Changing the way you learn

Feynman

Hobbies
1. Played bongos
  1. for San Fransisco Ballet
2. patron of a topless bar
3. go-go dancers
4. fascination with safecracking
  1. Convinced the bomb files were not well enough protected
  2. After war managed to open bank safe, where documents for construction of bomb were located, demonstrating the edge in which our civilization teeters on
5. drumming
6. art
  1. signed "Ofey"
    1. Wanted to describe emotion about world
7. Experimentation with LSD
  1. powerful hallucinogenic drug
Teaching
Family
1. wives
  1. Arline Greenbaum
    1. After engagement she began to get symptoms of mystery illness (fevers, pain, and large lumps that would appear and disappear)
      1. Diagnosed with lymphatic tuberculosis (possibly from unpasteurized milk)
        Married after but couldn't kiss for fear of Feynman contracting
        Feynman's mother apparently said union should be "illegal"
    2. While working towards PhD at Princeton they became engaged
    3. visited her at a sanitarium (in Albuquerque) on weekends, while working on Manhattan Project
      1. Richard was working in Los Alamos (2 hours away)
        After a year brought her to Los Alamos
        Nurses unable to provide her with care she needed for awful stage of terrible illness
    4. (doctors thought would only last for 2 years) died in 1945 right before...
    5. Met in high school
      1. longtime sweetheart
        By Junior year he wanted to marry
    6. Wrote, "I have however, other desires and aims in the world. One of them is to contribute as much to physics as I can. This is, in my mind, of even more importance than my love for Arline.”
    7. called her "Putzi"
    8. He was unable to come to terms with the fact that she was dying. In his letters he told her to "be nicer", stop complaining, stop crying, and be stronger.
      1. Compartmentalized his feelings
        Only at the end in his second-to-last letter he seems to finally have accepted the graveness of her illness. He apologizes and expresses his regret
    9. died a month before the first atomic bomb was detonated in the desert
      1. He got a call while at Los Almos, that told him that Arline was dying.
        raced over and was with her when she took her last breath
        compartmentalized
        didn't cry until months afterwards when he walked past a department store, saw a dress and thought Arline would like it
        wrote many letters to her after death
        “I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead—but I still want to comfort and take care of you – and I want you to love me and care for me.”
        “I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet that you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it darling, nor can I—I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone—but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real. My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Rich P.S. Please excuse my not mailing this—but I don't know your new address."
        “When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn't have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true—you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of laving anyone else—but I want to stand there. You, dead, are so much better that anyone else alive.”
  2. Gweneth Howarth
    1. stayed together for remainder of life
  3. Mary Louise Bell
    1. Did not truly love and soon divorced
2. kids
  1. Carl Richard
  2. Michelle Catherine
3. sister - Joan became astrophysicist
Awards
1. co-awarded nobel prize in physics (1965)
  1. b/c of work on for work in quantum electrodynamics
  2. w/ Julian Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomonaga
2. Oersted Medal for Teaching in 1972
3. Albert Einstein Award (1954, Princeton)
4. Einstein Award
5. Lawrence Award (1962)
Projects
1. Manhattan Project
  1. became youngest group leader in theoretical division
2. served on the presidential commission investigating
  1. of 1986 explosion of the Challenger
Education/life
1. Education
  1. Attended MIT as an undergraduate
  2. Attended Princeton for his PhD
2. life
  1. died from abdominal cancer at 69 in 1988
  2. born in NYC in 1983
    1. Far Rockaway, Queens
Cite
1. https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/no-other-love-heart-wrenching-letters-from-richard-feynman-to-his-late-wife-arline
2. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-feynman-file
3. https://www.openculture.com/2015/09/the-drawings-paintings-of-richard-feynman.html

Next up

Feynman

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by Isabel Pearson about 2 years ago