman loved shows its age in disturbingly sexist sections electro dynamics included methods that even telling stories about himself and observing such as “You just ask them?”, about his pred- he saw as a sleight-of-hand for removing the re action — the more stunned, amused atory behaviour towards women. 164 | NATURE | VOL 557 | 10 MAY 2018©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT His relationships with women were com- plicated. In What Do You Care, he explained how he encouraged his younger sister Joan, now an acclaimed astrophysicist, to go into CALTECH ARCHIVES CALTECH science. And he recounted how many of his attitudes had been shaped by his love for his first wife, Arline, who died of tuberculosis in 1945, a few years after they married. Those stories were mostly written during the final stages of Feynman’s life, after he had under- gone treatment for cancer. By that point he had undoubtedly become more cognizant of his legacy. Indeed, beneath his clown’s guise, Feynman was a sensitive man, suffering from both early grief and considerable anguish about the atomic weapons he had helped engender. These demons stymied his research from the end of the Second World War until 1947, when findings reported at the Shelter Island Conference in New York helped to spark his Nobel-prizewinning work. At the meeting, physicist Willis Lamb presented evidence of a discrepancy between predictions for certain energy levels of the hydrogen atom, calculated using the Dirac equation, and experimental results obtained using microwaves to excite the Richard Feynman lecturing at California State University, Long Beach, in 1979. atom. Inspired by Bethe’s quick calculation of this Lamb shift, Feynman developed tech- and other advanced methods. The second, Another, 1959’s The Theory of Fundamental niques to solve that problem and beyond, to QED (1985; based on a lecture series) is Processes, is based on notes taken by Peter the widest range of quantum electrodynamic more accessible — explaining the same Carruthers and Michael Nauenberg, two interactions between charged particles. theory using diagrams and examples. students at Cornell University in Ithaca, Starting in the 1950s, Feynman ventured New York, when Feynman was a visiting GOLDEN YEARS into many other areas of theoretical physics: lecturer there in 1958. Nauenberg told The next two years proved extremely superfluids, superconductivity, gravitation me how, during the first lecture, Feynman productive in disseminating his extraordi- and the constituents of protons and neu- walked in, glanced at the blackboard, wildly nary methods for calculating interactions trons, which he called partons. Two later erased the equations on it and declared in particle physics. Feynman published papers that made a huge impact were his that they would all learn the whole of phys- seminal papers such as ‘Classical electro- model of the weak interaction, ‘Theory of the ics from scratch. Within a few weeks, the dynamics in terms of direct interparticle Fermi interaction’ course proceeded from elementary quan- action’ (J. A. Wheeler and R. P. Feynman (R. P. Feynman “Feynman’s tum mechanics to Feynman’s rules for par- Rev. Mod. Phys. 21, 425–433; 1949) and and M. Gell-Mann books urge us ticle-physics calculations. The Character of ‘Space-time approach to quantum electro- Phys. Rev. 109, to explore the Physical Law (1967), another of Feynman’s dynamics’ (R. P. Feynman Phys. Rev. 76, 193; 1958), and his world with works, emerged from lectures he delivered 769–789; 1949). These build on each other proposal for quan- open-minded at Cornell six years later. like revelations in a Sherlock Holmes story tum computation, inquisitiveness.” Feynman’s books urge us to explore the — with the last supplying a complete resolu- ‘Simulating phys- world with open-minded inquisitiveness, tion of how electrons interact using photons. ics with computers’ (R. P. Feynman Int. J. as if encountering it for the first time. He Through his diagrams, which surprisingly Theor. Phys. 21, 467–488; 1982). In each, worked from the idea that all of us could depict positively charged positrons as elec- he tinkered with variations until he reached aspire to take the same mental leaps as him. trons moving backward in time, Feynman definitive conclusions. But, of course, not every ambitious young portrayed the gamut of possible modes of Feynman was also a renowned educator. magician can be a Harry Houdini. Whereas interaction, each contributing to the total Those lucky enough to have attended his other educators might try to coddle those picture in a weighted tally called “sum over lectures have the best sense of how his who couldn’t keep up, Feynman never histories”. In his brilliant vision, quantum agile mind operated. He taught a first-year relented. The essence of his philosophy was reality is a cloud-like smear of particles’ pos- course at the California Institute of Tech- to find something that you can do well, and sible paths, as if a commuter from Essex to nology (Caltech) in Pasadena: ‘Physics X’, put your heart and soul into it. If not physics, London could travel the entire route by train, in which students would ask him anything then another passion — bongos, perhaps. ■ coach, car and bicycle simultaneously. and he’d think on his feet. Feynman loved Feynman published two excellent to astound, and often refused to provide Paul Halpern is a professor of physics at the primers introducing these quantum solutions, to spur students on intellectually. University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, methods. Quantum Mechanics and Path The careful notes of attendees have been Pennsylvania. He is the author of 15 science Integrals (1965; co-authored with Albert published as books and articles, bolster- books, most recently The Quantum Hibbs) begins with one of his favourite ing his reputation as a master lecturer. One Labyrinth and Einstein’s Dice and apparatuses, the double-slit experiment, such from Caltech was the three-volume Schrödinger’s Cat. and quickly moves into path integration The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964). e-mail: [email protected] ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts re10ser vMAYed. 2018 | VOL 557 | NATURE | 165.
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