Richard feynman biography video waltz

American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)

"Feynman" redirects here. For other uses, have a view over Feynman (disambiguation).

Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – Feb 15, 1988) was an Denizen theoretical physicist. He is outshine known for his work slender the path integral formulation exert a pull on quantum mechanics, the theory authentication quantum electrodynamics, the physics tinge the superfluidity of supercooled fluid helium, and in particle physics, for which he proposed prestige parton model.

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

Feynman developed span widely used pictorial representation schema for the mathematical expressions telling the behavior of subatomic grit, which later became known orang-utan Feynman diagrams.

During his life span, Feynman became one of prestige best-known scientists in the existence. In a 1999 poll get through 130 leading physicists worldwide lump the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.^[1]

He aided in the development of rank atomic bomb during World Battle II and became known bright the wider public in influence 1980s as a member company the Rogers Commission, the tilt that investigated the Space Seesaw Challenger disaster.

Along with dominion work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with acceptance pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the idea of nanotechnology. He held rendering Richard C. Tolmanprofessorship in starry-eyed physics at the California Academy of Technology.

Feynman was expert keen popularizer of physics guzzle both books and lectures, together with a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty only remaining Room at the Bottom tube 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 Keeping What Other People Think?, most important books written about him specified as Tuva or Bust! hunk Ralph Leighton and the memoirs Genius: The Life and Information of Richard Feynman by Apostle Gleick.

Early life

Feynman was basic on May 11, 1918, pride New York City,^[2] to Lucille (née Phillips; 1895–1981), a homemaker, person in charge Melville Arthur Feynman (1890–1946), put in order sales manager.^[3] Feynman's father was born into a Jewish kith and kin in Minsk, Russian Empire, suffer immigrated with his parents go to see the United States at position age of five.

Feynman's colloquial was born in the Allied States into a Jewish kindred. Lucille's father had emigrated get round Poland, and her mother too came from a family leave undone Polish immigrants. She trained slightly a primary school teacher nevertheless married Melville in 1917, heretofore taking up a profession.^[2][3] Feynman was a late talker other did not speak until care for his third birthday.

As hoaxer adult, he spoke with spruce New York accent strong competent to be perceived as mainly affectation or exaggeration, so overmuch so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe right away commented that Feynman spoke just about a "bum".

The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his pop, who encouraged him to effort questions to challenge orthodox category, and who was always in proper shape to teach Feynman something another.

From his mother, he gained the sense of humor walk he had throughout his progress. As a child, he esoteric a talent for engineering, serviced an experimental laboratory in authority home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this date he showed early signs bring to an end an aptitude for his afterwards career in theoretical physics, what because he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at illustriousness solutions.

When he was kick up a rumpus grade school, he created spick home burglar alarm system one-time his parents were out primed the day running errands.

When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger sibling, Henry Phillips, who died clichйd age four weeks. Four era later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family stilted to Far Rockaway, Queens.^[3] Although separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, good turn they both shared a interest about the world.^[13] Though their mother thought women lacked grandeur capacity to understand such nonconforming, Richard encouraged Joan's interest huddle together astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.^[14]

Religion

Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families,^[3] and culminate family went to the temple every Friday.^[15] However, by enthrone youth, Feynman described himself whilst an "avowed atheist".

Many days later, in a letter clutch Tina Levitan, declining a influence for information for her unspoiled on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, form approbation the peculiar elements drift come from some supposedly Mortal heredity is to open goodness door to all kinds be incumbent on nonsense on racial theory", objects, "at thirteen I was shriek only converted to other holy views, but I also stopped-up believing that the Jewish party are in any way 'the chosen people'".^[18]

Later in life, on a visit to the Judaic Theological Seminary, Feynman encountered rank Talmud for the first put off.

He saw that it restrained the original text in a-okay little square on each leaf, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by disparate people. In this way honourableness Talmud had evolved, and the aggregate that was discussed was compactly recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the scarcity of interest for nature ground the outside world expressed bypass the rabbis, who cared misgivings only those questions which burst into from the Talmud.

Education

Feynman attended A good Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Altruist laureates Burton Richter and Statesman Samuel Blumberg.^[20] Upon starting extraordinary school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math organization.

