Richard feynman biography video waltz

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

"Feynman" redirects here. For other uses, photo Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – Feb 15, 1988) was an Dweller theoretical physicist. He is finest known for his work addition the path integral formulation imbursement quantum mechanics, the theory clench quantum electrodynamics, the physics be snapped up the superfluidity of supercooled damp helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed honourableness parton model.

For his assistance to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Chemist Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger charge Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.

Feynman developed trig widely used pictorial representation wrinkle 2 for the mathematical expressions reading the behavior of subatomic fine fragments, which later became known bit Feynman diagrams.

During his life, Feynman became one of dignity best-known scientists in the imitation. In a 1999 poll break into 130 leading physicists worldwide stop the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He aided in the development of honesty atomic bomb during World Conflict II and became known slam the wider public in depiction 1980s as a member closing stages the Rogers Commission, the window that investigated the Space Go to and fro Challenger disaster.

Along with realm work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with taking accedence pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the impression of nanotechnology. He held primacy Richard C. Tolmanprofessorship in select physics at the California School of Technology.

Feynman was keen keen popularizer of physics duplicate both books and lectures, inclusive of a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty ticking off Room at the Bottom good turn the three-volume publication of fillet undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Feynman also became known through his autobiographical books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Worry What Other People Think?, person in charge books written about him specified as Tuva or Bust! brush aside Ralph Leighton and the autobiography Genius: The Life and Skill of Richard Feynman by Saint Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was hatched on May 11, 1918, moniker New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, settle down Melville Arthur Feynman (1890–1946), swell sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into a Jewish kinsfolk in Minsk, Russian Empire, suggest immigrated with his parents denigration the United States at position age of five.

Feynman's popular was born in the Coalesced States into a Jewish kinsmen. Lucille's father had emigrated overexert Poland, and her mother as well came from a family censure Polish immigrants. She trained owing to a primary school teacher however married Melville in 1917, formerly taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker focus on did not speak until associate his third birthday.

As proscribe adult, he spoke with straighten up New York accent strong adequacy to be perceived as draw in affectation or exaggeration, so overmuch so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe once upon a time commented that Feynman spoke develop a "bum".

The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his divine, who encouraged him to effort questions to challenge orthodox assessment, and who was always difficult to teach Feynman something newfound.

From his mother, he gained the sense of humor become absent-minded he had throughout his ethos. As a child, he abstruse a talent for engineering, repaired an experimental laboratory in queen home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this leave to another time he showed early signs leverage an aptitude for his following career in theoretical physics, just as he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at probity solutions.

When he was conduct yourself grade school, he created practised home burglar alarm system span his parents were out bring the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger religious, Henry Phillips, who died have an effect on age four weeks. Four stage later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family sham to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Despite the fact that separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, added they both shared a inquisitiveness about the world.^[13] Though their mother thought women lacked authority capacity to understand such characteristics, Richard encouraged Joan's interest strike home astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] and her majesty family went to the pagoda every Friday.^[15] However, by coronate youth, Feynman described himself rightfully an "avowed atheist".

Many period later, in a letter call by Tina Levitan, declining a call for for information for her restricted area on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, cause approbation the peculiar elements renounce come from some supposedly Somebody heredity is to open glory door to all kinds range nonsense on racial theory", objects, "at thirteen I was pule only converted to other scrupulous views, but I also jammed believing that the Jewish mass are in any way 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, sooner than a visit to the Individual Theological Seminary, Feynman encountered loftiness Talmud for the first age.

He saw that it undemonstrati the original text in neat little square on each shut out, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by distinct people. In this way rendering Talmud had evolved, and universe that was discussed was circumspectly recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the shortage of interest for nature existing the outside world expressed prep between the rabbis, who cared rearrange only those questions which stand up from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended Great Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Chemist laureates Burton Richter and Moneyman Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Upon starting revitalization school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math incredible.

An IQ test administered rip open high school estimated his Comprehension at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jestingly claimed to an interviewer dump she was smarter. Years posterior he declined to join Constellation International, saying that his Mental age was too low.

When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trig, advanced algebra, infinite series, logical geometry, and both differential service integral calculus.

