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Topic for debate: is genius discontinuous? Feynman here seems to come down hard on the side of “no.” I’m inclined to agree, allowing for some modest provision of talent within the field.

This guy was my neighbor in Altadena where I grew up.

He was well aware that he was very special. He comes off as disingenuous here. I think this is where Ralph Leighton came up with the line “surely you must be joking Dr. Feynman.” He’s pulling the interviewers chain.

I think he was somewhat conflicted in this way. There’s the famous Feynmanism “You don’t have to show no one nothing.” Yet my memory of him was a showman with a streak of insecurity. I found this kind of confusing because we all knew he was a brilliant Nobel prize winning physicist. Yet he tried really hard to impress the neighborhood kids with magic tricks.

But if he’s NOT being disingenuous, who’s the joke really on?

At least one other YouTube clip from the same interview is him refusing to dumb down electromagnetism to satisfy the interviewer’s curiousity about the truth of the idea that “we never really touch the chair.” Unless the interviewer is a really good actor, he does seem to get openly offended by Feynman’s answer.

I recall someone telling me an anecdote about Feynman that Feynman shared somewhere, that when Feynman was a boy he’d worked at his family’s restaurant, but it was a miserable experience because all he’d done was anger people by explaining to them why things should be done a different way. In other words, being “different” was rather familiar to him.

Sclass wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:12 pm

This guy was my neighbor in Altadena where I grew up.

He was well aware that he was very special. He comes off as disingenuous here. I think this is where Ralph Leighton came up with the line “surely you must be joking Dr. Feynman.” He’s pulling the interviewers chain.

I think he was somewhat conflicted in this way. There’s the famous Feynmanism “You don’t have to show no one nothing.” Yet my memory of him was a showman with a streak of insecurity. I found this kind of confusing because we all knew he was a brilliant Nobel prize winning physicist. Yet he tried really hard to impress the neighborhood kids with magic tricks.

It was never clear how those book came to exist. Feynman did not write them; apparently they were spontaneously compiled by someone Feynman knew who just thought he was so interesting there must be such a book. But it is not a conventional biography, or even autobiography, really just Feynman talking to the reader.

Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist surely can be interesting. But there are several interesting people in the world and none others have this sort of treatment that I know of.

If he asked a friend to write such a book so he can soap box the world while still appearing modest, makes more sense.

A guy named Ralph Leighton wrote many of the books. He was the son of Bob Leighton, one of the co authors of the Feynman lectures.

I hung out with Ralph in the 80s. He followed Dr. Feynman like he was some kind of guru. His dad was disappointed that he chose to do this and didn’t bother learning physics from Feynman. The word among the Caltech families was that the Leighton kid was enchanted by the Nobel professor. Along with Ralph were a bunch of other people in the neighborhood Feynman entourage. I hung out with some of these guys regularly as preteens.

My parents discouraged me from attending the intellectually stimulating get togethers at the Feynman home even though there was an open invitation. My dad had known him a long time before we moved into the neighborhood from his undergrad days at Caltech. While he admired the guy deeply he didn’t want me spending my time over there having fun with Ralph and the gang.

I wonder why your parents were suspicious of him. No one is a prophet in their home town, or how was it that the saying went.

In another thread regarding Feynman, was another forum member who I think worked for him or studied under him. He said he was very egotistical and also notorious for seducing married woman. The impression I was left with was that Feynman was brilliant but made choices that would probably kick him out of a lot of social circles.

I still respect Feynman and his work in physics and electrodynamics. And his lectures are fun to watch. His testimony on the Challenger explosion was also very interesting. He had the gift of knowing how to explain difficult concepts to laymen.

ertyu wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:10 am

I wonder why your parents were suspicious of him.

They knew him a little too well.

The books and stories are a glimpse of reality. Reality was way more complex.

He portrayed himself in a way that would maximize attention. The kind of schtick that kept his entourage of teenagers wide eyed in his home did not make any of them physicists. The video above represents that side of the man. All good but that wasn’t going to do much for me. I did go on to graduate in physics.

My dad, a physicist, worried I’d go down Ralph Leighton’s path and become RF’s follower rather than learning how to be a better physicist. Mom didn’t like the womanizing. The guy left a wake of destruction behind him among the townswomen.

Makes perfect sense thanks for answering Sclass. Also, really interesting case study on the sort of difference between the public figure and the actual human that I'm sure applies across the board for most who achieve some level of social renown.

I got inspired to climb into my loft and dig through some print books in boxes. My favorite Feynman books. Also saw this in a high school yearbook with a photo of Michelle. We went to school with Rodney King too believe it or not. I'll save his photo for another thread. History is just history. The RF books are an enjoyable collection of stories.

While dumping stuff at my family’s home in Altadena I stumbled across a couple of yearbooks. A John Muir High School 1978, 1979 and Caltech 1955 belonging to my older siblings and father. Here are some scans I saved.

Apparently Ralph Leighton, the author of Surely You’re Joking Dr. Feynman was a high school math teacher and PE teacher at my high school in 1979. He was Caltech physics professor Robert Leighton’s son - a co author of the Feynman Lectures in Physics. I met Ralph after he left my high school. I had forgotten what he did for a living before becoming Feynman’s biographer.



Carl Feynman was my brother’s intelligent pal. They played D&D and built Tesla coils in my brother’s home lab. They’d challenge each other to solve Putnam Exam problems. I recall my brother was disappointed he didn’t join him Caltech. My dad explained MIT was the better choice than living under his dad’s shadow. Carl was very bright. I think I recall hearing him say he wanted to study AI back then.



Cute signature.



Dad had a few of his 1954 and 1955 Caltech yearbooks. The photos were really fuzzy in the 1954. Here is the 1955 of a young pre Nobel Prize Feynman. He got a much bigger photo than the other older faculty members who are shown in a smaller group photo which says a lot. Perhaps he was rising fast or the students laying out the yearbook admired him.



ETA - just remembered I noticed the movie Oppenheimer had several Feynman Easter eggs. I wouldn’t have caught them he first time around but “(Feynman)” shows up in the closed caption dialog a few times even though his name isn’t in the script.

I've had two different friends/housemates (unknown to each other/different eras of my life) who were genius or near-genius level electrical engineers and huge fans of Feynman. One of them was the son of a PhD physicist at the University of Kansas and the other was the son of a famous, kooky-stoner female neuroscientist at John Hopkins/Georgetown. When I was kicked out of the physics department, I gave my set of the Feynman lectures to the son of kooky-stoner famous female scientist. I think that was the same year I learned from a newspaper article that I had a lot in common with the Unabomber, notable exception being my complete lack of a tendency towards violence.

Sclass wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 22, 2020 10:41 am

Mom didn’t like the womanizing. The guy left a wake of destruction behind him among the townswomen.

Led Zeppelin wanted to be Jewish physicists but settled on being rock stars.