For so long, I didn’t really get what the lore around Richard Feynman was. Sure, he was a brilliant physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and won a Nobel Prize, but why was he so oft-cited in popular culture? Why was there a near cult-like following around him?
For so long, I had Richard Feynman’s autobiography, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, sitting on my bookshelf, and I only finally took the chance to read the book. What followed were some of the funniest and most entertaining hours of my life, a plunge into the life of a patient teacher, eclectic genius, and merry trickster. Why is Richard Feynman so highly regarded, a man whose influence transcends his expertise in physics? I understand now.
Build your toolbox
During his time in high school, Feynman’s calculus teacher had given him a copy of Advanced Calculus by Frederick Woods, where he learned a plethora of non-standard methods for solving calculus problems. These techniques were invaluable during his graduate years at Princeton, where he was able to solve nasty integrals that other students were stumped by.
As Feynman later remarked, “[so] I had got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me” (87).
Encourage autonomy and understanding
When Feynman was working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, he was assigned a group of young students to perform the monotonous calculations for his work. In an effort to ensure confidentiality, the military had forbidden Feynman to tell the students what ultimate purpose their calculations were for. After lobbying from Feynman, the military command relented and the students were entrusted with the knowledge of the significance of their work. From then on, the students worked ten times as quickly, and invented novel methods of solving computations that surprised even Feynman. As Feynman recalled, “[t]hey began to invent ways of doing it better. They improved the scheme. They worked at night. They didn’t need supervising in the night; they didn’t need anything. They understood everything” (128).
The lesson is clear: trust your team with information about the big picture and give them autonomy to do their work, and they will work much harder and make better decisions.
It’s the quality of an idea that matters
While at Los Alamos, Feynman was the only person audacious enough to challenge eminent physicist Niels Bohr’s new ideas. From henceforth, even though Feynman was relatively junior in the general academic hierarchy, Bohr would request Feynman’s company to bounce ideas off of him, as Feynman was the only one brave enough to criticize or call Bohr’s ideas crazy.
After their Feynman and Bohr’s first meeting, Bohr told his son: “‘Remember the name of that little fellow in the back there? He’s the only guy who’s not afraid of me, and will say when I’ve got a crazy idea. So next time when we want to discuss ideas, we’re not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes, yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy and we’ll talk with him first’” (133). As Bohr demonstrates, great thinkers should value the ideas and criticism of others, not the sycophantic parroting of yes-men.
Besides, it’s often easier to live an honest life. As Feynman stated, “I was always dumb in that way. I never knew who I was talking to. I was always worried about the physics. If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition” (133).
Knowing the name of something
For a brief period of time, Feynman served as a professor at the Center for Physical Research in Brazil. There, he found the physics students to be dedicated and studious, constantly performing extremely well on their exams. But if this was the case, then why did Brazil have a dearth of high-performing professional physicists?
He quickly isolated the cause: the Brazilian students could seamlessly regurgitate the definition of any topic or solve textbook problems, but when asked to apply the concepts to novel problems, they were completely perplexed. The Brazilian students knew the names of everything in their study of physics, but did not actually know any physics. As Feynman noted, the students could pass the examinations, and ‘learn’ all this stuff, and still not know anything at all, except what they had memorized.
For more on this topic, read this excellent post on Farnam Street: Richard Feynman: The Difference Between Knowing the Name of Something and Knowing Something.
On Art
In his later years, Feynman became an avid sketch artist. He mostly sketched nude figures, which led him to frequent local topless bars and other similar establishments, a fact that led to quite a few entertaining adventures on his part.
Before learning to draw, Feynman commented on his lack of understanding towards the beauty of art, how it was different from the pure and objective beauty of mathematics and physics. But after selling a few of his pieces and talking to the buyers, he had finally figured it out: art is created to engender feeling and emotion in others who experience your artwork.
As Feynman put it: “I understood at last what art is really for, at least in certain respects. It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they’re depressed, or they’re happy, on account of that damn thing you made!” (267).