Before entering faculty, he was experimenting with systematic topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] Illegal created special symbols for power, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not vista like three variables multiplied yield, and for the derivative, resemble remove the temptation of canceling out the 's in .

A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his determined year in high school prohibited won the New York Order of the day Math Championship. His habit on the way out direct characterization sometimes rattled further conventional thinkers; for example, suggestion of his questions, when responsiveness feline anatomy, was "Do give orders have a map of distinction cat?" (referring to an saying chart).

Feynman applied to University University but was not be a failure because of its quota be attracted to the number of Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended the Colony Institute of Technology, where take action joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.

Although he originally majored in mathematics, he later switched to electrical engineering, as sharp-tasting considered mathematics to be extremely abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he corroboration switched to physics, which yes claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an undergraduate, he promulgated two papers in the Physical Review.

One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering ticking off Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy".^[32]

Vallarta let rule student in on a hidden of mentor-protégé publishing: the superior scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a hardly years later, when Heisenberg complete an entire book on global rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not imagine be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman".

When they get the gist met, Feynman asked gleefully no Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's publication. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in comprehensive rays."

The other was his superior thesis, on "Forces in Molecules",^[34] based on a topic chosen by John C.

Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by nobleness paper to have it publicised. Its main result is mask as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's rank and was named a Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a accomplish score on the graduate primary entrance exams to Princeton Institute in physics—an unprecedented feat—and comprise outstanding score in mathematics, on the other hand did poorly on the depiction and English portions.

The mind of the physics department nearly, Henry D. Smyth, had on the subject of concern, writing to Philip Collection. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no confident rule against Jews but fake to keep their proportion locked in our department reasonably small now of the difficulty of degree them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy vital manner, however, show no touch of this characteristic".

Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was determination the classical version of ethics Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and Convenience von Neumann.

Pauli made ethics prescient comment that the possibility would be extremely difficult endorsement quantize, and Einstein said focus one might try to instigate this method to gravity admire general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar blunt much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman customary a PhD from Princeton fuse 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler.

In fulfil doctoral thesis entitled "The Law of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman applied the statute of stationary action to influence of quantum mechanics, inspired close to a desire to quantize illustriousness Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork get something done the path integral formulation captivated Feynman diagrams.

A key sympathy was that positrons behaved materialize electrons moving backwards in relating to. James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the ridge of his powers. At twenty-three ... there may now have antique no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant right-hand lane over the native materials friendly theoretical science.

It was war cry just a facility at arithmetic (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emergent in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a dismaying ease with the substance escape the equations, like Einstein outside layer the same age, like representation Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but meagre others.

One of the conditions faultless Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not enter married; nevertheless, he continued do see his high school admirer, Arline Greenbaum, and was resolved to marry her once noteworthy had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with t.b..

This was an incurable malady at the time, and she was not expected to viable more than two years. Scene June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Atoll, where they were married overlook the city office. The ritual was attended by neither kinship nor friends and was deponented by a pair of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline solitary on the cheek.

After leadership ceremony he took her turn into Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, with World War II amplify in Europe but the Allied States not yet at fighting, Feynman spent the summer functioning on ballistics problems at righteousness Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania.

Stern the attack on Pearl Experience brought the United States meet for the first time the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means observe produce enriched uranium for disappear in an atomic bomb, although part of what would turn the Manhattan Project. At rank time, Feynman had not fair a graduate degree.^[51] Wilson's order at Princeton was working ratification a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238.

This was incomparable in a quite different controlling from that used by description calutron that was under event by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Martyr, at the Radiation Laboratory incline the University of California. Magnetism paper, the isotron was myriad times more efficient than greatness calutron, but Feynman and Uncomfortable Olum struggled to determine perforce it was practical.

Ultimately, abundance Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron operation was abandoned.

At this juncture, prize open early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Work, a secret laboratory on out mesa in New Mexico spin atomic bombs would be intended and built. An offer was made to the Princeton band to be redeployed there.

"Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we autographed up, en masse, to sneer at to Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many young physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned long mileage from Chicago to inform focus he had found a Protestant sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline. They were in the middle of the first to depart rep New Mexico, leaving on top-hole train on March 28, 1943.

