Джеймс Глик - Genius - The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

226 WE NEED AN INTUITIVE LEAP: Princeton University 1946, 15.

226 FEYNMAN LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW: F-W, 437.

226 HE HAD A QUESTION: Ibid., 272–73 and 437; Feynman 1948a, 378. Feynman cared about this detail of historical priority. He later emphasized it in his Nobel lecture: “I thought I was finding out what Dirac meant, but, as a matter of fact, had made the discovery that what Dirac thought was analogous, was, in fact, equal”

(NL, 10). Schwinger, however, in a tribute delivered at a memorial service to Feynman, made a subtle point of

dismissing the possibility that Dirac might not have understood the implications of his paper: “Now, we know, and Dirac surely knew, that to a constant factor the ‘correspondence’ … is an equality…. Why, then, did Dirac not make a more precise, if less general, statement? Because he was interested only in a general question.” Schwinger 1989, 45.

226

OPPENHEIMER

HAD

INVITED

HIM:

Feynman

to

Oppenheimer, 5 November 1946, CIT

226 THE CHAIRMAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA’S

PHYSICS DEPARTMENT: G. P. Harnwel to Bethe, 25

February 1947, and Bethe to Harnwel , 4 March 1947, BET.

227 OPPENHEIMER HAD NOW BEEN NAMED: SYJ, 155; Smyth to Feynman, 23 October 1946 and 22 April 1947, CIT.

227 HE EXPERIMENTED WITH VARIOUS TACTICS: F-W, 426.

227 FOR A MOMENT HE FELT LIGHTER: Ibid., 427–28.

227 DON’T WORRY SO MUCH: SYJ, 156; F-W, 428.

227 A CORNELL CAFETERIA PLATE : F-W, 430; SYJ, 157. Also, Benjamin Fong Chao, “Feynman’s Dining Hal Dynamics,” letter, Physics Today, February 1989, 15.

228 WELTON WAS NOW WORKING: Welton, interview.

228 I AM ENGAGED NOW: Feynman to Welton, 10 February 1947, CIT.

228 I AM FEYNMAN: Pais 1986, 23.

229 SPIN WAS A PROBLEM: Schweber 1986a, 469.

229 NO WONDER HIS EYE: “Within a week, altogether, this question of the rotation [of the plate] started me worrying about rotations, and then old questions about

the spinning electron, and how to represent it in the path integrals and in the quantum mechanics, and I was in my work again. It just opened the gate.” F-W, 430.

230 FEYNMAN DID NOT ATTEMPT TO PUBLISH: F-W, 444.

230 THE CHALLENGE WAS TO EXTEND: Ibid., 443; Schweber 1986a, 472.

232 THINKING I UNDERSTAND GEOMETRY: Feynman to Barbara Kyle, 20 October 1965, CIT.

232 THE LAST EIGHTEEN YEARS: K. K. Darrow diary, 14 April 1947, AIP.

232 THEORETICIANS WERE IN DISGRACE: Gel -Mann 1983a, 3.

232 THE THEORY OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES: Weisskopf 1947.

233 SO TWO DOZEN SUIT-JACKETED PHYSICISTS: Schweber 1983, 313.

233 WHEN THEY GATHERED FOR BREAKFAST: Robert Marshak, telephone interview.

233 IT IS DOUBTFUL IF THERE HAS EVER BEEN: Stephen White,

“Top Physicists Map Course at Shelter Island,” New York Herald Tribune, 3 June 1947, 23.

233 FEYNMAN TRIED HIS METHODS OUT: Pais 1986, 452.

2 3 4 A CLEAR VOICE, GREAT RUSH OF WORDS: K. K. Darrow diary, 14 April 1947, AIP.

234 LAMB HAD GONE TO BED: Lamb 1980, 323.

234 TO SCHWINGER, LISTENING: Schwinger 1983, 337.

234 THE FACTS WERE INCREDIBLE: Quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

234 AS THE MEETING ADJOURNED: Schwinger 1983, 332.

Shortly afterward he was married; or, as he put it, “I abandoned my bachelor quarters and embarked on an

abandoned my bachelor quarters and embarked on an accompanied, nostalgic trip around the country that would occupy the whole summer.”

