Richard Feynman

 

Richard Feynman was one of the 20th century's most influential physicists and one of its most colourful personalities. Recruited to the Manhattan project in his early 20s, he helped calculate the magnitude of the expected blast of the first atomic bomb. In his spare time, he cracked the safes of senior army staff at the project's site in New Mexico, leaving notes behind to record his successes. The habit went down badly with the top brass.
After only two years of marriage, his wife Arline died of tuberculosis in 1945. Feynman was stricken and turned, as some kind of compensation, to the predatory pursuit of women – dating undergraduates, visiting prostitutes, and sleeping with the young wives of several colleagues while an academic at Cornell University.
At the age of 31, having never ventured outside the United States, he visited Rio de Janeiro, where he lectured at the Centro Brasiliero de Pesquisas Friscas during the day. In the evening, he played drums for a samba band or picked up women – he particularly liked air stewardesses – in the bar of the Miramar Palace hotel.
He was eventually snared by Mary Louise Bell – "a platinum blonde with a penchant for high heels and tight clothes," according to Lawrence Krauss. They married in 1952 and divorced shortly afterwards. "He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens," Bell complained to a divorce judge. "He did calculus while driving, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed at night."
It was an intriguing insight. Feynman was not just a ladies' man but a numbers' man as well. In fact, his calculations, his ability to master early computers, and his mathematical analyses were not only important in building atomic bombs but were pivotal in the development of quantum electrodynamics, the theory that describes how light and matter interact. The latter work earned him a Nobel prize in 1965.
By this time, Feynman had changed from being "a womaniser to a family man, from a solitary wanderer to a domesticated husband and father", according to Krauss. He married a young British woman, Gweneth Howarth; they had a son, Carl; later adopted a daughter, Michelle; and remained happily married until his death.
Feynman went on to make key contributions in the fields of quantum computing, introduced the idea of nanotechnology and published a range of highly regarded popular science books. He also developed into a magnificent speaker. "His remarkable energy, his colloquial manner, his physics intuition, his Long Island accent, and his inherent brilliance gave him a riveting aura behind any podium," says Krauss.
 
One of his last public roles was as a member of the Rogers Commission, which investigated the disastrous destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. A scientific purist, Feynman went out of his way to lambast Nasa for its failure to put safety above its desire to show off the prowess of its space shuttle fleet. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled," he said.
Feynman died of cancer in 1988, aged 69. "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring," he remarked. He was mourned as a great character and scientist. But above all he was "a great calculator – perhaps the best human calculator there's ever been," as his protege, the British mathematician Stephen Wolfram, put it. According to Wolfram, Feynman would take a problem, fill up pages with calculations, get the right answer, and then go back again to find out why the answer was obvious. For good measure, these calculations were often done while sitting at the strip bars Feynman visited because he claimed they helped him concentrate.
Armed with material like this, any biography is going to be an attractive proposition, and Quantum Man certainly has no shortage of intriguing anecdotes and insights. We get a feel for the ebullience, as well as the maddening irreverence, that defined his character.
The problem is that Krauss – also a theoretical physicist – concentrates a little too heavily on the science, rather then the life, of Richard Feynman. He seems overly concerned that his subject's antics might distract readers from fully appreciating quantum physics, an arcane world that Feynman ruled but which baffles most others. As a result, we are presented with pages and pages on the minutiae of electron interactions and photon exchanges at the expense of any human interest. The result is a book that strains to do intellectual justice to Feynman the scientist but leaves him short-changed as a rounded personality.