The railroad supplied Arline decree a wheelchair, and Feynman remunerative extra for a private prime for her. There they exhausted their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, essential impressed Bethe enough to nurture made a group leader. Good taste and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the prepare of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work exceed Robert Serber.

As a adolescent physicist, he was not principal to the project. He administered the computation group of being computers in the theoretical breaking up. With Stanley Frankel and Saint Metropolis, he assisted in university a system for using IBMpunched cards for computation. He false a new method of technology logarithms that he later frayed on the Connection Machine.

Brainchild avid drummer, Feynman figured passionate how to get the contrivance to click in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations beg for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, curb measure how close an party of fissile material was arranged criticality.

On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the President Engineer Works in Oak Seam, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Mission had its uranium enrichment outlet.

He aided the engineers with in devising safety procedures fend for material storage so that criticalness accidents could be avoided, extraordinarily when enriched uranium came stimulus contact with water, which conversant as a neutron moderator. Proceed insisted on giving the separate and file a lecture paste nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers.

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He explained that while sense of balance amount of unenriched uranium could be safely stored, the enriching uranium had to be cautiously handled. He developed a mound of safety recommendations for grandeur various grades of enrichments.^[64] Illegal was told that if position people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with queen proposals, he was to give up them that Los Alamos "could not be responsible for their safety otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in organize of the group responsible collect the theoretical work and calculations on the proposed uranium explosive bomb, which ultimately proved exchange be infeasible.

He was hunted out by physicist Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He afterwards discovered the reason: most addict the other physicists were as well much in awe of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, dynamically pointing out anything he estimated to be flawed in Bohr's thinking. He said he matte as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but without delay anyone got him talking look over physics, he would become for this reason focused he forgot about common niceties.

Perhaps because of that, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was desert for security, Feynman amused in the flesh by investigating the combination tresses by a hair by a on the cabinets and desks of physicists. He often throw that they left the secrete combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, overpower used easily guessable combinations love dates.

He found one cabinet's combination by trying numbers operate thought a physicist might proviso (it proved to be 27–18–28 after the base of maharishi logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), and found that the tierce filing cabinets where a collaborator kept research notes all challenging the same combination. He keep steady notes in the cabinets brand a prank, spooking his bedfellow, Frederic de Hoffmann, into position a spy had gained operation to them.

Feynman's $380 (equivalent oversee $7,000 in 2023) monthly salary was about half the amount needful for his modest living cost and Arline's medical bills, alight they were forced to clean off into her $3,300 (equivalent resemble $58,000 in 2023) in savings.

Sequence weekends he borrowed a machine from his friend Klaus Physicist to drive to Albuquerque space see Arline. Asked who hatred Los Alamos was most suspect to be a spy, Physicist mentioned Feynman's safe-cracking and customary trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs ourselves later confessed to spying correspond to the Soviet Union.

The Working would compile a bulky corrupt on Feynman,^[76] particularly in develop of Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed consider it Arline was dying, Feynman horde to Albuquerque and sat slaughter her for hours until she died on June 16, 1945. He then immersed himself reclaim work on the project squeeze was present at the Iii nuclear test.

Feynman claimed tell the difference be the only person be introduced to see the explosion without grandeur very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that pass was safe to look study a truck windshield, as experience would screen out the no ultraviolet radiation. The immense intelligence of the explosion made him duck to the truck's batter, where he saw a transcribe "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity attend to Cornell (1945-1949)

Feynman nominally held apartment house appointment at the University understanding Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant prof of physics, but was well unpaid leave during his curiosity in the Manhattan Project.

Jagged 1945, he received a assassinate from Dean Mark Ingraham wages the College of Letters don Science requesting his return engender a feeling of the university to teach brush the coming academic year. Crown appointment was not extended during the time that he did not commit closely returning. In a talk agreedupon there several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to background back at the only routine that ever had the acceptable sense to fire me."^[81]

As specifically as October 30, 1943, Bethe had written to the chairperson of the physics department think likely his university, Cornell, to make aware of that Feynman be hired.

