Genius_ The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick [265]
3 NOTHING IS CERTAIN: Feynman to Arline Feynman, 9 May 1945, PERS.
3 IT GNAWED AT HIM: Feynman 1975, 132.
3 WOMEN SIDLED AWAY: AIP, 423.
3 HALF GENIUS AND HALF BUFFOON: Freeman Dyson to his parents, 8 March 1948; Dyson, interview, Princeton, N.J.
4 NO TRANSCRIPT: John Archibald Wheeler made and later circulated several dozen pages of handwritten notes, however (Wheeler 1948).
5 PRINCIPLES: “Addresses,” notebook, PERS.
6 THE MOST BRILLIANT YOUNG PHYSICIST: “He is by all odds the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows this.” Smith and Weiner 1980, 268.
6 THE KEY EQUATION: Hans Bethe, interview, Ithaca, N.Y.
6 TWISTING A CONTROL KNOB: Victor Weisskopf had brought the trains from Russia. “He played the following game. The guy with the switches has to avoid an accident and the other one has to produce an accident. It was the most nervewracking game you can imagine, and Dick was absolutely into it. It didn’t matter which role he played.” Weisskopf, interview, Cambridge, Mass.
6 WHAT ABOUT THE EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE?: F-W, 471.
7 IS IT UNITARY?: Ibid., 472.
7 THIS WONDERFUL VISION OF THE WORLD: Dyson 1979, 62.
7 THANK GOD: W.H. Auden, “After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics,” Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York: Vintage, 1971), 214.
7 A POEM FEYNMAN DETESTED: Feynman to Mrs. Robert Weiner, 24 October 1967, CIT. Auden wrote, “This passion of our kind/For the process of finding out/Is a fact one can hardly doubt”—and Feynman resented his adding, “But I would rejoice in it more/If I knew more clearly what/We wanted the knowledge for.” Feynman said: “We want it so we can love Nature more… . A modern poet is directly confessing not understanding the emotional value of knowledge of nature.”
9 WE PUT OUR FOOT IN A SWAMP: Albert R. Hibbs, interview, Pasadena, Calif.
9 A LITTLE BIZARRE: Snow 1981, 142–43.
10 A SHALLOW WAY TO JUDGE: Morrison 1988, 42.
10 WE GOT THE INDELIBLE IMPRESSION: David Park, personal communication.
10 DICK COULD GET AWAY WITH A LOT: Sidney Coleman, interview, Cambridge, Mass.
10 FEYNMAN TRIED TO STAND ON HIS OWN: Kac 1985, 116.
10 THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF GENIUSES: Ibid., XXV.
11 ANGERED HIS FAMILY: E.g., Gweneth Feynman, interview, Altadena, Calif.; Gell-Mann 1989a, 50.
11 HE’S NO FEYNMAN, BUT: Morrison 1988, 42.
12 A HALF-SERIOUS DEBATE: Coleman, interview.
12 BOOK II, CHAPTER 41, VERSE 6: D. Goodstein 1989, 75.
13 PHILOSOPHERS ARE ALWAYS ON THE OUTSIDE: CPL, 173.
13 IT HAS NOT YET BECOME OBVIOUS: Feynman 1982, 471.
13 DO NOT KEEP SAYING TO YOURSELF: CPL, 129
13 NATURE USES ONLY THE LONGEST THREADS: Ibid., 34; draft, PERS.
15 AN OFFICIAL SECRECY ORDER: U. S. Department of Commerce Rescinding Order, 7 January 1966, CIT.
15 HE DID THE TRAINING IN STAGES: Ralph Leighton, interview, Pasadena.
16 A TWO-HANDED POLYRHYTHM: Theodore Schultz, interview, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
16 AN HONEST MAN: Schwinger 1989, 48.
FAR ROCKAWAY
Family members and childhood friends provided recollections and copies of correspondence from the 1920s and 1930s: Joan Feynman, Frances Lewine, Jules Greenbaum (Arline Greenbaum’s brother), Leonard Mautner, Jerry Bishop, Mary D. Lee, and Novera H. Spector. Far Rockaway High School and the Brooklyn Historical Society had records, school newspapers, Chamber of Commerce publications, and other useful documents from the period. Sali Ann Kriegsman and Charles Weiner kindly shared transcripts of oral-history interviews they had conducted with Lucille Feynman.
18 HE ASSEMBLED A CRYSTAL SET: F-W, 35.
18 WHEN ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS WERE RIGHT: SYJ, 5.
18 EINSTEIN WAS SHOWING: Einstein 1909.
18 IT SEEMS THAT THE AETHER: Weyl 1922, 172.
19 “THE SHADOW” and “UNCLE DON”: F-W, 35.
19 A COIL SALVAGED FROM A FORD: SYJ, 4.
19 STANDARD EMERGENCY PROCEDURE: Frances Lewine, interview, Washington, D.C., and Far Rockaway.
19 DANGLING HIS METAL WASTEBASKET: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, 8 August 1945, PERS.
19 HIS SISTER, JOAN: