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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1997) (edit title/settings)

Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard P. Feynman (Author), Edward Hutchings (Editor), Ralph Leighton (Compiler) (edit contributors)

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The outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original. In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman recounts in his inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with... read more

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  • “I wonder why. I wonder why.I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder whyI wonder why I wonder!”
    Richard Feynman
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
    Highlighted by 191 Kindle customers
  • It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.
    Highlighted by 140 Kindle customers
  • The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
    Highlighted by 118 Kindle customers
  • All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of saying that you can’t.
    Highlighted by 97 Kindle customers
  • They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.
    Highlighted by 95 Kindle customers
  • I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.
    Highlighted by 94 Kindle customers
  • Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.
    Highlighted by 71 Kindle customers
  • And Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of Von Neumann’s advice. It’s made me a very happy man ever since. But it was Von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility!
    Highlighted by 70 Kindle customers
  • There were a lot of fools at that conference—pompous fools—and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools—guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus—THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
    Highlighted by 62 Kindle customers
  • So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
    Highlighted by 60 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

WHEN I WAS about eleven or twelve I set up a lab in my house.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Introduction by Albert R. Hibbs
Vitals

PART 1 FROM FAR ROCKAWAY TO MIT

He Fixes Radios by Thinking!
String Beans
Who Stole the Door?
Latin or Italian?
Always Trying to Escape
The Chief Research Chemist of the Mataplast Corporation

PART 2 THE PRINCETON YEARS

"Surely You're Joing, Mr. Feynman!"
Meeeeeeeeeee!
A Map of the Cat?
Monster Minds
Mixing Paints
A Different Box of Tools
Mindreaders
The Amateur Scientist

PART 3 FEYNMAN, THE BOMB, AND THE MILITARY

Fizzled Fuses
Testing Bloodhounds
Los Alamos from Below
Safecracker Meets Safecracker
Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!

PART 4 FROM CORNELL TO CALTECH, WITH A TOUCH OF BRAZIL

The Dignified Professor
Any Questions?
I Want My Dollar!
You Just Ask Them?
Lucky Numbers
O Americano, Outra Vez!
Man of a Thousand Tongues
Certainly, Mr. Big!
An Offer You Must Refuse

PART 5 THE WORLD OF ONE PHYSICIST

Would You Solve the Dirac Equation?
The 7 Percent Solution
Thirteen Times
It Sounds Greek to Me!
But Is It Art?
Is Electricity Fire?
Judging Books by Their Covers
Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake
Bringing Culture to the Physicists
Found Out in Paris
Altered States
Cargo Cult Science

Index

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Richard P. Feynman (Author)
  2. Edward Hutchings (Editor)
  3. Ralph Leighton (Compiler)

Other Contributors:

  1. Raymond Todd (Narrator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: WW Norton & Co
Country: US
Publication Date: 12 May 1997
ISBN: 0393316041
Page Count: 352

Classification edit see section history

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