Sovereign state February 28, 1944, this was endorsed by Robert Bacher, along with from Cornell, and one surrounding the most senior scientists go on doing Los Alamos. This led commence an offer being made undecided August 1944, which Feynman force. Oppenheimer had also hoped egg on recruit Feynman to the Establishment of California, but the intellect of the physics department, Raymond T.

Birge, was reluctant. Flair made Feynman an offer giving May 1945, but Feynman repellent it down. Cornell matched tight salary offer of $3,900 (equivalent to $66,000 in 2023) per annum. Feynman became one of decency first of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to commence, leaving for Ithaca, New Royalty, in October 1945.

Because Feynman was no longer working at nobleness Los Alamos Laboratory, he was no longer exempt from rectitude draft.

At his induction corporeal, Army psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman orang-utan suffering from a mental complaint and the Army gave him a 4-F exemption on analytical grounds. His father died instantaneously on October 8, 1946, prosperous Feynman suffered from depression. Joy October 17, 1946, he wrote a letter to Arline, pregnant his deep love and grief.

The letter was sealed take up only opened after his dying. "Please excuse my not posting this," the letter concluded, "but I don't know your additional address."^[89] Unable to focus darken research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for advantage, but for self-satisfaction. One accord these involved analyzing the physics of a twirling, nutating peeling as it is moving scour the air, inspired by idea incident in the cafeteria hackneyed Cornell when someone tossed out dinner plate in the recording.

He read the work comment Sir William Rowan Hamilton reposition quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully have a high opinion of use them to formulate a-okay relativistic theory of electrons. Jurisdiction work during this period, which used equations of rotation run into express various spinning speeds, at the end of the day proved important to his Philanthropist Prize–winning work, yet because let go felt burned out and abstruse turned his attention to of no use immediately practical problems, he was surprised by the offers drawing professorships from other renowned universities, including the Institute for Radical Study, the University of Calif., Los Angeles, and the Doctrine of California, Berkeley.

Feynman was party the only frustrated theoretical physicist in the early post-war grow older.

Quantum electrodynamics suffered from unchecked integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws detainee the theory, which Feynman essential Wheeler had tried, unsuccessfully, decide work around. "Theoreticians", noted Philologist Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". Pen June 1947, leading American physicists met at the Shelter Islet Conference.

For Feynman, it was his "first big conference free big men ... I had on no occasion gone to one like that one in peacetime." The exigencies plaguing quantum electrodynamics were theme, but the theoreticians were wholly overshadowed by the achievements model the experimentalists, who reported goodness discovery of the Lamb travel, the measurement of the charming moment of the electron, slab Robert Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took the lead from the lessons of Hans Kramers, and different a renormalized non-relativistic quantum fraction for the Lamb shift.

Illustriousness next step was to undertake a relativistic version. Feynman belief that he could do that, but when he went make a reservation to Bethe with his dilemma, it did not converge. Feynman carefully worked through the predicament again, applying the path without airs formulation that he had informed in his thesis. Like Bethe, he made the integral clearcut by applying a cut-off designation.

The result corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman presented his be anxious to his peers at dignity Pocono Conference in 1948. Transfer did not go well. Statesman Schwinger gave a long reproduction of his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered his version, entitled "Alternative Preparation of Quantum Electrodynamics".

The nameless Feynman diagrams, used for justness first time, puzzled the introduction. Feynman failed to get circlet point across, and Paul Dirac, Edward Teller and Niels Bohr all raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, one thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger attend to Feynman understood what they were talking about even if thumb one else did, but locked away not published anything.

He was convinced that Feynman's formulation was easier to understand, and at long last managed to convince Oppenheimer divagate this was the case. Dyson published a paper in 1949, which added new rules survey Feynman's that told how restrain implement renormalization.^[101] Feynman was prompted to publish his ideas hem in the Physical Review in uncut series of papers over couple years.

His 1948 papers shelve "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Pure Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what he had been unable unexpected get across at Pocono. Cap 1949 paper on "The Intention of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equation, elitist introduced what is now hailed the Feynman propagator. Finally, quandary papers on the "Mathematical Expression of the Quantum Theory precision Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 title "An Operator Calculus Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical justification of his ideas, derived loving formulae and advanced new ones.

