The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman FROM THE PUBLISHER
Richard Feynman was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century - from his work on the atomic bomb to his solution to the puzzle of the Challenger disaster. Feynman helped to shape the world as we know it. Nobel laureate, iconoclastic icon, caring family man, amateur artist, and professional musician (in a Rio de Janeiro samba band), Feynman was a man of many dimensions.. "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a treasury of the best of Feynman's short works - from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles.
FROM THE CRITICS
Edward Neuert - Salon
How strange that the popular image of one of the greatest minds of the century rests so heavily on a flimsy set piece involving a glass of ice water and a scrap of rubber. But Richard Feynman is fixed in the memories of many non-scientists as the iconoclast on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the space shuttle Challenger explosion -- the lab geek with the crazy hair who, in the middle of a hearing, cut through the bureaucratic obfuscation to perform his own telling experiment.
Knowing that flexibility was crucial to the rubber o-ring's ability to contain the intense heat of the shuttle's solid-fuel boosters, Feynman immersed a piece of the material in a glass of ice water on the hearing-room table -- showing simply and clearly that the ring had lost its ability to flex on the cold January morning of the Challenger's launch. "Feynman," commission chair William Rogers is reported to have whispered to a colleague, "is becoming a real pain."
This Mr. Wizard Goes to Washington performance nicely summed up the public Richard Feynman: genius, rule-breaker, simplifier of the seemingly complex. And this was a guy who knew from complex. Winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in reconstructing the theory of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was recruited to the Manhattan Project while he was still in his early 20s. But unlike most people with intimate knowledge of subatomic particles, Feynman could function and communicate in the world of large, everyday objects.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a new gathering of Feynman pieces, is as illuminating, pleasurable and frustrating as the scientist himself. Subtitled "The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman," the book presents a baker's dozen pieces culled from a career's worth of lectures, reports, interviews and articles. Feynman discourses on the philosophy of science, the relationship of science to religion and the world of the top-secret Los Alamos lab. The collection also gives us Feynman's prescient looks at "the future" that has become our present, seen most strongly in his groundbreaking 1959 Cal Tech lecture on the possibilities of miniaturization. Reading Feynman's Cal Tech musings on possible ways to build tiny electrical circuits makes you feel you are witnessing the birth of the silicon chip, and you pretty much are. Just as affecting in different ways are his descriptions of his father -- who encouraged Feynman's boyish scientific curiosity with "no pressure, just lovely interesting discussions" -- and an account of the physicist's deep despair after the product of interesting discussions at Los Alamos had twice been dropped on Japan.
Feynman was a world-class talker who seemingly had little time or patience for mundane rewrite work. So a large portion of this book consists of spoken-word transcriptions that could have benefited from the clarifying process of editing. Quite a few have already been edited, in fact, and appeared some years ago, polished up in two as-told-to books: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? To say Feynman needed an editor may be heresy to his disciples, who rival Bucky Fullerites in their level of devotion. But I'd hazard a guess that the man himself would be pleased to know, 11 years after his death, that he's still capable of being both a pain and a pleasure, and much more the latter.
Publishers Weekly
A Nobel-winning physicist, inveterate prankster and gifted teacher, Feynman (1918-1988) charmed plenty of contemporary and future scientists with accounts of his misadventures in the bestselling Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and explained the fundamentals of physics in (among other books) Six Easy Pieces. Editor Jeffrey Robbins's assemblage of 13 essays, interviews and addresses (only one of them new to print) will satisfy admirers of those books and other fans of the brilliant and colorful scientist. Best known among the selections here is certainly Feynman's "Minority Report to the Challenger Inquiry," in which the physicist explained to an anxious nation why the Space Shuttle exploded. The title piece transcribes a wide-ranging, often-autobiographical interview Feynman gave in 1981; an earlier talk with Omni magazine has the author explaining his prize-winning work on quantum electrodynamics, then fixing the interviewer's tape recorder. Other pieces address the field of nanotechnology, "The Relation of Science and Religion" and Feynman's experience at Los Alamos, where he helped create the A-bomb (and, in his spare time, cracked safes). Much of the work here was originally meant for oral delivery, as speeches or lectures: Feynman's talky informality can seduce, but some of the pieces read more like unedited tape transcripts than like science writing. Most often, however, Feynman remains fun and informative. Here are yet more comments, anecdotes and overviews from a charismatic rulebreaker with his own, sometimes compelling, views about what science is and how it can be done. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
It is an ironic twist of fate that Feynman the iconoclast has become a 20th-century icon. Feynman has a large and devoted following not because of his famous hijinks, or his skill as a bongo drum performer, or even his Nobel Prize in quantum electrodynamics. Feynman became an icon because he was a man of great integrity who did physics because it was fun. This collection of 13 short works is a pleasure to read--the editor has chosen not to correct any of Feynman's grammar or idiosyncratic phraseology. Intended for a general audience, these lectures and presentations cover a wide range of topics, including his early life, philosophy, religion, nanotechnology, the future of computing, Los Alamos, fun with science, science and society, and the Challenger disaster. Recommended for public as well as academic institutions.--James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Comprises 13 piecesinterviews, speeches, lectures, and printed articleson all sorts of topics, by the inimitable physicist. Many (most) are available elsewhere, but it's fun to have them collected here. Freeman Dyson provides the foreword; editor Robbins briefly introduces the collection and each selection. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Graham Farmelo - Nature
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a delightful reminder of Feynman's prodigious gifts. On the book's inside cover, among the encomia to his talents as a communicator and a scientist, the writer John Gribbin asserts that he "was certainly the greatest physicist, and possibly the greatest scientist, to be born in the twentieth century."Read all 6 "From The Critics" >
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Feynman at his idiosyncratic, brilliant best. — John Horgan, author of The Undiscovered Mind
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