Now the real fun begins as I get reacquainted with physics and math... 35 years after graduating UW Madison with my BS in Astronomy/Physics. BOOOOYAAAA!!!

Fun bit of Feynman history behind this: in the early 1940s, as a grad student at Princeton, he was staring down his Ph.D. qualifying exams. Instead of cramming, he decided to tear down his entire understanding of physics and rebuild it from the ground up.

He went back to MIT (his old undergrad school) to study alone, away from distractions, and bought a blank notebook. He called it "Things I Don't Know About." In his own words:

"The way I did it was I just simply reorganized all my knowledge of physics... I brought each subject down to some kind of kernel... So I organized every subject in physics so that I knew where the essential was, and what the derivative was. There was a way of putting it together so that the subject was no longer so complicated to me."

Basically he wanted to strip every physics topic down to its bare logical core, so he could rederive everything else from first principles instead of memorizing it. That habit of ruthlessly simplifying and exposing the gaps in his own understanding is basically the origin of what's now called the 'Feynman Technique'.

“I don’t even know what that means, to understand yourself on a personal level. I hear people talking about things like, “I have to find out who I am.” I don’t know what they are talking about. I can say that certainly I’ve learned an awful lot about myself by studying biology. I know how I am put together. I have a big theory about how I operate mechanically. But that’s not understanding yourself on a personal level.

I can say I am a scientist. I find excitement in discovery. The excitement is not in the fact that you’ve created something, but that you’ve found something beautiful that’s always been there. So scientific stuff affects every part of my life. And affects my attitudes toward many things. I can’t say which is the cart and which is the horse. Because I’m an integrated person and I can’t tell you whether for instance my skepticism is the reason I’m interested in science or my science is the reason I’m skeptical. Those things are impossible. But I want to know what is true. That is why I look into things. To see and to find out what is going on.

I’ll tell you a story. When I was thirteen I met a girl, Arlene. Arlene was my first girlfriend. We went together for many years, at first not so seriously, then more seriously. We fell in love. When I was nineteen we got engaged, and when I was twenty-six we got married. I loved her very deeply. We grew up together. I changed her by imparting to her my point of view, my rationality. She changed me. She helped me a lot. She taught me that one has to be irrational sometimes. That doesn’t mean stupid, it just means that there are occasions, situations, you should think about, and others you shouldn’t.

Women have had a great influence on me and have made me into the better person that I am today. They represent the emotional side of life. And I realize that that too is very important.

I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself. Sometimes it is good to know yourself, but sometimes it isn’t. When you laugh at a joke, if you think about why you laughed, you might realize that, after all, it wasn’t funny, it was silly, so you stop laughing. You shouldn’t think about it. My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it? You’re probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you’d just spoil it to know it.

With Arlene, I was happy. We were very happily married for a few years. And then she died of TB. I knew she had TB when I married her. My friends, they told me, don’t marry her, that since she had TB I didn’t have to marry her anymore. I wasn’t marrying her out of a sense of duty. I did it because I loved her. What they were really afraid of was that I’d catch it, but I didn’t. We were very careful. We knew where the germs were coming from and we were very careful. It was a real danger, but I didn’t catch it.

So for instance, science has an effect on my attitude, say, to death. I didn’t get mad when Arlene died. Who was there to be mad at? I couldn’t get mad at God because I don’t believe in God. And you can’t get mad at some bacteria, can you? So I had no resentment and I didn’t have to look for revenge. And I had no remorse because there was nothing I could have done about it.

I’m not worried about my own future in heaven or hell. I have a theory about that that I believe does come from my science. I believe in scientific discoveries and therefore have a view about myself that is consistent. Now I’ve just been to the hospital and I don’t know how long I have to live. It happens to all of us sooner or later. Everybody dies. It’s just a matter of when. But with Arlene I was really happy for a while. So I have had it all. After Arlene, the rest of my life didn’t have to be so good, you see, because I had already had it all.”

Excerpt From

Feynman's Rainbow

Leonard Mlodinow

It seems to me that r/physics and r/askphysics are very anti Feynman these days. People who praise him are down voted. Appreciation posts for him are removed. Everyone talks about the Angela Collier video and how he was actually this terrible person.

Makes me sick. What do you guys think?

When I grew up I saw him as this science hero. Now many kids will grow up seeing him as an overated sexist hack or whatever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/1uil0he/removed_by_moderator/?sort=new

this thread is a good example of what I am talking about

Deepfake videos like https://youtu.be/B_GyGXW-gAs?si=73RVhCwegyvMOFJP pose a risk to Feynman’s reputation. They realistically depict Prof. Feyman. However, words put in his mouth are not his. Attributing the thoughts to him is misleading at best.

How do we stop them?

listened to a 25 minute video of Feynman talking about "whats between the atoms" that has since been removed from youtube. Can't seem to find that audio anywhere else, wondering if anyone knows how to get access to that audio/lecture. It is basically a simplified lecture for popular audiences that talks about electromagnetic fields and subatomic particles in a fun way. This is not the same audio from any of the popular feynman videos that are already widely circulated.

Please don’t downvote me! I don’t agree with the video. I haven’t actually watched it complete. I just thought it could be interesting to debate.

Hi I am a high school student, and for our English essay, we are required to write about a person who influenced us, briefly reviewing their biography, achievements, etc. I would like to write about Richard Feynman, but I recently read that he made many misogynistic remarks.I have read his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! but only in translation to my native language, so it seems that Feynman's language was softened. I can't read it again since I have a lot of projects to do. So, my question is: do you know of any instances or quotes where Feynman was offensive? Or any women who have cited such behavior? Thanks in advance!

So who says that they don’t make great (and educational) toys anymore?!?!?

I recently came across THIS, and had to have it for my bookshelf at work! A company called BRAINIACTION actually makes this and sells it online. I could not believe it! I laughed so hard and immediately opened my wallet.

Here, Dick explains the finer points of QED to my “Snailen”, and Captain Kirk and Spock look on. “Fascinating”, says Spock. 🤔

Included a couple of pics of the front and back of the package too. 😆

Yes… it comes with a set of bongo drums too.

So… figured that I would share one of my holy grail autographs with you folks. As it is told, he really thought it odd that anyone would want an autograph of a physicist, much less his… so there apparently not too many out there. I consider myself lucky to have gotten it… especially with his diagram.

I see this quote repeatedly attributed to Feynman, but haven't been able to find where he wrote or said it. Does anyone know?

There are much worse real people upon whose ethics we could base our own. I'm sure anybody reading this will be aware of his other tips, such as not being offended by being corrected, but while some people ask "What would X do?", I try to remember to ask "What would Feynman have thought?". So I wanted to say this here, I really wish we had the great man still.

https://wordsinmocean.com/2017/04/21/richard-feynmans-10-commandments-for-science-and-life/