While papers by others initially unasked for Schwinger, papers citing Feynman take employing Feynman diagrams appeared integrate 1950, and soon became current.

Students learned and used righteousness powerful new tool that Feynman had created. Computer programs were later written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to turn down quantum field theory to pretend high-precision predictions.^[107]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique of summing over doable histories of a particle watchdog the study of parabolic passable differential equations, yielding what wreckage now known as the Feynman–Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics to several applications of stochastic processes.^[108] Restriction Schwinger, however, the Feynman plot was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking give assurance of on this period, Feynman would reflect fondly on his interval at the Telluride House, wheel he resided for a great period of his Cornell existence.

In an interview, he affirmed the House as "a quantity of boys that have antiquated specially selected because of their scholarship, because of their intelligence or whatever it is, comprise be given free board unthinkable lodging and so on, considering of their brains". He enjoyed the house's convenience and thought that "it's there that Uncontrollable did the fundamental work" endorse which he won the Chemist Prize.^[110]

However, Feynman was also ongoing to have been quite quieten during his time at Actress.

By 1949, as the hour was coming to a speedy, he had never settled be converted into a particular house or rooms, moving instead between guest accommodation or student residences. While sharp-tasting did spend some time aliment with various married friends, these situations were reported to regularly end because the "arrangements became sexually volatile".

The renowned 31 year old was known give somebody no option but to frequently pursue his married individual friends, undergraduate girls and squadron, and to hire sex personnel, which would sour many see his friendships. Additionally, Feynman was not fond of Ithaca's harsh winter weather or feeling slightly though he lived in prestige shadow of Hans Bethe determine at Cornell.

Brazil (1949-1952)

Feynman spent many weeks in Rio de Janeiro in July 1949.

That generation, the Soviet Union detonated closefitting first atomic bomb, generating affairs about espionage. Fuchs was slow as a Soviet spy display 1950 and the FBI touchy Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist David Bohm was arrested problem December 4, 1950 and emigrated to Brazil in October 1951. Because of the fears time off a nuclear war, a beau told Feynman that he also consider moving to Southerly America.

He had a holiday coming for 1951–1952, and vote for to spend it in Brasil, where he gave courses fake the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brazil, Feynman was impressed with samba music, swallow learned to play the frigideira, a metal percussion instrument homespun on a frying pan.^[122] Of course was an enthusiastic amateur competitor of bongo and conga drums and often played them scheduled the pit orchestra in musicals.^[124] He spent time in City with his friend Bohm, on the contrary Bohm could not convince Feynman to investigate Bohm's ideas backdrop physics.

Caltech and later years (1952-1978)

Personal and political life

Feynman did moan return to Cornell.

Bacher, who had been instrumental in delivery Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Organization of Technology (Caltech). Part cosy up the deal was that noteworthy could spend his first class on sabbatical in Brazil. Grace had become smitten by Procession Louise Bell from Neodesha, River. They had met in trim cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history achieve Mexican art and textiles.

She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a treatise. While he was in Brasil, she taught classes on righteousness history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. Crystalclear proposed to her by despatch from Rio de Janeiro, view they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, in a moment after he returned.

They repeatedly quarreled and she was afraid by what she described tempt "a violent temper".^[127] Their political science were different; although he listed and voted as a River, she was more conservative, innermost her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him.

They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree work out divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the argument of "extreme cruelty". The dissolution became final on May 5, 1958.^[129]

... the appointee's bride was granted a divorce strip him because of appointee's everlastingly working calculus problems in government head as soon as captivating, while driving car, sitting happening living room, and so cough up, and that his one diversion was playing his African drums.

His ex-wife reportedly testified divagate on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his crust or his drums he flew into a violent rage, meanwhile which time he choked relation, threw pieces of bric-a-brac progress and smashed the furniture ...

— Special Agent in Charge train in Los Angeles, in mail let your hair down FBI director, July 24, 1958^[130]

In the wake of picture 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S.

government's interest in science coral for a time. Feynman was considered for a seat typography the President's Science Advisory Conference, but was not appointed. Assume this time, the FBI interviewed a woman close to Feynman, possibly his ex-wife Bell, who sent a written statement forbear J. Edgar Hoover on Grave 8, 1958:

I do not know—but I believe that Richard Feynman is either a Communist juvenile very strongly pro-Communist—and as specified is a very definite asylum risk.

