[HN Gopher] The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
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The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964)
Author : rramadass
Score : 464 points
Date : 2026-02-10 11:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu)
| colmmacc wrote:
| Lesser known but possibly more relevant to most HN readers are
| Feynman's lectures on computation -
| https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Gentoomen%20Library/Extra/Richard... .
| There's some really great explanations in there of computability,
| information theory, entropy, thermodynamics, and more. Very
| little of it is now out-dated.
| jesuslop wrote:
| Interesting, he also talks about quantum computing (a first?):
| p. 191, "We now go on to consider how such a computer can also
| be built using the laws of quantum mechanics. We are going to
| write a Hamiltonian, for a system of interacting parts, which
| will behave in the same way as a large system in serving as a
| universal computer."
|
| p. 196: "In general, in quantum mechanics, the outgoing state
| at time t is e Ps[?] where Ps[?] is the input state, for a
| system with Hamiltonian H. To try to find, for a given special
| time t, the Hamiltonian which will produce M = e when M is such
| a product of non-commuting matrices, from some simple property
| of the matrices themselves, appears to be very difficult.
|
| We realize, however, that at any particular time, if we expand
| e out (as 1 + iHt - H2t2/2 + ...) we'll find the operator H
| operating an innumerable arbitrary number of times -- once,
| twice, three times, and so forth -- and the total state is
| generated by a superposition of these possibilities. This
| suggests that we can solve this problem of the composition of
| these A's in the following way..."
| dgfl wrote:
| Feynman is indeed often quoted among the first people to
| propose the idea of a quantum computer! This talk he gave in
| '81 is among the earliest discussion of why a quantum
| universe requires a quantum computer to be simulated [1]:
|
| > Can a quantum system be probabilisticaUy simulated by a
| classical (probabilistic, I'd assume) universal computer? In
| other words, a computer which will give the same
| probabilities as the quantum system does. If you take the
| computer to be the classical kind I've described so far, (not
| the quantum kind described in the last section) and there're
| no changes in any laws, and there's no hocus-pocus, the
| answer is certainly, No! This is called the hidden-variable
| problem: it is impossible to represent the results of quantum
| mechanics with a classical universal device.
|
| Another unique lecture is a 1959 one [2] about the potential
| of nanotechnology (not even a real thing back then). He
| speaks of directly manipulating atoms and building angstrom-
| scale engines and microscope with a highly unusual
| perspective, extremely fascinating for anyone curious about
| these things and the historical perspective. Even for
| Feynman's standards, this was a unique mix of topics and
| terminology. For context, the structure of DNA has been
| discovered about 5 years prior, and the first instruments
| capable of atomic imaging and manipulation are from at least
| the 80's.
|
| If you're captivated by this last one as I was, I can also
| recommend Greg Bear's novel "Blood Music". It doesn't explore
| the nanotechnology side much, but the main hook is biological
| cells as computers. Gets very crazy from there on.
|
| 1. https://s2.smu.edu/~mitch/class/5395/papers/feynman-
| quantum-... 2. https://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
| anoncow wrote:
| Are there Feynmans today making predictions which we scoff
| at.
| richardfeynman wrote:
| indeed there are.
| bryzaguy wrote:
| Talk about a cliffhanger
| dgfl wrote:
| Said by the man himself no less
| dgfl wrote:
| "There's plenty of space at the bottom" only really took
| off in popularity decades later. Feynman's
| accomplishments are undeniable, Nobel prize and all, but
| his celebrity status is given by other aspects of his
| personality. No Feynman equivalent I can think of is
| alive today. Perhaps Geoffrey Hinton and his views on the
| risk of AGI? He's far from the only one of course.
| jesuslop wrote:
| IBM (atoms) [1989]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_%28atoms%29
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| The quote is not suggesting a quantum computer can't be
| simulated classically, it can in fact, just slowly, by
| keeping track of the quantum state where n qubits is 2^n
| complex amplitudes.
|
| It relates more to the Bell results, that there doesn't
| exist a hidden variable system that's equivalent to QM.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| If you're into atomic physics and getting a feel for the
| intricate structure of the basic processes, the best find I
| had recently is this MIT course by Wolfgang Ketterle. The
| first lecture is an informal overview, and he gives vivid
| and detailed descriptions of the phenomena they can create
| and control now, like why we see different kinds of thing
| happening at very low temperatures: the atoms are moving
| past each other so slowly that it gives their wavefunctions
| time to overlap and interact, using intersecting lasers to
| create arrays of dimples in the electromagnetic field to
| draw in and hold single atoms, this kind of thing. It gives
| a more tangible insight into the quantum aspects of matter
| that can otherwise seem inscrutable
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agu68RGaoWM&list=PLUl4u3cNG
| P...
|
| He also got the Nobel prize in the 90s for making a Bose-
| Einstein condensate iirc.
| Isamu wrote:
| Apropos of Feynman on computing, the story of his time working
| at Thinking Machines Corp https://longnow.org/ideas/richard-
| feynman-and-the-connection...
|
| "For our first seminar he invited John Hopfield, a friend of
| his from CalTech, to give us a talk on his scheme for building
| neural networks. In 1983, studying neural networks was about as
| fashionable as studying ESP, so some people considered John
| Hopfield a little bit crazy. Richard was certain he would fit
| right in at Thinking Machines Corporation."
