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Posted on 09/16/2010 5:45:18 PM PDT by decimon
Nobel Prize-winning and eccentric physicist Richard Feynman has been called a buffoon and a magician, but is lauded as a man who could make science accessible and interesting for all.
When I was a child I desperately wanted to be a scientist, but then it all went wrong.
Unfortunately, during the early years of my secondary school education, science became joyless.
It was a subject that seemed disjointed from the world even though it is the method that attempts to explain the world and the universe.
If only it were possible to place an automaton Richard Feynman in every school.
Children would leave each day wide-eyed with astonishment and eager to run home to look down their microscopes or mull over the movement of a bee in a flower border.
Richard Feynman did not understand how scientific knowledge could make anything dull.
He once related an argument with an artist who declared that scientists removed the beauty of flowers and made them seem dull. Feynman vehemently disagreed.
"A knowledge of science only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Santa Claus ping.
I went to the same high school.
This man was, and is, a hero/godlike figure to all technical geeks.
Read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
After the oil spill, Obama’s people looked for politically-correct, leftward-leaning scientists who would find a way to blame BP and it’s evil oil. When Reagan wanted the greatest scientific mind to help determine the cause of the Challenger accident, he got Feynman.
Enough Said.
Surely you’re joking, Errant. [BTW, Feynman is my favorite genius. I have lots of video of him, including his Physics lecture series from CalTech. Truly, he was no ordinary genius.
His Cargo Cult essay should be required reading for all.
YES!
Richard Feynman
He is the Miles Davis of physics.
Truly, you are right this time! ;)
He was quite the character... I'm glad to hear that you also find him interesting.
bookmark.
ping
I’ve listened to him so much that when I read something he wrote I hear him saying that in his New Yawk accent! It is a fun quirk I have along with my auditory memory.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (UNABRIDGED) by Richard P. Feynman
Publisher's Summary:
With his characteristic eyebrow-raising behavior, Richard P. Feynman once provoked the wife of a Princeton dean to remark, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" But the many scientific and personal achievements of this Nobel Prize-winning physicist are no laughing matter. In addition to solving the mystery of liquid helium, Feynman has been commissioned to paint a naked female toreador and asked to crack the uncrackable safes guarding the atomic bomb's most critical secrets. He has traded ideas with Einstein and Bohr, discussed gambling odds with Nick the Greek, and accompanied a ballet on the bongo drums. Here, woven with his scintillating views on modern science, Feynman relates the defining moments of his accomplished life.
I have a section in my library which is purely all things Feynman, especially the writings by his friends and students who knew him best. But then, I also have a section on Carl Jung ... it’s more technical junk.
Tuva!
Einstein's writings and biographies are another of my favorites. I haven't found psychology that interesting for some reason but history and ancient mysteries intrigue me.
I didn’t know Santa Claus even *went* to school. ;’)
Decades ago I dated a stripper whose IQ was 138. She was working her way through college. Have no idea whatever happened to her ...
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