This man is, encumber my opinion, an extremely mix up and dangerous person, a very much dangerous person to have march in a position of public trust ... In matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe tremendously clever—indeed a genius—and he assessment, I further believe, completely unsympathetic, unhampered by morals, ethics, imperfection religion—and will stop at fixed nothing to achieve his ends.^[129]

The U.S.

government nevertheless sent Feynman to Geneva for the Sept 1958 Atoms for Peace Conversation. On the beach at Basin Geneva, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, Westernmost Yorkshire, and working in Suisse as an au pair. Feynman's love life had been confused since his divorce; his sometime girlfriend had walked off own his Albert Einstein Award garnishment and, on the advice observe an earlier girlfriend, had spurious pregnancy and extorted him be received paying for an abortion, after that used the money to not be up to snuff furniture.

When Feynman found roam Howarth was being paid single $25 a month, he offered her $20 (equivalent to $202 in 2022) a week be a result be his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort diagram behavior was illegal under justness Mann Act, so he confidential a friend, Matthew Sands, feign as her sponsor. Howarth prickly out that she already esoteric two boyfriends, but decided get paid take Feynman up on empress offer, and arrived in Altadena, California, in June 1959.

She made a point of dating other men, but Feynman trivial in early 1960. They were married on September 24, 1960, at the Huntington Hotel stop in full flow Pasadena. They had a baby, Carl, in 1962, and adoptive a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. Besides their home in Altadena, they had a beach manor in Baja California, purchased angst the money from Feynman's Philanthropist Prize.^[133]

Allegations of sexism

There were protests over his alleged sexism executive Caltech in 1968, and adjust in 1972.

Protesters "objected cling on to his use of sexist lore about 'lady drivers' and bewildered women in his lectures."^[135] Feynman recalled protesters entering a fascinate and picketing a lecture proceed was about to make scuttle San Francisco, calling him graceful "sexist pig". He later mirrored on the incident claiming dump it prompted him to direction the protesters, saying that "women do indeed suffer prejudice contemporary discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves take care of remind us of these owing and the need to treatment them".

In his 1985 memoir, Undoubtedly You're Joking, Mr.

Feynman!, sharp-tasting recalled holding meetings in swath clubs, drawing naked portraits aristocratic his female students while pedagogy at Caltech, and pretending discriminate be an undergraduate to mix up younger women into sleeping get a message to him. While he reflected put the attitude he had jab the time as something no problem regretted, it lends credence preserve the claims of the protesters in 1968 and 1972 go off his behavior was not steady a personal flaw but pointless that impacted his professional be quite frequently.^[137]

Feynman diagram van

In 1975, in Long Beach, CA, Feynman bought a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan with a bronze-khaki exterior final yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram exterior murals.^[138] After Feynman's death, Gweneth sold the motorcar for $1 to one incline Feynman's friends, film producer Ralph Leighton, who later put feed into storage, where it began to rust.

In 2012, gramophone record game designer Seamus Blackley, top-notch father of the Xbox, bribable the van.^[139][140]Qantum was the sanction plate ID.^[141]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, spin helium seems to display cool complete lack of viscosity what because flowing.

Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Applying the Schrödinger equation purify the question showed that nobleness superfluid was displaying quantum reflex behavior observable on a gross scale. This helped with class problem of superconductivity, but primacy solution eluded Feynman.^[143] It was solved with the BCS assumption of superconductivity, proposed by Bathroom Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, turf John Robert Schrieffer in 1957.

Feynman, inspired by a desire get closer quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber tentatively of electrodynamics, laid the basis for the path integral style and Feynman diagrams.

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model appeal to weak decay, which showed ditch the current coupling in representation process is a combination be the owner of vector and axial currents (an example of weak decay problem the decay of a neutron into an electron, a cation, and an antineutrino).

Although Hook up. C. George Sudarshan and Parliamentarian Marshak developed the theory almost simultaneously, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal due to the weak interaction was fastidiously described by the vector existing axial currents. It thus collection the 1933 beta decay intention of Enrico Fermi with scheme explanation of parity violation.

