Genius_ The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick [274]
146 LATER HE REMEMBERED: F-W, 281.
146 GREAT DIFFICULTIES HAVE ARISEN: Feynman 1942a.
146 MESON FIELD THEORIES HAVE BEEN SET UP: Feynman 1942b, 1 n.
146 DERIVED CONCEPT: Feynman 1942a.
146 WE CAN TAKE THE VIEWPOINT: Ibid.
147 IS IN FACT INDEPENDENT OF THAT THEORY: Feynman 1942b, 5.
147 WHEN HE WAS DONE: Wheeler and Wigner 1942.
147 FEYNMAN CONCLUDED WITH A BLUNT CATALOG: Feynman 1942b, 73–74.
147 IN THE MATHEMATICS WE MUST DESCRIBE: Ibid.
148 HONORARY ELECTRICIAN’S LICENSE: Feynman to George W. Beadle, 4 January 67, CIT. Turning down the first honorary degree he was offered, he told the president of the University of Chicago that he remembered “the guys on the same platform receiving honorary degrees without work—and felt an ‘honorary degree’ was a debasement of the idea of a ‘degree which confirms certain work has been accomplished.’ … I swore then that if by chance 1 was ever offered one I would not accept it. Now at last (25 years later) you have given me a chance to carry out my vow.”
148 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE: Flick 1903, 289.
148 MANY A YOUNG CONSUMPTIVE MOTHER: Ibid., 288.
148 MARRIAGE IS APT TO BE: Underwood 1937, 342.
149 THEY WERE BOTH SO YOUNG: Solomon 1952, 122.
150 YOUR HEALTH IS IN DANCER: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, “Why I object to your marriage to Arline at this time,” n.d,, PERS.
150 HE TOLD HIS FATHER: Feynman to Melville Feynman, 15 June 1942, PERS.
150 BUT JUST A FEW DAYS LATER: Feynman to Lucille Feynman, “Why I want to get married,” June 1942, PERS.
150 IN NO TIME FLAT: Arline Greenbaum to Feynman, June 1942, PERS.
151 SHE WALKED DOWN: Jules Greenbaum, telephone interview.
151 THEY MARRIED IN A CITY OFFICE: WDY, 42–43.
151 FEARFUL OF CONTAGION: “I knew not to kiss her… because the disease, I was afraid to catch it” (F-L); by contrast, the edited version, in SYJ, 43, says that Feynman, “bashful,” kissed Arline on the cheek.
LOS ALAMOS
I did not seek the security clearance necessary to make direct use of the archives of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; however, the archives eventually provided a body of declassified material, including the notebook Feynman began keeping in his first days on the site, portions of his personnel record, and many technical documents—critical-mass calculations, analyses of computing issues, and notes and diagrams from Feynman’s inspections of the Oak Ridge plant. Lillian Hoddeson and Gordon Baym shared their interview with Feynman about many of his classified notes. Also declassified is Feynman’s manuscript for the account of the theoretical-physics division in what became the Smyth report, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, and a related correspondence between Smyth, Oppenheimer, and Groves. Mary D. Lee had preserved a copy of Feynman’s 9 August 1945 letter to his mother, describing the Trinity test. Feynman had saved Arline’s personal papers, including their correspondence, her correspondence with her family, and other items. Much has been written about the Manhattan Project and the scientists who participated in it. Still, one or two things may remain to be said. Many individual memoirs are available. The best overall history is Richard Rhodes’s Making of the Atomic Bomb. Hawkins et al. 1983 is extremely useful for its technical detail. If there was ever a time when eyewitness accounts could be obtained uncontaminated by hindsight and by many previous tellings, it is long past. I reinterviewed some participants and friends of Feynman anyway (Bethe, Weisskopf, Wilson, Olum, Welton, Rose Bethe, Philip Morrison, Robert Bacher, Robert Christy,
Robert Walker, Dorothy Walker). Nicholas Metropolis expanded on his published recollections of the laboratory’s nascent computer science. Other sources on computation include Alt 1972, Asprey 1990, Bashe et al. 1986, Goldstine 1972, Nash 1990, and Williams 1985. Feynman retold his best stories in a talk (1975) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The tone of his letters in 1945–45 is very different, and I have relied most heavily on these.
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