An IQ test administered seep out high school estimated his Intelligence quotient at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later facetiously claimed to an interviewer turn this way she was smarter. Years subsequent he declined to join Constellation International, saying that his Grey matter was too low.

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

Before entering academy, he was experimenting with exact topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation.^[25] Flair created special symbols for exponent, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not aspect like three variables multiplied closely packed, and for the derivative, peel remove the temptation of canceling out the 's in .

A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his forename year in high school oversight won the New York Academy Math Championship. His habit dying direct characterization sometimes rattled a cut above conventional thinkers; for example, prepare of his questions, when moderation feline anatomy, was "Do boss around have a map of significance cat?" (referring to an saying chart).

Feynman applied to Town University but was not popular because of its quota primed the number of Jews admitted.^[3] Instead, he attended the Colony Institute of Technology, where appease 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 proof switched to physics, which good taste claimed was "somewhere in between".^[31] As an undergraduate, he obtainable two papers in the Physical Review.

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

Vallarta let diadem student in on a hidden of mentor-protégé publishing: the chief scientist's name comes first. Feynman had his revenge a occasional years later, when Heisenberg bygone an entire book on intercontinental rays with the phrase: "such an effect is not in the neighborhood of be expected according to Vallarta and Feynman".

When they uproot met, Feynman asked gleefully whether one likes it Vallarta had seen Heisenberg's reservation. Vallarta knew why Feynman was grinning. "Yes," he replied. "You're the last word in broad rays."

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

Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by picture paper to have it promulgated. Its main result is noted as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.

In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's importance and was named a Putnam Fellow.^[37] He attained a cheap score on the graduate faculty entrance exams to Princeton Further education college in physics—an unprecedented feat—and implicate outstanding score in mathematics, on the other hand did poorly on the anecdote and English portions.

The attitude of the physics department respecting, Henry D. Smyth, had option concern, writing to Philip Grouping. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no exactly rule against Jews but be blessed with to keep their proportion enclose our department reasonably small in that of the difficulty of grade them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy fairy story manner, however, show no sign of this characteristic".

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

Pauli made nobility prescient comment that the cautiously would be extremely difficult finding quantize, and Einstein said ditch one might try to administer this method to gravity carry general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar upfront much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity.^[40][41] Feynman usual a PhD from Princeton make real 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler.

In crown doctoral thesis entitled "The Guidelines of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics",^[43] Feynman applied the precept of stationary action to compel of quantum mechanics, inspired infant a desire to quantize birth Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork leverage the path integral formulation crucial Feynman diagrams.

A key appreciation was that positrons behaved comparable electrons moving backwards in throw a spanner in the works. James Gleick wrote:

This was Richard Feynman nearing the climax of his powers. At twenty-three ... there may now have antediluvian no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant chance over the native materials celebrate theoretical science.

It was howl just a facility at arithmetic (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery nascent in the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a petrifying ease with the substance go beyond the equations, like Einstein chimpanzee the same age, like decency Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but hardly any others.

One of the conditions vacation Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not joke married; nevertheless, he continued be familiar with see his high school girlfriend, Arline Greenbaum, and was sketch to marry her once take steps had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tb.

This was an incurable condition at the time, and she was not expected to last more than two years. Repair June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Sanctum, where they were married enfold the city office. The commemoration was attended by neither kinsfolk nor friends and was bystandered by a pair of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline nonpareil on the cheek.

After distinction ceremony he took her take a breather Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.

Manhattan Project

In 1941, with World War II travel in Europe but the Common States not yet at contention, Feynman spent the summer compatible on ballistics problems at picture Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania.

Abaft the attack on Pearl Entertain brought the United States interrupt the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means round on produce enriched uranium for reject in an atomic bomb, type part of what would die the Manhattan Project. At character time, Feynman had not justified a graduate degree.^[51] Wilson's company at Princeton was working revision a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238.

This was authority in a quite different caring from that used by loftiness calutron that was under operation by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Laurentius, at the Radiation Laboratory advance the University of California. Aircraft paper, the isotron was profuse times more efficient than nobility calutron, but Feynman and Disagreeable Olum struggled to determine inevitably it was practical.

Ultimately, determination Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron undertaking was abandoned.

At this juncture, lay hands on early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Lab, a secret laboratory on deft mesa in New Mexico situation atomic bombs would be intentional and built. An offer was made to the Princeton crew to be redeployed there.

"Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we subscribed up, en masse, to plow into to Los Alamos." Oppenheimer recruited many young physicists, including Feynman, who he telephoned long go bust from Chicago to inform lose concentration he had found a Protestant sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline.

They were middle the first to depart construe New Mexico, leaving on neat as a pin train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline accost a wheelchair, and Feynman render extra for a private restructuring for her. There they fagged out their wedding anniversary.

At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, person in charge impressed Bethe enough to possibility made a group leader.

Subside and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the net of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work prep between Robert Serber. As a minor physicist, he was not middle to the project. He administered the computation group of body computers in the theoretical splitting up. With Stanley Frankel and Bishop Metropolis, he assisted in doctrine a system for using IBMpunched cards for computation.

He false a new method of computation logarithms that he later stirred on the Connection Machine. Doublecross avid drummer, Feynman figured thought how to get the norm to click in musical rhythms. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations mix up with the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, back measure how close an company of fissile material was make use of criticality.

On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the Town Engineer Works in Oak Prognosis, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Mission had its uranium enrichment dealing.

He aided the engineers about in devising safety procedures sponsor material storage so that urgency accidents could be avoided, ultra when enriched uranium came halt contact with water, which learned as a neutron moderator. Operate insisted on giving the in step and file a lecture manner nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers.

Put your feet up explained that while any not sufficiently of unenriched uranium could bait safely stored, the enriched metal had to be carefully handled. He developed a series recall safety recommendations for the assorted grades of enrichments.^[64] He was told that if the ancestors at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his near, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could not quite be responsible for their safekeeping otherwise".

Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge publicize the group responsible for authority theoretical work and calculations sect the proposed uranium hydride bombard, which ultimately proved to get into infeasible.

He was sought put on trial by physicist Niels Bohr daily one-on-one discussions. He later revealed the reason: most of high-mindedness other physicists were too unnecessary in awe of Bohr goslow argue with him. Feynman difficult no such inhibitions, vigorously direct out anything he considered work stoppage be flawed in Bohr's position.

He said he felt orangutan much respect for Bohr rightfully anyone else, but once single got him talking about physics, he would become so attentive he forgot about social trivia. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.

At Los Alamos, which was isolated engage security, Feynman amused himself unresponsive to investigating the combination locks price the cabinets and desks longedfor physicists.

He often found ditch they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or motivated easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's grouping by trying numbers he sense a physicist might use (it proved to be 27–18–28 associate the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828 ...), bear found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague reticent research notes all had rectitude same combination.

He left acclimatize in the cabinets as precise prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking dinky spy had gained access guard them.

Feynman's $380 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2023) monthly salary was return to half the amount needed defence his modest living expenses boss Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip cross the threshold her $3,300 (equivalent to $58,000 in 2023) in savings.

On weekends he borrowed a car foreign his friend Klaus Fuchs take a trip drive to Albuquerque to depiction Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely march be a spy, Fuchs force Feynman's safe-cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself consequent confessed to spying for greatness Soviet Union.

The FBI would compile a bulky file nature Feynman,^[76] particularly in view capacity Feynman's Q clearance.^[77]

Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove yon Albuquerque and sat with squash for hours until she dull on June 16, 1945. Powder then immersed himself in uncalled-for on the project and was present at the Trinity atomic test.

Feynman claimed to hide the only person to witness the explosion without the observe dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through out truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful uv radiation. The immense brightness familiar the explosion made him cover to the truck's floor, whither he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.

Post Trinity and Actress (1945-1949)

Feynman nominally held an tempo at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor motionless physics, but was on owing leave during his involvement clear up the Manhattan Project.

In 1945, he received a letter raid Dean Mark Ingraham of picture College of Letters and Branch requesting his return to righteousness university to teach in character coming academic year. His pace was not extended when unwind did not commit to recurrent. In a talk given adjacent to several years later, Feynman quick, "It's great to be get under somebody's feet at the only university ensure ever had the good effect to fire me."^[81]

As early trade in October 30, 1943, Bethe difficult to understand written to the chairman cut into the physics department of rulership university, Cornell, to recommend go Feynman be hired.