| mhh__ wrote:
| The Feynman lectures are obviously brilliant but think the
| computation lectures are probably a better display of Feynman's
| brilliance. It's quite stunning how up to date they are.
|
| Although that being said the rough outline of a field is
| usually worked out almost immediately after a consensus forms
| that it's "real" so to speak.
| chii wrote:
| The theory of computation hasn't changed a whole lot since
| those times - and feynman explains it very well to a laymen
| audience (which is what makes it great, as it's not filled
| with jargon).
| mkw5053 wrote:
| I was just talking to someone about Feynman's lectures on
| computation the other day. I really really enjoyed it. That's
| all.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| I feel like the section on primality testing with Fermat's test
| should at least make a shout out to Carmichael numbers and that
| for some inputs the probability you get a false positive result
| is 1.
| vmilner wrote:
| Unlike the commercial audio CDs of the lectures the recordings
| here have the chat before and after the lecture which is fun.
|
| My favourite lecture is the standalone "The Principle of Least
| Action" at
|
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html
|
| Audio:
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html#Ch19-audi...
| ontouchstart wrote:
| This one is my favorite too. I had the three volumes of
| hardcover copy.
|
| > Later chapters do not depend on the material of this special
| lecture--which is intended to be for "entertainment"
|
| We might say this is the most important chapter in the whole
| series.
| pm90 wrote:
| I have the print version and have been working through them
| slowly. Funnily enough I didn't find it very useful when I had
| physics classes in school/uni since most of those classes were
| just memorizing equations and solving problems. But now that
| there is no exams pressure, it makes for such wonderful reading!
| I think its not just an introduction to physics but to the
| scientific method itself. Its first principles approach is so
| different than most physics textbooks.
| rramadass wrote:
| _" I have never let my schooling interfere with my education"_
| - Mark Twain
| another_twist wrote:
| Self study is the best study. Out of all the bloatedness of
| modern education, one thing that doesnt bother me is the high
| cost of textbooks. High quality books and a habit of studying
| yourself enables you to learn high skill disciplines on the
| cheap.
|
| For me, I am currently slogging through Lazlo Lovasz's
| combinatorics book and another one on Monte Carlo method. Dont
| know why but its just a good way to pass the time while staying
| away from the internet and its attention hogging.
| ontouchstart wrote:
| I got a kindle Scribe which can load PDF, HTML and text files
| via iPhone Kindle App and read offline.
|
| Since most pre-1925 books are out of copyright and free on
| https://gutenberg.org, ACM is open access
| (https://dl.acm.org/) and we have open https://arxiv.org/, it
| is the golden age for readers seeking original content.
|
| We don't need bots to read for us. We can live in the mind of
| human writers.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| Are technical/scientific books from pre-1925 particularly
| useful for self-learning today? I'd imagine for most
| disciplines, the knowledge has progressed and possibly
| changed course since then and it may be more outdated than
| not.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It might depend on the topic. Classical mechanics? I'm
| not sure that there is any fundamentally new knowledge
| since 1925 in that field. What's different is that people
| have 100 more years of figuring out how to explain it
| well.
| rramadass wrote:
| A previous comment of mine is relevant here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41567665
| rapatel0 wrote:
| One gem if you're interested in semiconductors is the Feynman
| lecture "There's plenty of room at the bottom." He basically laid
| out the case for the modern nanotechnology age in 1959
|
| https://web.pa.msu.edu/people/yang/RFeynman_plentySpace.pdf
| evanb wrote:
| I'm using these to teach an intermediate mechanics class, and my
| only regret is that there are no problems. The flip side is that
| sometimes Feynman skips over the derivations of certain things,
| and that makes good assignments ("Fill in the steps between
| [these assumptions] and [this result]").
|
| Feynman's writing of course is stellar. The order is a bit
| unusual and not really designed for a "standard" university-level
| course. I can pick and choose, but I wish I could easily reorder
| the material.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| There is a book of exercises, which I've heard of but not
| looked at myself, titled "Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on
| Physics". I don't know if that will help you but it might be
| worth a look.
| evanb wrote:
| I'll try to find it; thanks!
| vmilner wrote:
| Looks like they're here:
|
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/info/exercises.html
|
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flphandouts.html
| mmooss wrote:
| What has changed in 60 years, I wonder? If you are teaching this
| material, what do you have to update and/or contextualize?
| rramadass wrote:
| This is a good question and my initial thought would be Atomic
| Physics and Cosmology.
|
| A book like _Modern Atomic Physics by Vasant Natarajan_ (2015)
| would be a good place to look -
| https://www.routledge.com/Modern-Atomic-Physics/Natarajan/p/...
|
| The recent book (free) _Atomic Physics for Everyone: An
| Introduction to Atomic Physics, Quantum Mechanics, and
| Precision Spectroscopy with No College-Level Prerequisites_
| (2025) should also be good for an initial understanding of
| atomic physics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961595
|
| Also Wikipedia has a helpful _Timeline of fundamental physics
| discoveries_ page to browse -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_fundamental_physic...
|
| Finally, asking Google something like "what is new in physics
| since feynman lectures", Gemini gave me a helpful summary in
| its "AI Overview" which you can also try out.
