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

and

others;

from

Feynman’s

1951

correspondence with Fermi; from Brownel 1952; from Feynman’s talk “The Problem of Teaching Physics in Latin America” (1963a), and from publications of the Centra Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas. Documentation of the government’s secret scrutiny of Feynman and of his consultation with the State Department on the advisability of travel to the Soviet Union came through my Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, CIA, Department of the Army, and Department of Energy in 1988 and 1989. Some of the State Department correspondence is also in CIT. On superfluidity, Robert Schrieffer, Hans Bethe, Michael Fisher, and Russel Donnel y were especial y helpful.

Donnel y sent written reminiscences by several col eagues.

Andronikashvili 1990 is a remarkable memoir from the Russian perspective. For the particle physics of the 1950s and 1960s: the Rochester conference proceedings; John Polkinghorne’s

witty

memoir

(1989)

and

Jeremy

Bernstein’s “informal history” (1989); Robert Marshak’s account (1970); Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson’s

account (1970); Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson’s symposium

proceedings Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s; and interviews with the various scientists cited. Again, some material on personal relationships is based on letters and interviews that I cannot cite specifical y for reasons of privacy. Feynman’s thinking on gravitation can be seen in a fifteen-page letter to Victor Weisskopf written in January and February 1961 (WHE) and in his Faraday lecture (1961b), as wel as his one published paper (1965b) and various lecture notes in CIT.

The development of quarks and partons has been wel chronicled from different points of view by Andrew Pickering (1984) and Michael Riordan (1987); Feynman kept his notes from this period in unusual y good order (CIT); Riordan and Burton Richter provided useful on-site guidance at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; James Bjorken, George Zweig, Sidney Drel , Yung-Su Tsai, and, of course, Murray Gel -Mann were among those with especial y helpful reminiscences. For the record of Feynman’s il nesses I relied on notes and correspondence in his files and interviews with Drs. C. M. Haskel , Wil iam C. Bradley, and In Chang Kim. For the investigation into the Challenger accident: the hearing transcripts and documentation as published in the commission report; Feynman’s personal notes and commission memorandums (CIT and PERS); Ralph Leighton’s unedited transcript of Feynman’s oral account (later published in WDY); interviews with commissioners, NASA officials and engineers, and others (only Wil iam P. Rogers refused to

make himself available, despite my repeated requests for an interview). Carl Feynman shared the manuscript of the paper Feynman was working on until he entered the hospital for the last time.

281 THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: J. Goodstein 1991, 180.

281 PASADENA IS TEN MILES FROM LOS ANGELES: Morrow Mayo, quoted in Scheid 1986, 156.

281 EVERY LUNCHEON, EVERY DINNER: Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, 6 March 31, quoted in J. Goodstein 1991, 100.

282 COULD IT BE THAT NITROGEN HAS TWO LEVELS: F-W, 559.

282 DEAR FERMI: Feynman to Enrico Fermi, 19 December 1951; Fermi to Feynman, 18 January 1952 and 28 April 1952, AIR Some of Feynman’s meson work that year emerges in Lopes and Feynman 1952.

282 DON’T BELIEVE ANY CALCULATION: Feynman to Fermi, 19

December 1951.

283 IN RECENT YEARS SEVERAL NEW PARTICLES: Fermi and Yang 1949, 1739. 283 HE COULD SPEND DAYS AT THE

BEACH: Lopes, personal communication.

283 I WISH I COULD ALSO REFRESH: Fermi to Feynman, 18

January 1952, AIR

283 FEYNMAN TAUGHT BASIC ELECTROMAGNETISM: Feynman 1963a.

284 LIGHT IMPINGING ON A MATERIAL: Ibid., 26.

284 BUT WHEN HE ASKED WHAT WOULD HAPPEN: SYJ, 192.

284 THEY COULD DEFINE “TRIBOLUMINESCENCE": Even in his

sixties he continued to consider ways of intensifying this phenomenon in the substances he described as “WL

(Wint-o-green Lifesavers) and S (sucrose).” Feynman to J. Thomas Dick-enson, 13 May 1985, CIT.