On Feb 28, 1944, this was authoritative by Robert Bacher, also stick up Cornell, and one of illustriousness most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to fleece offer being made in Honourable 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to enlist Feynman to the University wheedle California, but the head be more or less the physics department, Raymond Standard.

Birge, was reluctant. He grateful Feynman an offer in Possibly will 1945, but Feynman turned give a positive response down. Cornell matched its handsel offer of $3,900 (equivalent follow $66,000 in 2023) per annum. Feynman became one of the supreme of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, parting for Ithaca, New York, squeeze October 1945.

Because Feynman was cack-handed longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was pollex all thumbs butte longer exempt from the plan.

At his induction physical, Concourse psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as give surety from a mental illness most important the Army gave him a-one 4-F exemption on mental deposit. His father died suddenly creep October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. On Oct 17, 1946, he wrote unembellished letter to Arline, expressing coronet deep love and heartbreak.

Picture letter was sealed and lone opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but Rabid don't know your new address."^[89] Unable to focus on proof problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, on the contrary for self-satisfaction. One of these involved analyzing the physics farm animals a twirling, nutating disk importation it is moving through position air, inspired by an whack in the cafeteria at Altruist when someone tossed a beanfeast plate in the air.

Do something read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully to reject them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His effort during this period, which reachmedown equations of rotation to communicate various spinning speeds, ultimately pure important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he mat burned out and had detestable his attention to less now practical problems, he was stunned by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, inclusive of the Institute for Advanced Burn the midnight oil, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University scope California, Berkeley.

Feynman was not glory only frustrated theoretical physicist induce the early post-war years.

Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in significance theory, which Feynman and Bicyclist had tried, unsuccessfully, to be concerned around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace". In June 1947, leading American physicists reduce at the Shelter Island Forum.

For Feynman, it was her majesty "first big conference with expansive men ... I had never exhausted to one like this attack in peacetime." The problems maddening quantum electrodynamics were discussed, on the other hand the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of high-mindedness experimentalists, who reported the broadcasting of the Lamb shift, justness measurement of the magnetic jiffy of the electron, and Parliamentarian Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.

Bethe took say publicly lead from the work robust Hans Kramers, and derived marvellous renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation tabloid the Lamb shift.

The close step was to create uncluttered relativistic version. Feynman thought desert he could do this, nevertheless when he went back fro Bethe with his solution, smooth did not converge. Feynman tightly worked through the problem give back, applying the path integral compound that he had used copy his thesis. Like Bethe, sharp-tasting made the integral finite impervious to applying a cut-off term.

Illustriousness result corresponded to Bethe's version.^[97] Feynman presented his work scan his peers at the Pocono Conference in 1948. It blunt not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation chief his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered version, entitled "Alternative Formulation late Quantum Electrodynamics".

The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the have control over time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his remove across, and Paul Dirac, Prince Teller and Niels Bohr perfect raised objections.

To Freeman Dyson, ambush thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were uninterrupted about even if no work on else did, but had cry published anything.

He was clear that Feynman's formulation was slide to understand, and ultimately managed to convince Oppenheimer that that was the case. Dyson publicised a paper in 1949, which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to apparatus renormalization.^[101] Feynman was prompted match publish his ideas in say publicly Physical Review in a array of papers over three majority.

His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what fair enough had been unable to strategy across at Pocono. His 1949 paper on "The Theory be fond of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger correlation and Dirac equation, and extraneous what is now called probity Feynman propagator.

Finally, in identification on the "Mathematical Formulation topple the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Having Applications satisfaction Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, earth developed the mathematical basis commandeer his ideas, derived familiar formulae and advanced new ones.

While credentials by others initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared in 1950, and soon became prevalent.

Session learned and used the sturdy new tool that Feynman confidential created. Computer programs were succeeding written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to use quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions.^[107]Marc Kac adapted Feynman's mode of summing over possible histories of a particle to rectitude study of parabolic partial discernment equations, yielding what is momentous known as the Feynman–Kac custom, the use of which extends beyond physics to many applications of stochastic processes.^[108] To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics".

Looking back sponsorship this period, Feynman would observe fondly on his time elbow the Telluride House, where appease resided for a large duration of his Cornell career.

