“SURELY YOU’RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by Edward Hutchings Copyright 1985 by Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110. Bantam New Age and the accompanying figure design as well as the statement “the search for meaning, growth and change” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Cover photo by Floyd Clark / Caltech. ISBN 0-553-34668-7 Preface The stories in this book were collected intermittently and informally during seven years of very enjoyable drumming with Richard Feynman. I have found each story by itself to be amusing, and the collection taken together to be amazing: That one person could have so many wonderfully crazy things happen to him in one life is sometimes hard to believe. That one person could invent so much innocent mischief in one life is surely an inspiration! RALPH LEIGHTON Contents Introduction Vitals Part 1 - From Far Rockaway to MIT He Fixes Radios by Thinking! String Beans Who Stole the Door? Latin or Italian? The Chief Research Chemist of the Metaplast Corporation Part 2 - The Princeton Years “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Meeeeeeeeeee! A Map of the Cat? Monster Minds Mixing Paints A Different Box of Tools Mindreaders The Amateur Scientist Part 3 - Feynman, the Bomb, and the Military Fizzled Fuses Testing Bloodhounds Los Alamos from Below Safecracker Meets Safecracker Uncle Sam Doesn’t Need You! Part 4 - From Cornell to Caltech, With a Touch of Brazil The Dignified Professor Any Questions? I Want My Dollar! You Just Ask Them? Lucky Numbers O Americano, Outra Vez! Man of a Thousand Tongues Certainly, Mr. Big! An Offer You Must Refuse Part 5 - The World of One Physicist Would You Solve the Dirac Equation? The 7 Percent Solution Thirteen Times It Sounds Greek to Me! But Is It Art? Is Electricity Fire? Judging Books by Their Covers Alfred Nobel’s Other Mistake Bringing Culture to the Physicists Found Out in Paris Altered States Cargo Cult Science INDEX Introduction I hope these won’t be the only memoirs of Richard Feynman. Certainly the reminiscences here give a true picture of much of his character - his almost compulsive need to solve puzzles, his provocative mischievousness, his indignant impatience with pretension and hypocrisy, and his talent for one- upping anybody who tries to one-up him! This book is great reading: outrageous, shocking, still warm and very human. For all that, it only skirts the keystone of his life: science. We see it here and there, as background material in one sketch or another, but never as the focus of his existence, which generations of his students and colleagues know it to be. Perhaps nothing else is possible. There may be no way to construct such a series of delightful stories about himself and his work: the challenge and frustration, the excitement that caps insight, the deep pleasure of scientific understanding that has been the wellspring of happiness in his life. I remember when I was his student how it was when you walked into one of his lectures. He would be standing in front of the hall smiling at us all as we came in, his fingers tapping out a complicated rhythm on the black top of the demonstration bench that crossed the front of the lecture hall. As latecomers took their seats, he picked up the chalk and began spinning it rapidly through his fingers in a manner of a professional gambler playing with a poker chip, still smiling happily as if at some secret joke. And then - still smiling - he talked to us about physics, his diagrams and equations helping us to share his understanding. It was no secret joke that brought the smile and the sparkle in his eye, it was physics. The joy of physics! The joy was contagious. We are fortunate who caught that infection. Now here is your opportunity to be exposed to the joy of life in the style of Feynman. ALBERT R. HIBBS Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology Vitals Some facts about my timing: I was born in 1918 in a small town called Far Rockawav, right on the outskirts of New York, near the sea. I lived there until 1935, when I was seventeen. I went to MIT for four years, and then I went to Princeton, in about 1939. During the time I was at Princeton I started to work on the Manhattan Project, and I ultimately went to Los Alamos in April 1943, until something like October or November 1946, when I went to Cornell. I got married to Arlene in 1941, and she died of tuberculosis while I was at Los Alamos, in 1946. I was at Cornell until about 1951. I visited Brazil in the summer of 1949 and spent half a year there in 1951, and then went to Caltech, where I’ve been ever since. I went to Japan at the end of 1951 for a couple of weeks, and then again, a year or two later, just after I married my second wife, Mary Lou. I am now married to Gweneth, who is English, and we have two children, Carl and Michelle. R.P.F.