| delichon wrote:
| Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars--mere
| globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere.' I too can see the stars on
| a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The
| vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination--stuck on this
| carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A
| vast pattern--of which I am a part--perhaps my stuff was belched
| from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them
| with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some
| common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What
| is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm
| to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous
| is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the
| poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can
| speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense
| spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| A footnote for those of the millenial or more recent
| persuasion: we take the full "vastness of the heavens" as
| given, as we've seen it described pretty confidently all the
| way back to the science books of our childhood. But cosmology,
| and frankly the entire field of astrophysics, is strikingly
| young. The idea that nebulae are in fact whole independent
| collections of stars, and that the observable universe is large
| enough to accomodate all of that, is younger than quantum
| mechanics and relativity both, and only got acceptance after a
| huge fight. The name "Big Bang" was originally a pejorative
| used in a similar, later fight. And so on. When Feynman said
| this, the idea of nebulae as galaxies was younger (~40 years)
| than the key idea of quarks (confinement/asymptotic freedom) is
| today (~50 years), and I'm guessing the latter still counts as
| new and arcane in your mind.
| kmaitreys wrote:
| I feel uncomfortable labelling nebulae as collection of
| stars. The more appropriate term is stellar nursery if you
| want to allude to their role in star formation.
|
| They themselves are just clouds of gas and dust where
| protostars have begun to form.
|
| Stellar clusters are what you would call a collection of
| stars.
|
| Also on the note of cosmology and astrophysics being
| strikingly young fields, I think that's fair statement if we
| consider their modern definitions. Although their core ideas
| have already been discussed in a lot of ancient
| civilizations. It was a lot more philosophical and less
| rooted in science though (except for the observational
| astronomy, which remains perhaps one of the oldest scientific
| discipline).
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Sorry, yes, there's a terminological disconnect here: M31,
| say, is the "Andromeda Galaxy" to us, but the "Andromeda
| Nebula" to Hubble's contemporaries circa 1920. The
| recognition that at least some of the cloudy (nebulous,
| literally) stuff in the sky is galaxies (and that the
| universe fits more than one) was the very point of the
| fight I mentioned. The world before it was thought to be
| drastically smaller in a way that I find difficult to think
| about.
| kmaitreys wrote:
| That's right. Historically, nebula was anything that
| looked cloudy, so a lot of astrophysical objects that we
| now understand are distinct, were simply labelled as
| nebulous. M31, as you said, being a great example.
|
| Modern astrophysics still carries the baggage of obsolete
| terminology to this day, from names of objects to names
| of units.
| shanemhansen wrote:
| I've thought of this quote a bunch and I came up with my own
| addon.
|
| "Some people think that the magic of something wondrous is
| diminished when it's understood. I feel bad for those people."
| -- Shanemhansen
| dullcrisp wrote:
| I pity the fool.
|
| -- Mr. T
| pstuart wrote:
| "Magic is the inducement of awe." -- pstuart
| rramadass wrote:
| The man had a way with words.
|
| The recent HN thread _Why is the sky blue?_ is a good example
| of this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46946401
|
| Once you start going down the rabbit hole you start asking
| questions like "does the photon oscillate?", "what exactly is
| resonant frequency?", "how different is the electron cloud
| around a molecule from that around its constituent atoms?",
| "how does a photon passing by/through a molecule cause its
| electron cloud to oscillate?" etc. The act of clarifying each
| to oneself in however simple a form is the insight we all
| crave. Good teachers like Feynman do a great job of it which is
| why their books are so highly valued.
|
| PS: People might find the recent free book _Atomic Physics for
| Everyone: An Introduction to Atomic Physics, Quantum Mechanics,
| and Precision Spectroscopy with No College-Level Prerequisites_
| (2025) good for an initial understanding of atomic physics -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46961595
| haroldp wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo
| chadrs wrote:
| "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
| rngfnby wrote:
| So true.
|
| How this guy captures the imagination of the English speaking
| world is astonishing.
|
| Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger
|
| They mop the floor with Feynman but no one remembers them.
| Landau, meanwhile had the most comprehensive set of physics
| book, Sommerfeld the most accessible deep set of physics books.
|
| Meanwhile "the Feynman Lectures" burry important details that
| will derail a train as soon as you leave the safe space of
| first order approximations.
|
| Feynman's lectures are akin to the "everything is a mass on a
| spring" meme. Actually, nothing is, and the nobilities are
| everything. To his credit, though, Feynman never intended his
| lectures to be more than an intro survey class
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I think Feynman's popularity lie with his deep understanding
| of phenomena and ability to explain them to others - "If you
| can't explain it to a six-year old, you don't understand it
| yourself"
| rramadass wrote:
| > Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger
|
| I am the OP who posted this with an idea of eliciting other
| notable works on Physics and comparing them to Feynman
| Lectures. I do not want this to be derailed into talking
| about the man.
|
| While i know of Landau & Lifshitz, i have not read Arnold
| Sommerfeld's nor Julian Schwinger's works.
|
| I sincerely suggest that you post a top-level comment in this
| thread with your takes on Feynman vs. Other authors works
| that you mention. This would be of great help to everybody
| interested in Physics and Science.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He
| invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite
| calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unless you're a
| perfect human being, please, cut him just a tiny bit of slack.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| path integrals existed since the 19th century
| srean wrote:
| Cite an example please.
| traes wrote:
| I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a
| comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well
| thought out video by a professional physicist giving a
| nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many
| times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who
| deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is
| dissecting his public image and the many books published
| under his name that he did not in fact write, including
| Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well
| as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those
| books that has left a negative impact on the culture of
| physics.
|
| (And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax
| language considering the behavior being criticized includes
| beating his wife.)