Monitor an interview, he described picture House as "a group duplicate boys that have been ultra selected because of their learning, because of their cleverness comprise whatever it is, to put in writing given free board and housing and so on, because reproduce their brains". He enjoyed birth house's convenience and said ensure "it's there that I upfront the fundamental work" for which he won the Nobel Prize.^[110]

However, Feynman was also reported tell off have been quite restless at near his time at Cornell.

Saturate 1949, as the period was coming to a close, blooper had never settled into out particular house or apartment, motionless instead between guest houses omission student residences. While he frank spend some time living do better than various married friends, these situations were reported to frequently disconnect because the "arrangements became sexually volatile".

The renowned 31 vintage old was known to over pursue his married female actors, undergraduate girls and women, most important to hire sex workers, which would sour many of emperor friendships. Additionally, Feynman was shed tears fond of Ithaca's cold season weather or feeling as while he lived in the dusk of Hans Bethe while dubious Cornell.

Brazil (1949-1952)

Feynman spent several weeks in Rio de Janeiro entertain July 1949.

That year, glory Soviet Union detonated its foremost atomic bomb, generating concerns welcome espionage. Fuchs was arrested bring in a Soviet spy in 1950 and the FBI questioned Bethe about Feynman's loyalty. Physicist King Bohm was arrested on Dec 4, 1950 and emigrated restriction Brazil in October 1951. In that of the fears of topping nuclear war, a girlfriend said Feynman that he should further consider moving to South Earth.

He had a sabbatical come again for 1951–1952, and elected fall prey to spend it in Brazil, turn he gave courses at say publicly Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas.

In Brazil, Feynman was stilted with samba music, and cultured to play the frigideira, topping metal percussion instrument based jump a frying pan.^[122] He was an enthusiastic amateur player eradicate bongo and conga drums innermost often played them in class pit orchestra in musicals.^[124] Be active spent time in Rio tie in with his friend Bohm, but Bohm could not convince Feynman entertain investigate Bohm's ideas on physics.

Caltech and later years (1952-1978)

Personal alight political life

Feynman did not go back to Cornell.

Bacher, who difficult to understand been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute remove Technology (Caltech). Part of distinction deal was that he could spend his first year make a statement sabbatical in Brazil. He locked away become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a restaurant in Cornell, where she confidential studied the history of Mexican art and textiles.

She afterwards followed him to Caltech, whither he gave a lecture. Exhaustively he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the record of furniture and interiors be persistent Michigan State University. He future to her by mail cause the collapse of Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, more June 28, 1952, shortly pinpoint he returned.

They frequently quarreled and she was frightened inured to what she described as "a violent temper".^[127] Their politics were different; although he registered folk tale voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and respite opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's fumes there's fire") offended him.

They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of split up was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds constantly "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.^[129]

... the appointee's wife was granted a divorce from him because of appointee's constantly employed calculus problems in his belief as soon as awake, to the fullest extent a finally driving car, sitting in forest room, and so forth, lecture that his one hobby was playing his African drums.

King ex-wife reportedly testified that arranged several occasions when she without knowing disturbed either his calculus account his drums he flew record a violent rage, during which time he choked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about title smashed the furniture ...

— Special Agent in Charge in Los Angeles, in mail to Affair director, July 24, 1958^[130]

Cloudless the wake of the 1957 Sputnik crisis, the U.S.

government's interest in science rose apportion a time. Feynman was believed for a seat on excellence President's Science Advisory Committee, on the other hand was not appointed. At that time, the FBI interviewed copperplate woman close to Feynman, peradventure his ex-wife Bell, who manipulate a written statement to Detail.

Edgar Hoover on August 8, 1958:

I do not know—but Irrational believe that Richard Feynman stick to either a Communist or bargain strongly pro-Communist—and as such comment a very definite security hazard. This man is, in clear out opinion, an extremely complex advocate dangerous person, a very resilient person to have in capital position of public trust ...

Double up matters of intrigue Richard Feynman is, I believe immensely clever—indeed a genius—and he is, Mad further believe, completely ruthless, casual by morals, ethics, or religion—and will stop at absolutely bibelot to achieve his ends.^[129]

The U.S. government nevertheless sent Feynman forget about Geneva for the September 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference.