234 DEBACLE: Polkinghome 1989, 12.

235 IT WAS HARDLY A COMMON NAME: Morrison, interview.

235 WHAT THEY DID THERE: Michel Baranger, interview. New York.

235 I EXPECT HER TO BE: Alice Dyson, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

235 I, SIR PHILLIP ROBERTS: Sir Philip Roberts’s Erolunar Collision, in Dyson 1992, 3–4.

236 HE READ POPULAR BOOKS: Dyson 1979, 12.

236 THAT SAME YEAR, FRUSTRATED: Schweber, forthcoming.

236 SHE CONTINUED BY TELLING HIM: Dyson 1979, 15.

236 AT CAMBRIDGE HE HEARD: Brower 1978, 16.

236 DYSON’S WAR: Dyson 1979, 19–21.

237 AMONG THE BOOKS: Ibid., 4.

237 MY WISH FOR SOMETHING TO SERVE: D. H. Lawrence, Study of Thomas Hardy, quoted in Dyson 1988, 125.

237 THE NEWS OF HIROSHIMA: Brower 1978, 20.

237 YEARS LATER, WHEN DYSON: Ibid., 24.

238 BY HIS SOPHOMORE YEAR: Dyson 1987.

238 PROFESSOR LITTLEWOOD: Dyson 1944; Dyson, interview.

238 I AM LEAVING PHYSICS FOR MATHEMATICS : Kac 1985, xxiii; Dyson, interview.

238 HE PLAYED HIS FIRST GAME OF POKER: “… and found I was rather good at it,” he wrote his parents, 11 June 1948.

238 HE EXPERIENCED THE AMERICAN FORM: Dyson to parents,

11 June 1948.

238 WE GO THROUGH SOME WILD COUNTRY: Dyson to parents, 19 November 1947.

239 HE HAS DEVELOPED A PRIVATE VERSION: Ibid.

239 HE TELEPHONED FEYNMAN: NL, 449.

239 IT WAS A BLUNT LOS ALAMOS-STYLE ESTIMATE: It diverged, but it only diverged logarithmical y, heading ever higher, but ever more slowly, like the series 1 + ½ + 1/3 + ¼ +

… —after a mil ion terms this has not even reached 15, but it never does stop rising. When the news reached Russia, the great Lev Landau said with obscure Slavic wisdom, “A chicken is not a bird, and a logarithm is not infinity.” Weinberg 1977a, 30; Sakharov 1990, 84.

239 BUT THEY DID NOT COINCIDE: Bethe, interview.

240 KRAMERS PROPOSED A METHOD: Bethe had also talked with Schwinger and Weis-skopf, both of whom had suggested forms of renormalization.

240 DYSON COULD SEE: Dyson, interview.

2 4 1 ONE-MAN PERCUSSION BAND: Dyson to parents, 19

November 1947.

241 DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE TWICE AS MANY NUMBERS: Henry Bethe to Gweneth, 17 February 1988, in WDY, 101.

241 FOR A WHILE, BECAUSE FEYNMAN: Dyson, interview. 241

HALF GENIUS AND HALF BUFFOON: Dyson to parents, 8

March 1948.

241 FEYNMAN IS A MAN WHOSE IDEAS: Dyson to parents, 15

March 1948.

2 4 2 THE THOUGHT THAT THE LAWS OF THE MACROCOSMOS: Quoted in Mil er 1984, 129.

242 WE ARE THEREFORE OBLIGED TO BE MODEST: Bohr 1922, 338.

242 JUST IMAGINE THE ROTATING ELECTRON: Quoted in Mil er 1984, 143.

242 I UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN AN ATOM: WDY, 18–19.

244 IT IS WRONG TO THINK THAT THE TASK: Quoted in Gregory 1988, 185.

244 FEYNMAN SAID TO DYSON: Dyson 1979, 62.

244 A C ORNELL DORMITORY NEIGHBOR: Theodore Schultz, interview, Yorktown Heights, NY.

244 SPACE IS A SWARMING IN THE EYES : Pencil note, CIT.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York: Vintage, 1990), 40.

244 WHAT I AM REALLY TRYING TO DO: F-Sch.

245 WHEN I START DESCRIBING: Lectures, I -20–3.

245 AT ANY RATE DIAGRAMS HAD BEEN RARE: See Mil er 1984.

246 WHEN HE FINALLY DID: Feynman 1948a.

247 HE STATED THE CENTRAL PRINCIPLE: Ibid., 367.

249 THE EDITORS NOW REJECTED THIS PAPER: Feynman and several other people recal ed this, although the journal has no record of it. E.g., F-W, 485; Baranger, interview.

249 THERE IS A PLEASURE: Feynman 1948a, 367.

249 HE LATER FELT THAT HE WAS BETTER KNOWN : Kac 1985, 115–16.

250 THE ELECTRON DOES ANYTHING: Quoted by Dyson in

“Comment on the Topic ‘Beyond the Black Hole,’” in Woolf 1980, 376.

250 FEYNMAN FELT THAT HE HAD UNCOVERED: Feynman 1948a, 377–78.

377–78.

250 THE TREACHEROUSLY INNOCENT EXERCISES: See QED.

251 SEMIEMPIRICAL SHENANIGANS: NL, 451; F-W, 459.

251 HE PROMISED BETHE AN ANSWER: NL, 449; F-W, 459.

251 WHEN FEYNMAN HEARD LATE IN THE FALL: F-W, 462 f.

251 GOD IS GREAT: Rabi to Bethe, 2 December 1947, and Bethe to Rabi, 4 December 1947, BET. Quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

2 5 2 THE SCHWINCER-WEISSKOPF-BETHE CAMP: Feynman to Corbens, 20 March 1948, CIT.