Richard Phillips Feynman was a brilliant theoretical physicist who, together with Julian S. Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomonaga, won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics for his fundamental work in the principles of quantum electrodynamics. His many important contributions to physics include the invention of simple diagrams to represent particle interactions graphically, the theory of the weak interaction of subatomic particles, a reformulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of superfluid helium, and his contribution to physics education through the magnificent three-volume text The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
Feynman did his undergraduate work at MIT and received his PhD in 1942 from Princeton University. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project first at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1945 and was appointed professor of physics at California Institute of Technology in 1950, where he remained for the rest of his career.
Feynman had a passion for finding new and better ways to formulate each problem, or, as he would say, "turning it around." In the early part of his career, he was fascinated with electrodynamics and developed an intuitive view of quantum electrodynamics. Convinced that the electron could not interact with its own field, he said, "That was the beginning, and the idea seemed so obvious to me that I fell deeply in love with it . . . ." Often called the outstanding intuitionist of our age, he said in his Nobel acceptance speech, "Often, even in a physicist's sense, I did not have a demonstration of how to get all of these rules and equations, from conventional electrodynamics . . . I never really sat down, like Euclid did for the geometers of Greece, and made sure that you could get it all from a single set of axioms."
In 1986, Feynman was a member of the presidential commission to investigate the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. In this capacity, he performed for the commission members a simple experiment that showed that one of the shuttle's O-ring seals was the likely cause of the disaster. After placing a seal in a pitcher of ice water and squeezing it with a clamp, he demonstrated that the seal failed to spring back into shape once the clamp was removed.1
Feynman worked in physics with a style commensurate with his personality, that is, with energy, vitality, and humor. The following quotes from some of his colleagues are characteristic of the great impact he made on the scientific community.2
"A brilliant, vital, and amusing neighbor, Feynman was a stimulating (if sometimes exasperating) partner in discussions of profound issues–we would exchange ideas and silly jokes in between bouts of mathematical calculation–we struck sparks off each other, and it was exhilarating." Murray Gell-Mann
"Reading Feynman is a joy and a delight, for in his papers, as in his talks, Feynman communicated very directly, as though the reader were watching him derive the results at the blackboard." David Pines
"He loved puzzles and games. In fact, he saw all the world as a sort of game, whose progress of "behavior" follows certain rules, some known, some unknown . . . Find places or circumstances where the rules don't work, and invent new rules that do." David L. Goodstein
"Feynman was not a theorist's theorist, but a physicist's physicist and a teacher's teacher." Valentine L. Telegdi
Laurie M. Brown, one of his graduate students at Cornell, noted that Feynman, a playful showman, was "undervalued at first because of his rough manners, who in the end triumphs through native cleverness, psychological insight, common sense and the famous Feynman humor. . . . Whatever else Dick Feynman may have joked about, his love for physics approached reverence."
1 Feynman's own account of this inquiry can be found in Physics Today, 4:26, February 1988.
2 For more on Feynman's life and contributions, see the numerous articles in a special memorial issue of Physics Today 42, February 1989. For a personal account of Feynman, see his popular autobiographical books, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, New York, Bantam Books, 1985, and What Do You Care What Other People Think, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1987