Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

I really enjoyed the insight into the person of Feynman. He was, as any other physicist, a human with positive and negative characteristics. This is an important book because it captures this balance, which I believe is intrinsic to any "Genius" because the term focuses on some exceptional characteristics while ignoring the rest of the person.

The mental patterns I found most interesting in how Feynman thought were his reliance on fundamental characteristics of a physical relation and to visualize this in a way that he could gain a personal insight into the big picture of what was going on. He cared more about the units of measurement in a relation than the values. This is an example of what we might call genius because it is an show more unconventional focus on how to do physics.

And yes of course the maverick was also a bit of an asshole. I think anyone that dedicates that much time and energy to abstract processing suffers a price in social value alignment. show less

For those who know of Richard Feynman, I salute you.

This biography by Gleik, the writer that made [b:Chaos: Making a New Science|64582|Chaos Making a New Science|James Gleick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327941595l/64582._SY75_.jpg|62690] a household name, tries, mostly successfully, to give us the same treatment about Feynman.

I was fascinated throughout. I've only heard a few funny anecdotes about the man and everyone seems to concur that he's one hell of a genius, but it's better to get into ALL the aspects. Humor, the heartwarming bits, the slightly frustrating but mostly amazing rise of his career as a physicist... all of these things pop out on the page.

An iconoclast? Possibly. But I see show more him more like a man who, from near-first principles, derived a new way of looking at the universe without bothering to read the majority of the works that came before. He was always shaking things up, keeping his mind agile, and never letting himself succumb to that most horrible of states: rigidity. He was well aware of the tendency of scientists with their pet theories to become ossified the longer they protected their positions.

Feynman always rode the high wave of creativity and originality. He may not have always been successful, but he never took himself too seriously despite being an integral part of quantum physics. Strong, Weak, and EM forces? Oh, yeah.

This book truly humanizes him but also rises above normal biographies in that it postulates, rightly so, a wide and specific theory of what makes Genius. It also comes to some conclusions that shed a bit of light on our own world, too.

For one: where are all the geniuses? :) The answer? They're all around us. And it's often hard to pick certain creative geniuses out of a crowd because the market might be saturated with tons of people who stand on the backs of giants.

One could argue that Richard Feynman was very lucky to have come around at exactly the right time, work on the first atomic bomb, and be surrounded by so many other brilliant minds. His bouts of isolation and creativity were bolstered by others.

Who knows? Without biographies like this, he might have disappeared into footnotes, too.

No one ever really sees the worth of the people around them while they're living. ; ; show less

A superbly written biography of this supremely individual scientist. For purists, the lack of any equations or mathematics may be off putting. I personally struggled to understand any of Feynmann's work despite Gleick clear expositions. Nonetheless, I found this to be an intreguing guide to a fascinating individual and the subjects he tackled.

Feynman's success in QED re-normalization won him the Nobel Prize, but his contributions were broad in science and education. I read his lecture series many years ago and got a grounding in many aspects of physics. However, what this book offers is anecdotal stories of his life that illustrate his humor and instincts for discovery. His, all too human, pranks are legendary. I enjoyed the book immensely.

This is a fantastic book for those interested in physics, but more importantly for those interested in change.

It is the biography of Richard Feynman, the talented physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize and major contributor to our understanding of particle physics. The term ‘genius’ is often used cheaply, and although Feynman would have declined the description, having read this account it is difficult to argue that he was not fully deserving of the title.

I first became aware of Richard Feynman through quotations credited to him, and was intrigued to find out more about the man behind the ideas. This book deals with his life and achievements and as much of this was directed at the hidden and mysterious world and mathematics that show more define the inner working of atoms, you might expect a difficult read. Have no fear. James Gleick has done a brilliant job of avoiding the mathematics whilst successfully conveying the ideas that Feynman spent a lifetime working on, without belittling them through oversimplification. Instead he succeeds in graphically illuminating the world of quantum physics as a truly remarkable one where particles exist for fractions of a billionth of a second, appear capable of travelling back in time, and provide the key to unlock our understanding of the universe, gravity and time itself.

‘I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.’
Richard Feynman.

That James Gleick is able to graphically convey the work of a genius operating in this field is truly fitting since the hallmark of Feynman’s work was a single minded focus on creating and sharing understanding, to create penny dropping moments of revelation, no matter how complex the underlying concepts. His career spanned almost the entire period of the development of modern physics, through to his untimely death in 1988. His life criss-crossed the paths of an array of great scientists such as Einstein, Dirac and Fermi and includes work on the development of the atom bomb and the investigation of the Challenger Shuttle disaster. Along the way he left a trail of discoveries. ideas and people he inspired, and received the Nobel Prize in recognition of only a small part of his contribution to science.

All of this is a fascinating account of a key participant and luminary at the cutting edge of scientific advance. But for me it is so much more. With an interest in the journey of change, this book provides a real insight into the thinking and approach of someone who saw change as an invitation to explore. His guiding principles were that nothing can ever be known with absolute certainty and that all knowledge was partial and temporary. For Feynman, as for Einstein, the most powerful tool in creating advance was imagination.
Rather than the widespread popularly held view that science is about the known,

This is a book full of insights. If you want to glimpse into the world of quantum physics and understand concepts and principles that you may have feared were beyond you, this book does the job. Beyond this the book provides an insight into the thinking of a man who was truly a genius and who defined genius as the ability to question, challenge, understand and create understanding.

Feynman is quoted as saying that he never read a scientific biography that he enjoyed. I agree with the reviewer who on the back cover suggests that he would have enjoyed this one. I read it on holiday and recommend that you set aside a little time to do the same. show less

In Genius, James Gleick has the same problem with Richard Feynman that Robert Kanigel had with Ramanujan in The Man Who Knew Infinity. If you are writing about a genius in literature, you can include excerpts from their works; if a genius painter, pictures of their paintings; if a genius musician, recordings of their music; and thus give some level of accessibility to readers who don’t happen to be geniuses. With a genius in science or mathematics, you’re out of luck; thus, there are some equations in Genius, and some Feynman diagrams, but they don’t really help very much. Biographers of scientific geniuses are reduced to stressing eccentricities – on the order of “Well, perhaps Albert Einstein was the greatest physicist who show more ever lived, but he never wore socks”. (In fact, Einstein is mentioned in Genius, when Feynman goes to visit him at Princeton – and it’s noted that Einstein was wearing shoes, but no socks). If you’re a genius with no eccentricity besides your scientific ability, your biographers will be lost – in fact, you probably won’t get a biography at all. (Example: there’s only one person ever to win two Nobel Prizes in physics. Their personal life was perfectly ordinary. Name this person).

So, we get Feynman the eccentric – playing the bongos, cracking safes at Los Alamos, “womanizing”, juicy details. Gleick notes Feynman cultivated this to a small extent; but he also enjoyed the challenges of playing the bongos, cracking safes, and women. There’s nothing that gives me a real understanding of Feynman’s physics – because I’m not a genius and I wouldn’t understand it. Ah well, there’s always the Lectures. show less

It's a great account of Feynman, and comes off feeling like less of a facade than Surely You're Joking or his other autobiographical works. It's not a life-changing book by any account, but it's a fascinating read for any researcher; in my opinion, the history presented in the book is completely paled by the glimpses we get into the governing dynamics of Feynman's mind.

You're not going to learn any science here, but you might get an inkling into how to actually do science. And that's a wonderful thing.