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree
| they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture.
| The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his
| behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come
| some way from that but still a way to go.
|
| From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a
| remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards,
| he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching,
| which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the
| stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a
| skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know
| when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books,
| particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd
| have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone
| would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are
| good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.
| opello wrote:
| > misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I
| agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their
| culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example)
| and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards.
| We've come some way from that but still a way to go.
|
| The video actually addresses this very point in the first
| few minutes:
|
| > the second component of the Feynman lifestyle that the
| Feynman bro has to follow, you know as told in this book,
| is that women are inherently inferior to you and if you
| want to be the smartest big boy physicist in the room you
| need to make sure they know that I think people are
| sometimes shocked to hear this like that that exists in
| this book especially because as I said if you were a
| precocious teenager interested in physics people shoved
| this book at you they just put it into your hands like oh
| you want to be a physicist here's the coolest physicist
| ever
|
| > I feel like it's at this point in the video when like
| Mr. Cultural Relativism is going to show up in the
| comments and be like how dare you judge people from the
| past on their actions that's not fair things were
| different back then women liked when men lied to them and
| pretended to be an undergrad so that-- it was fine back
| then it was fine and I just, no, actually this book was
| published 40 years ago which is just not that long ago
| Richard Feynman should have known that women were people
| 40 years ago like absolutely not it's not "how things
| were back then" what's wrong with you people, no, it's
| inappropriate then it's inappropriate now
|
| Later the actual author, Ralph Leighton, of "Surely
| You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is mentioned so perhaps the
| responsibility for what was included is his more than
| Feynman's. I think the criticism stands that the degree
| of sexism effectively celebrated by inclusion was
| certainly less culturally accepted in 1985 when the book
| was published than when the events occurred, and that's
| the point of raising the issue of why was it judged as
| good and proper to include this marginalizing anecdotes
| when his actual contributions to physics and teaching
| were worthy of celebration.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in
| the book. From memory, he learnt the behaviour from other
| bar flies at the bars he hung out. And he expressed his
| surprise at how some women reacted. This was far from his
| upbringing and his experience with his fiancee.
|
| The behaviour is hardly laudable, but "celebrated" it is
| not.
| opello wrote:
| > I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in
| the book.
|
| The argument presented in the video about this is that
| these are the stories Feynman edited and reworked over
| time, and shared with his friend Ralph Leighton, who then
| recorded them in the "Surely You're Joking" book.
|
| The video also describes a change in his behavior later
| in life. In 1974, responding to a letter asking to
| reprint "What is Science?"[1] from 1966, he comments that
| "some of the remarks about the female mind might not be
| taken in the light spirit they were meant"[2]. This is
| cited in the video as Feynman becoming more progressive
| between 1966 and 1974. The "Surely" book is published in
| 1985, and yet still includes the misogynistic stories.
| The video's complaint is that there should be some
| contextualization about views changing, like was given in
| Feynman's reply in 1974, but there being none it comes
| across as an implicit endorsement. I don't recall from
| the video if Feynman reviewed or edited the "Surely"
| book, which leaves it as Ralph Leighton's perspective
| more than Feynman's.
|
| It seems a legitimate criticism that this book held up as
| an example of a good role model in physics doesn't try to
| avoid perpetuating bad stereotypes. It's probably
| egregious to say the mere inclusion of the stories
| celebrates their actions. But it's equally egregious to
| fail to even try to address the bad behavior, especially
| when it's held out as a positive example.
|
| [1] https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/
|
| [2] https://archive.org/details/perfectly-reasonable-
| deviations-...
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| And...who hasn't done offensive things, before learning
| that what they're doing is bad? It's a matter of
| developing self control and awareness.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I
| agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their
| culture.
|
| Moral relativism is a thing, but I think a more useful
| way to think of it rather than just saying "misogyny was
| a thing back then, should we care he was a misogynist
| then?" is to ask "if he were to have lived and worked in
| the 2000s, would he associate with Epstein?" And to be
| honest... Feynman _does_ strike me as the kind of person
| to have the intellect to attract Epstein 's attention and
| also the, for lack of a better term, party attitude to go
| to a couple of Epstein's parties that would result in him
| having awkward press releases trying to explain that he
| just had no possible idea that Epstein was doing anything
| sexual with children and conveniently forgetting all the
| times he was on the private island for some party or
| another...
|
| That's the real strong vibe I get from _Surely You 're
| Joking_. He's the kind of person who _wants_ to be seen
| as someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as
| "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way
| that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating
| the stories that led to _Surely You 're Joking_) when
| misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.
|
| (And one of the things that really worries me about
| _Surely You 're Joking_ is that it's often recommended as
| a sort of "look at the wacky hijinks you can get up to as
| a physicist," so recommending the book is a valorization
| of his wacky hijinks and... well, that's ultimately what
| Angela's video is about, that's a thing we need to stop
| doing.)
