Reviews
Richard Feynman is one of my favourite people who ever lived, and this is one of my favourite books I've ever read. There are so many reasons why this book is awesome. Science is one of them. (That alone would be reason enough.) But it's not the rocket science kind of science. Not the big, movie-kind caricature kind of science. But it's the science of beans and doors and hoola hoops. The pursuit of science for its own sake. If there's one thing you will take from this book it's the pure delight and utter joy of science. And that's not all, though. Because Feynman, one of the most liveliest and colourful personalities of science, is both funny and intelligent in his thoughts and anecdotes. He manages to be both profound and irreverent, smart as hell and tongue-in-cheek. A fun and enlightening read.
A very fun read. Gotta love Professor Feynman
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It really gave dimension to a man I've heard so many stories about from my father in law. My husband got a kick out of seeing me read the book too. He had read it a few years ago and after I would finish a chapter he'd want to chit-chat about what I had just read.
It’s really solid. Feynman is an entertaining character, and the stories are engaging. I chuckled out loud many times while reading, usually because of some clever idea or ironic twist. Beyond the enjoyment of the stories, you get an appreciation for the science behind it. You witness the scientific process in all these forms and permutations. You see the interpersonal struggles and the scientific struggles. The book is great at showing you how science works That aside, there were some editing issues. Many of the stories have misogynistic comments from Feynman, and a few are even entirely based on his misogyny. The way he discusses women is… reflective of his time. Beyond the casual misogyny, some of chapters feel like they’re misplaced in the book, not lining up with the timeline. At its best, it’s fantastic. At its worst, it’s tough to read. Luckily, the highs are far more frequent than the lows, and the book remains entertaining. 8/10
Quite narcissistic storytelling, but I guess that’s required in autobiography. The stories are fun, lighthearted, but the thing I really loved about this book it’s his thought process and scientific approach towards different aspects of his life
A lot of reviews on this site say that Mr. Feynman sounds like a selfish man, who takes pleasure in the pain and misfortune of others. Ican certainly see how, but I really enjoyed his view on science and education.
Wow! Feynman was a douchebag despite his genius and talent in physics. The books is a loose collection of some stories happened to him. Must of them goes like this: he does something super genius , and people are like “no you didn’t”, and he shows them and the bow to him and his glory! I didn’t know it was possible to be this douche and genius at the same time! And I don’t think some of them actually happened! Some of them sounded like invention of his imagination! The book has some sexist/male chauvinist stories of him where he learn from a “master” that the way ti get the attention of a lady is to accuse her of “being a whore”! This is not something that you would expect coming from a “genius”. Other than that, the book is badly written, he jumps around from period ms of his life, one time he is talking about his first wife, then he starts telling another story where he mentions his second wife, and similar stuff! I can not understand so high average score!!! People are overestimating the book. It can gets maximum a 2 from me. I can not recommend this book.
Enjoyable from start to finish... This book tells the life of a man who appears to have done it all and achieved in every aspect. If you have even a mild interest in science or the people who worked on the Manhattan Project then definitely pick this up. The chapters are written like anecdotes roughly ordered chronologically, which makes it easy to jump in and out of Mr Feynman's adventures. Highly recommended.
Feynman was clearly a very passionate man when it came to science, and the scientific method. Obsessive about figuring out the result himself. This book is funny and interesting. Whilst I don't think many of his morals or principles would stand up to the scrutiny of today, there are lessons in this book that could benefit us still.
I think that these are:
- Do the work to prove things to yourself it is fundamental in creating and maintaining an understanding.
- Play with the things that hold your intellectual curiosity.
I guess I went into this book expecting something that it wasn't. I read this with a book club and was expecting something a bit more biographic than what I was given. Rather than it laid out like a life story, it came off more like grandpa at the Thanksgiving table telling you the same sorts of embellished stories he's told you every year previous. Sure they're amusing anecdotes to a certain degree, but it's definitely not biographic. If you take everything you read here at face value the guy clearly led an extremely varied life, which is more than I can say for myself. But the difference here is that, while I maybe lead a boring life in comparison, I'm not quite the quirky jerk that Mr. Feynman was in many of the stories laid out here. Many (most?) of the anecdotes here hinge on Mr. Feynman pulling one over on someone else, and reveling in how much more clever he is than everyone around him. It was funny in the beginning, but quickly got old for me. I also thought his views on women around him were problematic, and while an argument can be made about him being a product of his time, it's never too late for improvement and self reflection. You won't find a lot of either here.
Prior to reading this book, I assumed it was all going to be physics, physics and physics. Boy was I proved wrong. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether you like science or not.
What a character! Richard Feynman was not just a gifted scientist, but a great storyteller and allround charismatic guy. As a research Engineer, I can honestly say that such a confluence of scientifc and social skills is rare, particular at this level. Feynman is my hero and this book explains why....
I don't care how much of a genius he was, this is a book that teaches boys (clearly the target audience) in tech/sciences that it's ok to manipulate people who are less clever than themselves.
This book is a nice collection of adventures of a Nobel laureate. The passion of author, his love for physics and an attitude to discover rings for himself will inspire everyone!
I rarely read biographies, but this is an uncommonly good collection of anecdotes from an amazing life that both offers insight into one of the greatest scientific minds of our time while managing to be wholly entertaining. I would recommend this book to any fan of Richard Feynman, or really to anyone who can appreciate a sense of humor in a nobel laureate.
The book is awesome. It deals with personal adventures of Dr. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate and lot more. The adventure goes on in different fields- learning, teaching, the Manhattan Project, playing drums, drawing nudes, Quantum Electrodynamics, topless bars, Nobel Prize and more! This book is a must read for passionate science students, scientists and anyone who is interested in 'living' life differently. It will definitely teach how to perceive life from a complete different perspective. I am so much interested in this man now, I am currently reading "What Do You Care What Other People Think: Further Adventures of A Curious Character."
