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Genius_ The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick [291]

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CIT.

384 HE TURNED DOWN HONORARY DEGREES: George W. Beadle to Feynman, 4 January 1967, and William J. McGill to Feynman, 16 February 1976, CIT.

384 INTRODUCE A DRAFT OF FRESH AIR: Martin Mann to Feynman, 13 September 1962, and reply, CIT.

384 HE REFUSED TO SIGN PETITIONS: E.g., Feynman to Margaret Gardiner, 15 May 1967, CIT.

385 THE COMMENT YOU SENT BACK WITH OUR QUESTIONNAIRE: R. Hobart Ellis, Jr., to Feynman, 25 August 1966, and reply, CIT.

385 FEYNMAN HID BEHIND HER DOOR: Helen Tuck, interview, Pasadena.

385 A DISCRETIONARY KITTY: Goldberger, interview.

386 IT MUST HAVE BEEN VERY DIFFICULT: Holton, interview.

386 HANS BETHE TURNED SIXTY: R. E. Marshak to Feynman, 11 May 1965, and reply, CIT.

386 DON’T LET ANYBODY CRITICIZE: Feynman to James D. Watson, 10 February 1967, CIT.

387 IT IS OF COURSE A YANG-MILLS THEORY: Gell-Mann 1983a, 3.

387 BY THE WAY, SOME PEOPLE: Ibid.

388 THE POINT WAS HARDLY LOST: As Gell-Mann said at a memorial service for Feynman in 1989: “Everybody knows that Richard didn’t think one should be able to tell the difference between one bird and another…. He tried to show in yet another way that he could stand out from the herd—like not being a birdwatcher.” Talk at Feynman memorial, San Francisco, 18 January 1989.

388 SITS CALMLY BEHIND HIS DESK: Riordan 1987, 192.

389 MURRAY’S MASK WAS A MAN: Coleman, interview.

390 ZWEIG, FAR MORE VULNERABLE: Zweig 1981.

390 THEIR PALPITANT PIPING, CHIRRUP: Quoted in Crease and Mann 1986, 185.

391 THE CONCRETE QUARK MODEL: Zweig, interview.

391 IT IS FUN TO SPECULATE ABOUT THE WAY QUARKS: Gell-Mann 1964.

391 I ALWAYS CONSIDERED THAT TO BE A CODED MESSAGE: Polkinghome 1989, 110.

391 FOR GELL-MANN THIS BECAME: “People have deliberately misunderstood this for twenty-seven years.” Gell-Mann, interview.

391 I’VE ALWAYS TAKEN AN ATTITUDE: F-W, II-26.

391 AT FIRST HIS SYLLABUS CONTAINED: Zweig, interview; F-W, II-15.

392 A SINGLE BUBBLE CHAMBER: Traweek 1988, 52–53.

392 LIKE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT A POCKET WATCH: Quoted in Riordan 1987, 151–52.

392 THE PHYSICISTS WHO WOULD GATHER: Riordan 1987, 149.

393 HE ISOLATED A REMARKABLE REGULARITY: Bjorken 1989, 57; Bjorken, telephone interview.

393 OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY: “Each of the hypothetical point-like constituents of the nucleon that were invoked by R. P. Feynman to explain the way the nucleon inelastically scatters electrons of very high energy.” A Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, 279.

394 QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS HAD ITS PARTONS: Feynman 1969b, 241.

394 HE CHOSE NOT TO DECIDE: Feynman to Michael Riordan, 26 February 1986, CIT.

394 WHEN FEYNMAN DIAGRAMS ARRIVED: Bjorken 1989, 56.

394 FEYNMAN TOOK ON A PROJECT IN 1970: Feynman et al. 1971.

395 CONVERTED INTO A QUARKERIAN: F-W, II-47.

395 A QUARK PICTURE MAY ULTIMATELY PERVADE: Feynman et al. 1971, 2727.

395 HE DISLIKED THE FANFARE: “These things were quarks and antiquarks (and sometimes gluons), but he didn’t want to call them by their names. At first, he wasn’t sure that that’s what they were, but as time went on it became clearer, and it annoyed me that he still didn’t acknowledge that he was talking about quarks. Eventually, some authors began to speak of ‘quark partons,’ but as if they were somehow different from ordinary current quarks.

“The so-called parton model was an approximate description of quarks and gluons that could apply in the appropriate high-energy limits if the interaction of the particles became weak at short distances (as turned out to be the case in quantum chromodynamics). Dick painted a naïve picture, which was taken not just as an approximation to an unknown theory, but as a kind of revealed truth.

“Physicists all over the world learned the ‘parton’ story, memorized it, and immediately began to use it to interpret experiments. In other words Dick has oversimplified the picture so that it could be used by everybody.” Gell-Mann, personal communication.

395 WE HAVE BUILT A VERY TALL HOUSE OF CARDS: Feynman 1972c.

395 I’M A LITTLE BIT FRUSTRATED: F-W, II-86.

396 QUIETLY NOMINATED GELL-MANN AND ZWEIG:

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