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > That's the real strong vibe I get from Surely You're
| Joking. He's the kind of person who wants to be seen as
| someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as
| "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way
| that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating
| the stories that led to Surely You're Joking) when
| misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.
|
| In my experience, everyone who says this is talking about
| exactly one chapter in _Surely You 're Joking_, but they
| don't appear to actually have paid close attention to the
| story. It's a story that Feynman recounts about trying to
| pick up girls when he was younger. He was advised by an
| older, "cooler" man to be mean. Feynman tries it and it
| works, but he feels bad about it and says that he never
| did it again. People calling Feynman a misogynist for
| this story seem to have just skipped the end of the
| chapter.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's been decades since I read _Surely You 're Joking_,
| and I've completely forgotten about that chapter. It
| plays no part in my conscious recollection of the book.
|
| The episode that really stuck in my mind was the episode
| about his competition with the abacus-user, who was
| better at math, which essentially ends with him giving up
| trying to explain how he could mental math a cube root
| faster, because the abacus-user was just someone who
| couldn't understand a math explanation.
| addled wrote:
| I remembered enjoying the book, so having not read it in
| a long time, I tried sharing Surely You're Joking with my
| kids at bedtime.
|
| That chapter wasn't the only thing I ended up skipping or
| heavily editing.
|
| * Picking a room at Los Alamos with a window facing the
| women's housing, but being disappointed that a tree or
| something blocked his view. (Wasn't he also married at
| this point?)
|
| * Starting a new Uni faculty position and hanging out at
| student dances, dismayed that girls would stop chatting &
| dancing with him when they learned he was a prof and not
| a fellow student.
|
| * Hanging out at strip clubs to practice his drawing
| skills.
|
| * Considering a textbook sales rep's offer to help him
| find "trouble" in Vegas.
|
| So maybe that one chapter turns around some at the end,
| but it's not the only cringe-worthy moment in the book,
| and I can see why some people may have an overall
| negative opinion.
|
| If I were going to do this with my kids now that they are
| teens, I wouldn't filter as much and use the more
| questionable events as points of discussion.
| TwoFerMaggie wrote:
| > would he associate with Epstein?
|
| This is from Lawrence Krauss[0]'s email to Epstein[1]:
|
| > ps. I have decided that Feynman would have done what I
| did... and I am therefore content.. no matter what... :)
|
| > On Apr 6, 2011, at 3:56 PM, Jeffrey Epstein wrote:
|
| > what evidence? no real sex.. where is she getting her
| so called facts
|
| Krauss's letter is obviously horrible in its
| implications. What's interesting to me is his
| interpretation of what Feynman would have done. Is it his
| delusional justification of what he'd done with Epstein,
| or is it based on a certain reputation of Feynman in the
| science community?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss [1]
| https://www.epstein.media/files/house_oversight_030915/
| CalChris wrote:
| If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman
| did _write_ them. The published versions were edited from
| transcripts.
|
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Be forewarned. There's a new YouTube channel with an AI
| Feynman delivering slop.
| alsaaro wrote:
| I saw this and what makes this particularly pernicious
| that you assume it was a fan applying ai voice to his
| authentic words, but you don't know.
|
| There is also an ai slop channel featuring Leonard
| Susskind.
| ahefner wrote:
| This was really frustrating me. YT started recommending
| this channel and I could recognize the voice as an AI
| impersonation but had no way to know if it was at least
| reading something really written by Feynman. Eventually I
| concluded it wasn't, but there wasn't clear criteria
| under which I could report the channel. I'm not sure it's
| even against YT's TOS.
| emmelaich wrote:
| He was _accused_ , in divorce papers. And it wasn't
| beating, FWIW.
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| His wife accused him of choking her when she interrupted
| his science. She also accused him of playing the bongos too
| loud.
|
| This was during divorce testimony. She got the house and he
| got the bongos.
| srean wrote:
| > She got the house and he got the bongos.
|
| Both were likely happy with that outcome
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I've watched large sections of this video before, because
| it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video.
|
| Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her
| shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his
| teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a
| very naughty boy.
|
| One of the things that stand out from the video: The
| speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman
| lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If
| you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even
| have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and
| photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make
| a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this?
|
| Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the
| most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics
| teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for
| embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are
| incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many
| people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes
| out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one
| is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to
| try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's
| continued popularity).
|
| Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham
| legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about
| getting pushback.
|
| 0. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
|
| 1. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html
| renhanxue wrote:
| > The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman
| lectures. Wrong.
|
| No, she's right, just talking about a different thing.
|
| "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is a physics textbook.
| [0] He did prepare his own lecture material, but he did
| not write the book.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_o
| n_Physic...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| No, she's absolutely wrong about this. The book is based
| very closely on Feynman's lectures. He wrote the material
| and gave the lectures. Other people edited that material
| into book form, but Feynman did the lion's share of the
| work.
|
| Saying that Feynman didn't write the book is just
| dishonest, unless you immediately clarify afterwards that
| Feynman did indeed write almost all of the material in
| the book, in something very close to its final form.
| srean wrote:
| Seems she isn't interested in dragging a bit of fame and
| recognition her way.
|
| It's a low effort way to do that when the other party
| cannot defend himself.
| dtartarotti wrote:
| You should watch the whole video. From memory, the video
| author claims that the books are not based directly on
| the recordings nor on material that Feynman wrote
| himself, but rather on lecture notes written by another
| professor who had to cover for Feynman (who is also
| listed as one of the authors in the book). She also
| mentions how those lecture notes from this other
| professor correct some small mistakes Feynman made in
| some calculations and diagrams from the lecture. Her
| claim is that Feynman was not the person who actually
| wrote the text of the book.