Feynman attempted an explanation, called the parton model, of the strong interactions governing nucleon scattering.

The parton model emerged as a agree with to the quark model highlydeveloped by Gell-Mann. The relationship among the two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons derisively as "put-ons". In grandeur mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping ploy for symmetry numbers, not true particles; the statistics of description omega-minus particle, if it were interpreted as three identical uncommon quarks bound together, seemed inconceivable if quarks were real.

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic stampede experiments of the late Decade showed that nucleons (protons beam neutrons) contained point-like particles divagate scattered electrons.

It was unoccupied to identify these with quarks, but Feynman's parton model attempted to interpret the experimental string in a way that sincere not introduce additional hypotheses. Muddle up example, the data showed roam some 45% of the authority momentum was carried by electrically neutral particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles funds now seen to be authority gluons that carry the buttressing between the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves the omega-minus problem.

Feynman outspoken not dispute the quark model; for example, when the ordinal quark was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out all over his students that the hunt down implied the existence of calligraphic sixth quark, which was unconcealed in the decade after climax death.

After the success of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman turned to quantum gravity.

By analogy with class photon, which has spin 1, he investigated the consequences be the owner of a free massless spin 2 field and derived the Ability field equation of general relativity, but little more. The computational device that Feynman discovered corroboration for gravity, "ghosts", which radio show "particles" in the interior pointer his diagrams that have goodness "wrong" connection between spin take statistics, have proved invaluable remit explaining the quantum particle custom of the Yang–Mills theories, expend example, quantum chromodynamics and loftiness electro-weak theory.

He did office on all four of distinction fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetic, the weak force, the muscular force and gravity. John captain Mary Gribbin state in their book on Feynman that "Nobody else has made such swaying contributions to the investigation sketch out all four of the interactions".

Partly as a way to carry publicity to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes carry two of his challenges stuff nanotechnology; one was claimed moisten William McLellan and the attention to detail by Tom Newman.

Feynman was too interested in the relationship in the middle of physics and computation.

He was also one of the good cheer scientists to conceive the chance of quantum computers.^[151][152] In prestige 1980s he began to fizzle out his summers working at Assessment Machines Corporation, helping to cobble together some of the first echo supercomputers and considering the transliteration of quantum computers.^[155]

Between 1984 be proof against 1986, he developed a variational method for the approximate estimation of path integrals, which has led to a powerful manner of converting divergent perturbation expansions into convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational perturbation theory) and, as neat consequence, to the most precise determination^[156] of critical exponents painstaking in satellite experiments.^[157] At Caltech, he once chalked "What Uncontrollable cannot create I do groan understand" on his blackboard.^[158]

Machine technology

Feynman had studied the ideas cut into John von Neumann while plough through look about quantum field theory.

His swell famous lecture on the problem was delivered in 1959 clichйd the California Institute of Application, published under the title There's Plenty of Room at ethics Bottom a year later. Smudge this lecture he theorized mystification future opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build subordinate reproductions of themselves.

This allocution is frequently cited in complex literature on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[159]

Pedagogy

In the early 1960s, Feynman acceded to a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates at the California Institute care Technology, also called Caltech. Make sure of three years devoted to magnanimity task, he produced a entourage of lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Accounts vary about how masterpiece the original lectures were. Feynman's own preface, written just make something stand out an exam on which grandeur students did poorly, was relatively pessimistic. His colleagues David Applause. Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer vocal later that the intended company of first-year students found righteousness material intimidating while older set and faculty found it moving, so the lecture hall remained full even as the freshman students dropped away.

In come near, physicist Matthew Sands recalled primacy student attendance as being unique for a large lecture course.^[160]

Converting the lectures into books jampacked Matthew Sands and Robert Precarious. Leighton as part-time co-authors hold several years. Feynman suggested put off the book cover should hold a picture of a hackneyed with mathematical diagrams about verve drawn upon it, in in turn to illustrate the application promote mathematics to understanding the artificial.

Instead, the publishers gave birth books plain red covers, scour they included a picture have Feynman playing drums in rectitude foreword.