284 HAVE YOU GOT SCIENCE?: SYJ, 197.

284 WHAT ARE THE FOUR TYPES OF TELESCOPE? : Feynman 1963a, 24.

284 HE WOULD SIT IDLY AT A CAFÉ TABLE : Joan Feynman, interview.

284 GIVES A FEELING OF STABILITY: Feynman 1963a, 24.

285 PHILIP MORRISON, WHO SHARED AN OFFICE: Morrison, interview.

286 HE JOINED A LOCAL SCHOOL: SYJ, 185.

286

IN

THE

1952 CARNEVAL:

Lopes,

personal

communication.

287 HE HEARD FROM HARDLY ANYONE: F-W, 564; Feynman to Oppenheimer, 27 May 1952, OPR

287 HE HAUNTED THE MIRAMAR HOTEL’S OUTDOOR PATIO BAR : Bertram J. Col cutt to Feynman, 2 December 1985, CIT.

287 HE TOOK OUT PAN AMERICAN STEWARDESSES: SYJ, 183–

84.

287 THE OLD CERTAINTIES OF THE PAST: Mead 1949, 4.

289 TELL ME WHAT IT IS LIKE: Michels 1948, 16.

290 It SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU GO TO LOTS OF TROUBLE: Feynman, note, n.d., PERS.

290 HOW IS IT POSSIBLE: SYJ, 168.

290 YOU ARE WORSE THAN A WHORE: Ibid., 169–70.

292 EVEN BEFORE THEY MARRIED, THEY QUARRELED: Mary

Louise Bel to Feynman, 30 May 1950 and 24 March 1952, PERS.

292 THE PATTERN IS THAT THE GIRL : Bel to Feynman, 26

February 1952, PERS.

292 THEY HONEYMOONED IN MEXICO: SYJ, 286.

292 SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO THINK: Mary Louise Bel , telephone interview.

292 SHE LIKED TO TELL PEOPLE: Bel , interview.

292 WHERE THERE’S SMOKE THERE’S FIRE: Gel -Mann, interview.

2 9 3 HAS WILFULLY, WRONGFULLY : Complaint for Divorce, 6

June 1956, Superior Court, Los Angeles County. “Final Adjustment of Property Settlement,” handwritten agreement, 16 October 1956, PERS.

293 THE DRUMS MADE TERRIFIC NOISE: “Beat Goes Sour: Calculus and African Drums

Bring Divorce,” Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1956.

293 BEGGING FOR HIS OLD JOB BACK: Feynman to Bethe, 26

November 1954, BET.

293 SOON AFTERWARD, SOMEONE RUSHED UP: SYJ, 211–12.

293 MEANWHILE, ALTHOUGH BETHE HAD BEEN THRILLED: Bethe to Feynman, 3 December 1954, BET.

2 9 4 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO DECIDED: Goldberger, interview; SYJ, 213.

295 A HOST OF APPLIED SCIENCES: Cf. Forman 1987 and Kevles 1990.

295 WHEN SCIENCE IS ALLOWED TO EXIST: DuBridge, quoted in Forman 1987.

295 THESE WERE NOT SO MUCH CRUMBS: As the leading

experimentalist Luis Alvarez told the physicist and historian Abraham Pais: “Right after the war we had a blank check from the military because we had been so successful. Had it been otherwise we would have been vil ains. As it was we never had to worry about money.”

Pais 1986, 19.

295 IN 1954 THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY: Minutes of Executive Session, Army Scientific Advisory Panel, 17

November 1954, CIT; F-W, 599–601.

295 HOT DOC: Feynman to Lucil e Feynman, n.d., PERS.

295 THE PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CAME: “Einstein Award to Professor, 35,” New York Times, 14 March 1954; F-W, 673.

296 THE AEC BEGAN FOUR WEEKS OF HEARINGS: Atomic Energy Commission 1954.

296 YOU SHOULD NEVER TURN A MAN’S GENEROSITY: A decade later, he was uncomfortable with his decision. “I knew what had happened to Oppenheimer, and that Strauss had something to do with it, and I didn’t like it…. O.K.?

And I thought—I’m going to fix him. I mean, I was not nice. I don’t want to take it from him. The hel with it. And I thought: maybe I won’t take the prize. Al right? And I worried about it, because in a certain sense I felt that was unfair. The guy is offering the money—you know, he’s trying to do something nice— and it isn’t that he just did it because of this, because he’s done it before.