| renhanxue wrote:
| I mean, for the most part the book is an edited
| transcription of what he said at the lectures (or, in
| some cases, what a guest lecturer said). But the lectures
| weren't scripted, and we know this because his lecture
| notes are preserved[0] and they do not contain anything
| like he full text of even a single lecture. They're just
| lecture notes, not a script. And of course, the book also
| contain a lot of example problems and graphics - those
| are mostly the work of Bob Leighton, I believe. There's a
| reason the book has had so many errata corrected over the
| years: it was never written and edited in the way a book
| manuscript would've been written and edited.
|
| [0]: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/Notes.html
| Ardren wrote:
| Brave to link to that here.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It just wears thin after a while. Nobody studies Feynman to
| learn social skills or sexual ethics. If they did, these
| types of complaints would certainly be relevant... but they
| don't, and they aren't.
| melling wrote:
| People also don't think he's one of the greatest physicists
| ever.
|
| As he said, he was just an ordinary person who worked very
| hard.
| wellf wrote:
| Everyone thinks they are ordinary. If you have 160 IQ
| that just feels ordinary. You can only really measure
| ordinary in terms of achievement.
|
| The 100 IQ person that works that hard doesn't invent
| that much physics. They might get rich, change the world
| etc.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, the Nobel committee certainly seemed to disagree
| with you.
| melling wrote:
| I guess you didn't watch the video so you don't
| understand the point I'm trying to address.
|
| At any rate, this garbage doesn't belong on HN.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on that point? I didn't downvote you,
| but I'm also not going to watch a 3-hour #metoo video
| about a guy from my grandfather's era in order to
| understand what you mean.
|
| What's next... is she going to tell me that Newton was a
| real asshole? Noooooo, say it isn't so.
| melling wrote:
| It's discussed in the first few minutes. That's basically
| all I watched. One of the first points she tries to make
| is that people claim that Feynman is one of the top
| physicists of all time, comparable to Einstein and
| Newton. She tries to set us straight.
|
| Anyway, I'm a big Feynman fan. My Discord handle is
| feynman1918.
| ShamLegacyTldr wrote:
| Let's be clear about this video; the "sham legacy" is the
| commercialization/exploitation of Feynman's legacy after he
| died. Feynman was not a charlatan. Collier doesn't claim he is.
| She talks about the very real contributions he made. Her
| criticism is largely about the way people scraped together any
| scrap of paper he had jotted down a note on and turned it into
| a thin book, "Feynman on XYZ topic".
|
| But yes, he does catch criticism for his very real character
| flaws, his grandiosity, his philandering and inappropriate
| workplace behavior, and his physical abuse of his wife.
|
| He was a complicated person. Much of the work discussing him is
| hagiography. This essay is even keeled but does not gloss over
| his flaws. Again, she discusses his very real contributions and
| legacy. It's a long essay; she makes time for the complexity of
| Feynman as a person.
|
| If all you want to hear about Feynman is charming stories about
| Tuvan throat singing, you won't enjoy this essay. That's okay;
| it's not for everyone. There's an instinct to reject a critical
| work like this on it's face. I think that does a disservice,
| not only to Collier, but to us as students of history.
|
| Collier is a working astrophysicist who spent months on this
| project. It is not a low effort hit piece. It's a critical but
| fair portrait from someone qualified to engage with the subject
| matter. I encourage everyone to withhold judgement until
| watching the entire essay. If you haven't seen it, you probably
| shouldn't make a knee jerk dismissal.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| It should be knee-jerk dismissed because the submission topic
| is the textbooks, not the man, and it's derailed discussion
| into a tangent about his personal shortcomings. Not exactly
| in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.
| rramadass wrote:
| Well said !
|
| These sort of people are what is pejoratively called
| "attention whores" with nothing worthwhile to contribute
| _on the topic under discussion._ Hence they always come up
| with provocative phrases /statements simply to make
| themselves feel relevant.
|
| Downvote and Flag these sorts of comments into oblivion;
| don't engage with them.
| ShamLegacyTldr wrote:
| This is offensive and uncalled for. If the admins see
| your comment, they will tell you that comments like this
| get you banned. I don't agree with ThrowawayR2 but they
| were respectful; I doubt they appreciate their views
| being lumped in with your insulting, inappropriate
| comment. You've done a disservice to both of us.
| ShamLegacyTldr wrote:
| > Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN
| tries to foster.
|
| I could not disagree more. If you don't see how a
| comprehensive, warts and all look at the man's life and
| legacy doesn't add context and foster curiosity, I'm not
| even sure what to tell you.
|
| It didn't derail the conversation, it expanded it. There's
| still plenty of discussion about the lectures. This isn't
| even particularly close to the top of the thread.
|
| What's opposed to curious discussion is knee jerk reactions
| and middlebrow dismissals.
| danielam wrote:
| Ad hominem is indeed the hallmark of a small mind.
| agnishom wrote:
| Some people are (understandably) upset at the title of the
| video. I will summarize some of the main interesting beats in
| the video for those who don't want to watch this 3 hour
| masterpiece.
|
| (1) The stories in "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" portray
| Feynman in a mean-spirited, sometimes sexist light. (2) These
| books were not actually written by Mr. Feynman. They were
| actually written by Ralph Laden. (3) Upon further reflection,
| almost all the stories are either made up or greatly
| exaggarated. Presumably, Feynman spent a lot of time telling
| and retelling these stories (4) Also, Ralph Laden is Bob
| Laden's son. Supposedly, Bob Laden is also a famous physicist.
