Genius_ The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick [280]
218 WHETHER HE WOULD SUCCEED: Robert Walker, interview.
218 IN AN ATOM BOMB: “Methods of Math Phys 405.”
218 ANNOUNCER: LAST WEEK DR. FEYNMAN: “The Scientist Speaks,” transcript, radio broadcast, WHCU, 26 April 1946, OPR
218 THE RAYS EMITTED: Ibid.
218 AT LOS ALAMOS HE HAD INVENTED: Hawkins et al. 1983, 308.
218 I BELIEVE THAT INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL: Feynman to Paul Hartman, 5 December 1945, PERS.
219 FLYING UPSIDE DOWN: Ibid.
220 HE RETURNED HOME AND OCCASIONALLY SNEAKED OUT: Joan Feynman, interview.
220 ONE DAY FEYNMAN SAW HIM: F-L.
220 IT IS NOT SO EASY FOR A DOPE: Melville Feynman to Feynman, 10 September 1944, PERS.
220 THE DREAMS I HAVE OFTEN HAD: Ibid.
221 ON FEYNMAN’S FACE WAS A LOOK: Joan Feynman, interview.
221 CORNELL’S 1946 FALL-TERM ENROLLMENT: Bishop 1962, 555.
221 D‘ARLINE, I ADORE YOU: Feynman to Arline Feynman, 17 October 1947, PERS.
223 FEYNMAN’S VERSION OF THE STORY: F-W, 620; SYJ, 137. The latter was dictated more than twenty years later but sometimes tracks the first version with uncanny, verbatim precision. The Selective Service files were destroyed, as the FBI discovered in assembling its dossier on Feynman. FOI.
226 FEYNMAN WAS INVITED: Princeton University 1946; F-W, 433–34; Wigner 1947; Feynman to Dirac, 23 July 1947, PERS.
226 DIRAC’S PAPER: Dirac 1946.
226 WE NEED AN INTUITIVE LEAP: Princeton University 1946, 15.
226 FEYNMAN LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW: F-W, 437.
226 HE HAD A QUESTION: Ibid., 272–73 and 437; Feynman 1948a, 378. Feynman cared about this detail of historical priority. He later emphasized it in his Nobel lecture: “I thought I was finding out what Dirac meant, but, as a matter of fact, had made the discovery that what Dirac thought was analogous, was, in fact, equal” (NL, 10). Schwinger, however, in a tribute delivered at a memorial service to Feynman, made a subtle point of dismissing the possibility that Dirac might not have understood the implications of his paper: “Now, we know, and Dirac surely knew, that to a constant factor the ‘correspondence’ … is an equality…. Why, then, did Dirac not make a more precise, if less general, statement? Because he was interested only in a general question.” Schwinger 1989, 45.
226 OPPENHEIMER HAD INVITED HIM: Feynman to Oppenheimer, 5 November 1946, CIT
226 THE CHAIRMAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA’S PHYSICS DEPARTMENT: G. P. Harnwell to Bethe, 25 February 1947, and Bethe to Harnwell, 4 March 1947, BET.
227 OPPENHEIMER HAD NOW BEEN NAMED: SYJ, 155; Smyth to Feynman, 23 October 1946 and 22 April 1947, CIT.
227 HE EXPERIMENTED WITH VARIOUS TACTICS: F-W, 426.
227 FOR A MOMENT HE FELT LIGHTER: Ibid., 427–28.
227 DON’T WORRY SO MUCH: SYJ, 156; F-W, 428.
227 A CORNELL CAFETERIA PLATE: F-W, 430; SYJ, 157. Also, Benjamin Fong Chao, “Feynman’s Dining Hall Dynamics,” letter, Physics Today, February 1989, 15.
228 WELTON WAS NOW WORKING: Welton, interview.
228 I AM ENGAGED NOW: Feynman to Welton, 10 February 1947, CIT.
228 I AM FEYNMAN: Pais 1986, 23.
229 SPIN WAS A PROBLEM: Schweber 1986a, 469.
229 NO WONDER HIS EYE: “Within a week, altogether, this question of the rotation [of the plate] started me worrying about rotations, and then old questions about the spinning electron, and how to represent it in the path integrals and in the quantum mechanics, and I was in my work again. It just opened the gate.” F-W, 430.
230 FEYNMAN DID NOT ATTEMPT TO PUBLISH: F-W, 444.
230 THE CHALLENGE WAS TO EXTEND: Ibid., 443; Schweber 1986a, 472.
232 THINKING I UNDERSTAND GEOMETRY: Feynman to Barbara Kyle, 20 October 1965, CIT.
232 THE LAST EIGHTEEN YEARS: K. K. Darrow diary, 14 April 1947, AIP.
232 THEORETICIANS WERE IN DISGRACE: Gell-Mann 1983a, 3.
232 THE THEORY OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES: Weisskopf 1947.
233 SO TWO DOZEN SUIT-JACKETED PHYSICISTS: Schweber 1983, 313.
233 WHEN THEY GATHERED FOR BREAKFAST: Robert Marshak, telephone interview.
233 IT IS DOUBTFUL IF THERE HAS EVER BEEN: Stephen White, “Top Physicists Map Course at Shelter Island,” New York Herald Tribune, 3 June 1947, 23.
233 FEYNMAN TRIED