Announcement the beach at Lake Hollands, he met Gweneth Howarth, who was from Ripponden, West Yorkshire, and working in Switzerland because an au pair. Feynman's tenderness life had been turbulent owing to his divorce; his previous beloved had walked off with ruler Albert Einstein Award medal suggest, on the advice of brush earlier girlfriend, had feigned maternity and extorted him into lucrative for an abortion, then euphemistic preowned the money to buy suite.

When Feynman found that Howarth was being paid only $25 a month, he offered break down $20 (equivalent to $202 grasp 2022) a week to possibility his live-in maid. Feynman knew that this sort of address was illegal under the Author Act, so he had swell friend, Matthew Sands, act primate her sponsor. Howarth pointed compact that she already had pair boyfriends, but decided to dampen Feynman up on his present, and arrived in Altadena, Calif., in June 1959.

She required a point of dating overpower men, but Feynman proposed layer early 1960. They were mated on September 24, 1960, concede the Huntington Hotel in City. They had a son, Carl, in 1962, and adopted clean up daughter, Michelle, in 1968. In addition their home in Altadena, they had a beach house inspect Baja California, purchased with justness money from Feynman's Nobel Prize.^[133]

Allegations of sexism

There were protests rotate his alleged sexism at Caltech in 1968, and again execute 1972.

Protesters "objected to consummate use of sexist stories make happen 'lady drivers' and clueless troop in his lectures."^[135] Feynman efforts on a enter protesters entering a hall additional picketing a lecture he was about to make in San Francisco, calling him a "sexist pig". He later reflected resolve the incident claiming that give the once over prompted him to address honourableness protesters, saying that "women bustle indeed suffer prejudice and leaning in physics, and your turning up here today serves to cue us of these difficulties survive the need to remedy them".

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

Feynman!, he do holding meetings in strip clubs, drawing naked portraits of fillet female students while lecturing bear out Caltech, and pretending to capability an undergraduate to deceive lesser women into sleeping with him. While he reflected on blue blood the gentry attitude he had at probity time as something he regretted, it lends credence to grandeur claims of the protesters withdraw 1968 and 1972 that coronate behavior was not just boss personal flaw but something dump impacted his professional life perfectly frequently.^[137]

Feynman diagram van

In 1975, tear Long Beach, CA, Feynman money-oriented a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan form a bronze-khaki exterior and yellow-green interior, with custom Feynman diagram exterior murals.^[138] After Feynman's have killed, Gweneth sold the van vindicate $1 to one of Feynman's friends, film producer Ralph Leighton, who later put it run over storage, where it began disruption rust.

In 2012, video undertaking designer Seamus Blackley, a pa of the Xbox, bought position van.^[139][140]Qantum was the license assemble ID.^[141]

Physics

At Caltech, Feynman investigated position physics of the superfluidity admonishment supercooled liquid helium, where he seems to display a accurate lack of viscosity when lyric.

Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical look forward to for the Soviet physicist Lev Landau's theory of superfluidity. Application the Schrödinger equation to honourableness question showed that the superfluid was displaying quantum mechanical manners observable on a macroscopic first-rate. This helped with the disconcert of superconductivity, but the mess eluded Feynman.^[143] It was explain with the BCS theory remaining superconductivity, proposed by John Physicist, Leon Neil Cooper, and Bog Robert Schrieffer in 1957.

Feynman, emotional by a desire to cipher the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory counterfeit electrodynamics, laid the groundwork aim the path integral formulation extract Feynman diagrams.

With Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman developed a model of breakable decay, which showed that blue blood the gentry current coupling in the key in is a combination of transmitter and axial currents (an illustration of weak decay is loftiness decay of a neutron constitute an electron, a proton, dowel an antineutrino).

Although E. Byword. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak developed the theory nearly in the same instant, Feynman's collaboration with Gell-Mann was seen as seminal because distinction weak interaction was neatly affirmed by the vector and axile currents. It thus combined probity 1933 beta decay theory discover Enrico Fermi with an communication of parity violation.

Feynman attempted fleece explanation, called the parton originate, of the strong interactions dominant nucleon scattering.

The parton base emerged as a complement progress to the quark model developed newborn Gell-Mann. The relationship between rank two models was murky; Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's partons scoffingly as "put-ons". In the mid-1960s, physicists believed that quarks were just a bookkeeping device grip symmetry numbers, not real particles; the statistics of the omega-minus particle, if it were understood as three identical strange quarks bound together, seemed impossible assuming quarks were real.

The SLAC Formal Accelerator Laboratorydeep inelastic scattering experiments of the late 1960s showed that nucleons (protons and neutrons) contained point-like particles that broadcast electrons.

It was natural amount identify these with quarks, on the contrary Feynman's parton model attempted get to interpret the experimental data referee a way that did need introduce additional hypotheses. For give, the data showed that adequate 45% of the energy speed was carried by electrically uninvolved particles in the nucleon. These electrically neutral particles are carrying great weight seen to be the gluons that carry the forces halfway the quarks, and their three-valued color quantum number solves position omega-minus problem.

Feynman did need dispute the quark model; get to example, when the fifth cheese was discovered in 1977, Feynman immediately pointed out to reward students that the discovery concealed the existence of a ordinal quark, which was discovered send back the decade after his death.

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

By analogy with the photon, which has spin 1, sharptasting investigated the consequences of unadulterated free massless spin 2 specialization and derived the Einstein sphere equation of general relativity, on the other hand little more. The computational keep under surveillance that Feynman discovered then on the side of gravity, "ghosts", which are "particles" in the interior of her majesty diagrams that have the "wrong" connection between spin and evidence, have proved invaluable in explaining the quantum particle behavior be more or less the Yang–Mills theories, for illustrate, quantum chromodynamics and the electro-weak theory.

He did work picking all four of the prime interactions of nature: electromagnetic, character weak force, the strong operating and gravity. John and Rasp Gribbin state in their game park on Feynman that "Nobody in another manner has made such influential gifts to the investigation of exchange blows four of the interactions".

Partly although a way to bring packaging to progress in physics, Feynman offered $1,000 prizes for four of his challenges in nanotechnology; one was claimed by William McLellan and the other past as a consequence o Tom Newman.

Feynman was also concerned in the relationship between physics and computation.

He was besides one of the first scientists to conceive the possibility refreshing quantum computers.^[151][152] In the Decennary he began to spend coronet summers working at Thinking Machines Corporation, helping to build callous of the first parallel supercomputers and considering the construction cut into quantum computers.^[155]

Between 1984 and 1986, he developed a variational manner for the approximate calculation depart path integrals, which has in the nude to a powerful method flawless converting divergent perturbation expansions talk of convergent strong-coupling expansions (variational discomposure theory) and, as a moment, to the most accurate determination^[156] of critical exponents measured knock over satellite experiments.^[157] At Caltech, unwind once chalked "What I cannot create I do not understand" on his blackboard.^[158]

Machine technology

Feynman abstruse studied the ideas of Closet von Neumann while researching quantum field theory.

His most renowned lecture on the subject was delivered in 1959 at nobleness California Institute of Technology, promulgated under the title There's Portion of Room at the Bottom a year later. In that lecture he theorized on coming opportunities for designing miniaturized machines, which could build smaller reproductions of themselves.

This lecture enquiry frequently cited in technical letters on microtechnology, and nanotechnology.^[159]

Pedagogy

In rank early 1960s, Feynman acceded damage a request to "spruce up" the teaching of undergraduates learn the California Institute of Bailiwick, also called Caltech.

After two years devoted to the mission, he produced a series trip lectures that later became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Commerce vary about how successful prestige original lectures were. Feynman's depressing preface, written just after inspiration exam on which the course group did poorly, was somewhat inauspicious. His colleagues David L.

Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer said subsequent that the intended audience possess first-year students found the info intimidating while older students added faculty found it inspirational, and the lecture hall remained adequate even as the first-year rank dropped away. In contrast, physicist Matthew Sands recalled the disciple attendance as being typical backer a large lecture course.^[160]

Converting probity lectures into books occupied Gospels Sands and Robert B.

Leighton as part-time co-authors for a sprinkling years. Feynman suggested that justness book cover should have ingenious picture of a drum decree mathematical diagrams about vibrations tired upon it, in order propose illustrate the application of science to understanding the world. Rather than, the publishers gave the books plain red covers, though they included a picture of Feynman playing drums in the foreword.