| But Ralph never really mentions him
| codelieb wrote:
| Let me begin by saying that I am a friend of Ralph Leighton,
| whom I have known for 27 years. I am also a friend of
| Feynman's children, and several of Feynman's friends and
| colleagues. Now I will tell you this: Collier is a liar. The
| books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You
| Care What Other People Think" were made the same way that The
| Feynman Lectures on Physics was made: Feynman was recorded,
| and the recordings were transcribed and (lightly) edited for
| readability. It is true for ALL of Feynman's books (also
| Stephen Hawking's many books, and those of some other
| authors) that he did not put pen to paper himself, but what
| is written came from him, and are not the inventions of Ralph
| Leighton, nor does Leighton claim authorship to them. It is
| another lie of Collier that the stories in Feynman's
| autobiographical books are "either made up or greatly
| exaggerated," for which Collier provides no evidence
| whatsoever, and for which there are witnesses who claim the
| contrary - this is something Collier just "made up", because,
| apparently her goal in making several pejorative videos about
| Feynman is to defame him, for her own personal reasons. Yes
| it is true that Ralph Leighton is Robert Leighton's son, and
| Robert Leighton, who is one of Feynman's coauthors in The
| Feynman Lectures on Physics, was a great physicist, best
| known for establishing the field of microwave astronomy. But
| why would Ralph mention his father in Feynman's
| autobiographical books, when Robert Leighton is not a
| character in any of the stories Feynman tells in those books?
| What kind of criticism is that to make of Ralph? This is
| another example of how Collier is merely trying to smear the
| names of Feynman and the people associated with him. Note
| that Collier also says in her videos that The Feynman
| Lectures on Physics (the subject of this discussion) is "not
| worth reading," which puts her at odds with almost everyone
| who reads it - it is, in fact, one of the most (if not THE
| most) popular physics books ever written, and many great
| physicists sing its praises. Once again, this is Collier just
| dissing Feynman and his works. Collier is a Feynman-hating
| liar who fully deserves to be ignored.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| That was rather more interesting than I thought it would be.
| srean wrote:
| His wife allegedly secretly reported him to the FBI as a
| potential spy, communist, security risk, fraud. It was an
| anonymous letter.
|
| Given how different this wife's (second wife) description of
| Feynman compared to others is, that there are no record of
| complaints from first wife, the way her younger sister
| describes him, it could well be an earlier repeat of the now
| familiar Johnny Depp story, where it's not initially clear who
| the abusive person here is.
|
| The marriage was certainly not a happy one and some people turn
| vindictive, turn to smearing characters. Especially if the
| person has narcissistic tendencies.
|
| [Who Smeared Feynman]
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-f...
|
| Submitted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46974999
| karcass wrote:
| My copy of volume 1 is signed!
| MS007 wrote:
| Feynam is my hero. I have Volumes I, II, and III of his red
| hardbound books. His biography, Surely You're Joking, Mr.
| Feynman!, is one of my favorites.
| richardfeynman wrote:
| I appreciate it, thanks.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Was funny the first time ...
| richardfeynman wrote:
| Thanks for posting this.
| bibimsz wrote:
| not lost on me that the top of hacker news came from 60 years
| ago.
|
| we are entering the period of mourning
|
| what was
|
| won is n
|
| ow lost
|
| and the later days once feared are...
|
| now here.
|
| (the poet called bib)
| SachinnJainn wrote:
| Amazing!
| ncb9094 wrote:
| I remember watching these for my JEE (Joint Entrance Examination)
| of India
| ReptileMan wrote:
| There is a whole genre of youtube videos with AI generated
| Feynmann voice based on those lectures. They are of surprisingly
| high quality.
| tsycho wrote:
| Do you have a link to a good one?
|
| I presume the original videos of Feynman are lost, or never
| existed?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83EB1jGJwqE
|
| I found this channel to be ok-ish.
| willtemperley wrote:
| Thank you I've been looking for this. His method of delivery is
| so clear I find it immensely relaxing.
| thomasahle wrote:
| On the topic of lecture notes, I can really recommend Scott
| Aaron's Quantum Information lecture notes:
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/qclec.pdf
| porknbeans00 wrote:
| God Feynman was such an amazing teacher of complex topics. Never
| miss upvoting this guy.
|
| His involvement in NASA and challenger investigations
| specifically are also legendary. Watch more Feynman. Totally
| worth the time investment.
| redditor98654 wrote:
| My introduction to Feynman was more from other science
| communicators either quoting him or retelling some story about
| him and initially it formed a mental picture in my mind that he
| might be one of those personalities more famous culturally than
| for his actual scientific achievements. Like how in sports often
| the more popular players may not be the actual "best" one purely
| from the sporting skills pov.
|
| But then I read more about him and yeah, he is indeed the real
| deal.
| latexr wrote:
| This is fantastic. I recently regained an interest in revisiting
| Feynman lectures but several audios I found on YouTube left me
| uneasy that they could be AI-generated. I aimed to ensure good
| sources before diving in again, but hadn't yet had the
| opportunity to do so.
