Steven J Kolbe

At the end of his life, the great American physicist Richard P. Feynman wrote two books not about physics but about his adventures through life–and adventures they certainly were.

By twenty-seven years old Feynman, whom everyone called Dick, had met and married the love of his life, earned a PhD from Princeton, been hired onto the Manhattan project, lost his wife to lymphatic tuberculosis, and earned the esteem of the greatest physicists on the planet. All this was really only the beginning.

Surely You’re Joking covers the span of his life, from teaching at CalTech and his struggles to find love after Arline to his work on quantum electrodynamics and his experiences winning the Nobel prize in physics.

As irreverent as he was brilliant, Feynman treated every challenge as an adventure and was never too timid to try things his own way.

With his preternatural humor and lust for life, he explores the problems of scientific education in America and abroad but also the quintessential challenges faced by men–both romantically and professionally. (At one point, he adopts a scientific method of picking up women which, though it works, leaves him unsatisfied. At another he turns down a prestigious post at University of Chicago for fear of it enabling him to take a mistress.)

I have been drawn to Feynman ever since watching one of his lectures years ago. I was struggling with an idea (planetary orbits being elliptical or relativistic gravitation or some such thing) and I found his lecture on YouTube. I’m sure he was just restating Newton or Einstein, but it was the way he restated them. Never had the problem or how it had been solved seemed so clear. Feynman, I realized immediately, had a way of putting things directly and in real terms. At Los Alamos and beyond, this was his greatest strength.

What has brought me back around to a deeper dive into Feynman has been a historical mystery I’m writing. I don’t want to say too much about it yet, but Dick will play a large role, either as a character directly or for my understanding of the time period. As a character, he’s a lot to live up to, but I can’t imagine writing about the Manhattan Project without channeling Feynman in some way.

Have a favorite book by or about Richard Feynman? Tell me in the comments and tell me why I should read it or review it on my blog!