Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James GleickMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Could not put it down! Inspiration for aspiring scientists and independent thinkers.
Even the biographical description of his parents arrival in New York was fun reading. Very well written, includes an excellent summary of the history of physics during Feynman's lifetime. Gleick gives short biographies of Feynman's fellow physicists that helps provide greater context for understanding Feynman's work and life.
Several intriguing lines from the hardcover edition:
pg 306 "If a Caltech experimenter told Feynman about a result reached after a complex process of correcting data, Feynman was sure to ask how the experimenter had decided when to stop correcting, and whether that decision had been made before the experimenter could see what the effect it would have on the outcome. It was all too easy to fall into the trap of correcting until the answer looked right. To avoid it required an intimate relationship with the rules of the scientist's game. It also required not just honesty, but a sense that honesty requires exertion."
My comment is that this quote brings to mind Admiral Rickover's statement in one of his early books about about technology, that advanced technology (i.e. nuclear power) requires a greater degree of moral rectitude than earlier technologies. I am sure that most nuclear engineers who get a call from their duty officer in the middle of the night recognize "a sense that honesty requires exertion" to find out what is really happening. Rich Luke, new construction engineer of the USS Honolulu SSN718, explained that this what makes a good engineer, to be able to push for the true answer inspite of personal fatigue and sense of urgency to keep things moving.
pg 325 Gleick reveals his bias with "Scientists still speak unashamedly of reality, even in the quantum era, of objective truth, of a world independent of human construction, and they sometimes seem to be the last members of the intellectual universe to do so. Reality hobbles their imaginations." Glieck documents that Feynman did believe in objective truth, that could be described in many ways.
pg 326 Gleick's discussion of "genius" includes this interesting quote from the literary, artistic mind set: "Would that I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken." -- a quotation attributed to Khakheperresenb, an Egyptian scribe of the Middle Kingdom (circa 2000 B.C.)
pg 353, Feynman teases Russian physicist Ivanenko by asking him what is the integral of e to the minus x squared from minus infinity to plus infinity? Silence. "Ivanenko what is one and one?" {My comment: The integration comes out to square root of pi. I thought this was a pretty good joke, if you know your calculus. I had to look up the answer here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWOGf...}
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