Great book. Most of the things that Mr. Feynman talks about are much beyond my level of understanding.
Great book. It's a very fun read, but more than that it shows you how much you can achieve by constantly challenging yourself. Recommend it to everyone.
Não gostei do estilo, ainda que me tenha rido com algumas histórias, o tom cómico acaba por marcar o discurso de Feynman, reconhecido pela sua humildade, com um registo intenso de sobranceria. Reconheço no entanto que o teria sentido diferentemente se o tivesse lido em 1985, não apenas pela idade que tinha nessa altura, mas por estarmos numa época bastante diferente. Estes problemas de sobranceria são mais marcante em histórias que tocam o seu génio ou então áreas científicas além da Física, com Feynman a chegar ao ponto de dizer que não quer nada com abordagens científicas interdisciplinares. Por outro lado, o livro que se pretendia como autobiográfico não dá conta de qualquer linha cronológica, surgindo as histórias de modo desorganizado e com variações temporais que colocam eventos em choque (ex. histórias com as diferentes esposas). Do mesmo modo, vários dos ataques científicos realizados por Feynman aqui relatados acabam ficando coxos quando em contraste Feynman abusa de observações baseadas em meras histórias pessoais. No essencial, temos um amontoado de pequenas histórias, por vezes engraçadas, por vezes entediantes, que nos dão acesso a uma parte de Feynman, mas acaba por apresentar o mesmo bastante à distância.
Great book. It's a very fun read, but more than that it shows you how much you can achieve by constantly challenging yourself. Recommend it to everyone.
goddamn this sexist piece of shit
Brilliant book!
After reading this book, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Feynman had a rich and varied life, or rather lives. Apart from being a Nobel Prize winning physicist he was a drummer, a teacher, a reviewer of mathematics curriculum for public school, a lock picker, a carnival performer and so much more. All of these things are unique in itself but what's common was his fierce desire to learn and try out new things without any inhibition of what people will think. Another point that stands out is that he's done all this before the advent of the internet or the smartphone. Achieving what he's done requires a constant battle with time, energy, money and place which I feel he has optimised very well into the life he led.
five stars means fine stars
Highlights
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I've thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn't do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It's not so easy to remind yourself of these things.
In physics, I said. 'Oh. Well, nobody knows anything about that, so I guess we can't talk about it.' ‘On the contrary,' I answered. ‘It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international financegold transfers we can't talk about, because those are understood-so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!' I don't know how they do it. There's a way of forming ice on the surface of the face, and she did it! She turned to talk to somebody else.
Feynman on meeting Princess Somebody of Denmark when he went to receive his Nobel Prize
So I have just one wish for you – the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.
His name is Jirayr Zorthian; he's an artist. We often had long discussions about art and science. I'd say things like, "Artists are lost: they don't have any subject! They used to have the religious subjects, but they lost their religion and now they haven't got anything. They don't understand the technical world they live in; they don't know anything about the beauty of the real world so they don't have anything in their hearts to paint." Jerry would reply that artists don't need to have a physical subject; there are many emotions that can be expressed through art. Besides, art can be abstract. Furthermore, scientists destroy the beauty of nature when they pick it apart and turn it into mathematical equations.
When you're young, you have all these things to worry about- should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then sonmething else comes up. It's much easier to just plain decide. Never mind – nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again-I had the solution to that problem. Anyway, I decided it would always be Caltech.
Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn'thave to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
Finally there came in the mail an invitation from the Institute for Advanced Study: Einstein...von Neumann... Wyl...all these great minds! They write to me, and invite me to be a profes-sor there! And not just a regular professor. Somehow they knewmy feelings about the Institute: how it's too theoretical; how there’s not enough real activity and challenge. So they write, "We appreciate that you have a considerable interest in experiments and in teaching, so we have made arrangements to create a special type of professorship, if you wish: half professor at Princeton University, and half at the Institute." Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A positionbetter than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd! It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up toa point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it. And then I thought to myself, "You know, what they think ofyou is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!" It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake. not my failing.
One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an evaluation committee thathad to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabiand Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, andso they'd ask me questions and talk about it. In these discus-sions one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say,well, maybe, but there's this other possibility we have to consider against it. So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn't repeat and emphasize his point. Finally, at the end, Tolman, who's the chairman, would say, "Well, having heard all these arguments, I guess it'strue that Compton's argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead." It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end,the decision is made as to which idea was the best - summing it all up - without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.
I tried to explain — it was my own aunt — that there was no reason not to do that, but you can't say that to anybody who's smart, who runs a hotel! I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.
I think it‘s more change that is difficult. Oftentimes innovation brings change.
There were certain things I didn't like, such as tipping. I thought we should be paid more, and not have to have any tips. But when I proposed that to the boss, I got nothing but laughter. She told everybody, "Richard doesn't want his tips, hee, hee, hee; he doesn't want his tips, ha, ha, ha." The world is full of this kind of dumb smart-alec who doesn't understand anything.
Amen.
I wouldn't stop until I figured the damn thing out—it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. But during the day, other guys would come to me with the same problem, and I'd do it for them in a flash. So for one guy, to do it took me twenty minutes, while there were five guys who thought I was a super-genius.
One night my mother and father came home from a night out and very, very quietly, so as not to disturb the child, opened the door to come into my room to take my earphones of. All of a sudden this tremendous bell went off with a helluva racket BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG!!! I jumped out of bed yelling, "It worked! It worked!"