|
| The videos are particularly interesting in how they include a
| transcript which is auto-highlighted and one can click around the
| text to move in the video. That's a great mode of interaction I
| wish were more common. I have only found it in Apple's WWDC
| videos.
|
| It's missing a way to link directly to a timestamp, and when
| switching videos from the tabs the URL doesn't change, but those
| are minor inconveniences considering the rest of the website.
|
| Also kudos on choice of using the structure of the atom image as
| the "loading" graphic.
|
| Thank you to the authors for putting this together.
| thetwentyone wrote:
| I've been looking for a way to listen to the audio offline, but
| this website is very resistant to scraping. I'd appreciate if
| anyone knew of a free or paid place to download the audio
| lectures.
| ajb wrote:
| Along these lines, one of the early popular science works is
| "Letters to a German Princess", which compiles Euler's letters on
| Natural Philosophy (which is mostly what we today call science
| and maths) which he was commissioned to write as part of her
| education. Many were keen to educate their daughters as well as
| royalty, so the book version sold well. It is, of course, very
| out of date in terms of the science.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_to_a_German_Princess
| assemblyman wrote:
| It is very interesting to see completely different impressions of
| Feynman from comments here. As a physicist, I first got
| introduced to Feynman from his popular QED book as a freshman in
| college. Over the years, I came to admire his contributions and
| way of thinking but could also see the cult of personality that
| has formed.
|
| Feynman is definitely not like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Kaku. He
| was a very creative and technically sophisticated physicist. All
| his popular books are based on lectures he wrote and gave but
| they were mostly "side projects" e.g. computation, lectures on
| gravitation, six easy pieces etc.
|
| To get a better sense of his work, I would highly recommend:
|
| - The Beat of a Different Drum by Jagdish Mehra
|
| - Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
|
| - Selected Papers -
| https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/4270
| (expensive and technical)
|
| - QED and the men who made it by Schweber
|
| There are also many historical physicists who are surprisingly
| unknown outside the field - Schwinger, Tomonaga, Landau, Sidney
| Coleman, Murray Gell-mann, Nambu, Steven Weinberg, Ken Wilson,
| Curtis Callan etc. I just randomly picked a few names before the
| 90s but these are all scientific giants. For example, Schwinger's
| papers are notoriously hard to read but his books are great after
| a first course. Sidney Coleman gave beautiful lectures on QFT.
| Landau is extremely famous for his 9 books with Lifshitz. It
| definitely is very surprising that Feynman has such an outsized
| share of interest. Maybe because he was a gregarious outgoing
| character?
|
| Another interesting aspect is how a person is often viewed as an
| authority or even a genius because their work introduces an
| audience to the subject. Feynman with his lectures. To a far
| lesser extent (in my opinion), one sees this with Andrej Karpathy
| and Jeremy Howard. This is not to take away from their wonderful
| teaching work. I know how hard it is to distill material and
| convey it. But, there's a whole web of contributions that leads
| to a subject maturing enough to be taught clearly.
|
| As I get older, I find it less useful to assign labels (names) to
| discoveries and contributions. As Feynman himself said in a
| lecture after drawing a Feynman diagram, "this is THE diagram"
| (and not the Feynman diagram).
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Feynman had the vanishingly rare combination of being at world-
| shaking (literally) historical events like the Manhattan
| Project and the Trinity test that ordinary people can relate
| to1, actual scientific contribution enough to merit a Nobel
| Prize in Physics, and being an engaging storyteller and
| educator. I don't think it's all that surprising that his
| recognizability very high.
|
| 1 Ordinary people can relate to a giant industrial project and
| a huge boom. They cannot relate to some person sitting in a
| room writing arcane symbols and muttering to themselves until
| one day they yell "Heureka! Ich hab es gefunden!" or whatever
| the proper German is and rush off to publish a paper.
| assemblyman wrote:
| My point is that it's really the storytelling/gregarious
| nature character. There is no shortage of people who were at
| the Manhattan project and won Nobel prizes or were prominent.
| A partial list: Oppenheimer, Bethe, Rabi, Teller, von
| Neumann, Compton, Fermi, Segre, Ramsey, Alvarez. There are
| easily many more. Schwinger was at Rad lab.
|
| Schwinger was considered a tremendous educator. I think he
| had ~90 PhD students and four won Nobel prizes. His lectures
| were often described as Mozart symphonies. I have studied
| parts of his books and the experience was always eye-opening.
| But, his education was focused on students, mostly graduate
| students. He was also a shy character.
|
| In any case, I still love reading Feynman and Schwinger's
| works. I would also include Sommerfeld, Pauli, Landau,
| Weinberg in that list.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Sorry, my wording was imprecise; when I said "educator", I
| meant popular science educator, along the lines of Asimov,
| Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, etc. I can't think of anything
| Schwinger ever wrote or a public lecture that he gave that
| would be accessible to a general or even a semi-technical,
| non-physicist audience.
|
| But, beyond that, yes, I think we're largely in agreement.
| Starman_Jones wrote:
| I believe this is the point you are making, but it's worth
| clarifying that NDT is a technically sophisticated
| astrophysicist who is best known for his non-technical
| communication targeted at a non-technical audience. Part of the
| genius of Feynman is that he could communicate to a technical
| audience in a way that was still accessible to the lay
| audience. Tyson can't communicate to both groups at once like
| Feynman (or Tyson's mentor, Carl Sagan) could. It's a rare
| gift.
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