The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a one-hour documentary program featuring Feynman talking to the camera in a tight head-and-shoulders crop, aired on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1980s. Much to the surprise of some reviewers, it went over very well. More letters from laymen, admirers, and the merely curious soon followed.

A fluctuation between patience and a more brusque stance characterizes some of these later exchanges. Time seemed more scarce. In a letter from early 1982, Feynman claimed he found it very difficult to have discussions by letter, “because I cannot indulge in my habit of immediately asking for clarification of things which at first confuse me. I don’t have the patience to figure out what is probably meant.” Nonetheless, he would read through pages and pages of often unorganized, rambling thoughts, letters on subjects both technical and not, and in his reply hone in on what the letter was substantively about.

Meanwhile, his health problems continued. His mother passed away in early November 1981, and soon after her funeral, Feynman again underwent surgery to combat his abdominal cancer. During the fourteen-and-a-half-hour operation, his aorta split, and he required over seventy pints of blood. Dozens of Caltech students and faculty, as well as many staff from the nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory, rushed to UCLA Hospital to donate blood. I remember speaking to a number of them on the telephone at the time, trying to round up donors, and their love and admiration of my father was palpable. It made a difficult time a little easier for my family.

In March 1984, he tripped over a curb in a parking lot on the way to pick up a long-anticipated personal computer. He wiped the blood off his head and continued on to the store. Later, when my mother and I returned home from a day out, we found him happily playing with his new computer, still wearing his blood-stained shirt. A few weeks later it was discovered that he had a subdural hematoma (a collection of blood on the surface of the brain) as a result of the fall, and so he returned to the hospital to have two holes drilled in his skull to relieve the pressure. He then proudly told his friends, “If you think I’m crazy, I now have an excuse: I have holes in my head—you can feel them right here!”

Computers figured prominently in his professional life as well at this time. Thinking and lecturing about computers, their ultimate limits, and the possibility of quantum computers was primarily stimulated by work done by none other than Carl Feynman.

DON WRIGHT TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, NOVEMBER 23, 1981

The Christopher Sykes documentary, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, first aired in November 1981 in England, on a series called “Horizon.”

Dear Professor,

I don’t have a lot of time for most Americans (U.S. ones anyway) and I’ve never written to a T.V. personality before and probably will never do so again. But I was so impressed by your television talk (“lecture”, “interview”—whatever) which went out tonight on our BBC2 that I had to write and tell you so.

If you’re ever in England and have time to come to Swanage in Dorset—beautiful outside and in—and visit a very ordinary little Englander in a little house you’d be more than welcome.

I’ll post (mail) this letter knowing that if you feel that way your waste bin is probably bigger than mine.

Thanks for the talk.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO DON WRIGHT, JANUARY 13, 1982

Swanage, Dorset

Dear Mr.Wright:

Thank you very much for your kind remarks about my TV program. Maybe it would help you with your problem about my being an American, to know that my wife is an Englishwoman from Yorkshire. She has probably improved me greatly.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO CONNIE GRIFFITHS, JANUARY 25, 1982

Connie Griffiths also saw the “Horizon” program and wrote a letter proposing that transcendental meditation might help “fully coordinate” his brain, thereby saving time and effort. “I can see you must have a very fine, clear mind but even so I wonder if those ultimate problems you touch on might not be more easily solved by letting your attention go effortlessly through T.M. to the very area you are researching—the area next the vacuum state,” she suggested. “The laws of Nature there would be closer to you and reveal themselves—not one by one but suddenly.”

Connie Griffiths

Dear Miss Griffiths:

Thank you for your note about T.M.—Transcendental Meditation.

I have tried something similar—“sense-deprivation” tanks (made by a man called John Lilly—no sound, no light, little feeling for you are floating in salt water). I did it many hours, and had hallucinations, etc.

It is not the same as T.M. of course, but I had the impression that although such experiences may help your psychological feeling about yourself, they are no substitute for the hard directed thought that one apparently needs to get ready to solve a hard problem. After loading up with all the “facts” it is possible that some change in mental set, like T.M., or simply relaxing, might help one to get things to click all together.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion.

Richard P. Feynman

J. GERARD WOLFF TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, NOVEMBER 23, 1981

Dr. Richard Feynman,

Dear Dr. Feynman,

I found what you had to say on today’s BBC Horizon programme very interesting. In particular I was struck by your remarks about the problem of working out the implications of a theory so that it may be tested against observations.

This is precisely the kind of problem which arises in my area of research—how children acquire their first language. It is fairly obvious that a child’s brain does a large amount of complicated “computing” in working out grammatical patterns from the language he or she hears. Many theories of language acquisition are fairly simple to state—at least in outline—but the implications can be very complex and the theories can, as a consequence, be difficult to confirm or refute.

My favoured method of tackling the problem is not via mathematics (partly because I don’t know that much) but by expressing the theory in the form of a computer program and then allowing the computer to tease out the implications.This kind of technique is common enough in many areas of science and it is rather unlikely that you have not thought of it. But since you did not mention this as a possibility in your interview I thought it was worth making the point to you.

I agree that much social science, including psychology, is a sterile aping of the methods of physical sciences. But there are substantial problems—I think language acquisition is one of them—where precise and falsifiable theories can be devised and where potent insights can be obtained.

Do you think computer simulation would be any good for your problem?

Yours sincerely,

Gerry Wolff (Dr.) J. Gerard Wolff

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO J. GERARD WOLFF, FEBRUARY 4, 1982

Dr. J. Gerard Wolff

Department of Psychology

Dundee, Scotland

Thank you for your note about my program.

You guessed right—I had thought about computer simulation of a child acquiring language. I came to it the other way about. In studying the abilities of computers a friend gave me a problem. Computers can be programmed to play chess well, or they can be programmed to play backgammon, or bridge. Can you program a computer that can play any game?You tell it the rules of draughts say—and play some games with it and it gradually gets better and better as it gains experience (as a person might.) As it “learns” more it doesn’t run slower and slower while it searches its increasingly large memory storage.That would be an intelligent computer.

In thinking about that I tried to find a simpler system—first I thought of the problem of making a computer that could learn more and more mathematics as you went along—and then I thought of the problem of learning a language or the “simplest” problem of this type. Then I wondered how children do it.

I couldn’t figure out a way to store the knowledge so that as you learned more, new grammar or vocabulary, it would not make the computer slower and slower as it searched through its ever greater stores of memory to find the correct meaning.

Do you have some ideas on this subject? Could you send me some reprints if you have any published work?

In my physics problem we have, of course, attempted to work out some details by computer and some things have been learned that way, but so far the computers do not seem to have a large enough capacity to give clear results.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO H. DUDLEY WRIGHT, FEBRUARY 17, 1982

Mr. H. Dudley Wright

Well, the operation was a success—I mean I am still alive! In fact I have been recovering very well and would now be easily able to come to Geneva any time you want. I look forward to resuming work after that interruption.

Nearly every day I come to Caltech to work, but Helen, my secretary, won’t let me teach—she says I should take the year off—but she can’t stop me from doing research, thinking harder than ever.

It will be great to see you when you come in March—do you want to stay with us? But when will you let me go to Geneva to find out how everything is going, and to be with the gang again?

I got a great long letter with lots of non-technical news from the Hales.

Yours sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO V. TELEGDI, MARCH 30, 1982

Professor V.Telegdi

Zurich, Switzerland

Thanks for your note. There is nothing to worry about as I’m completely recovered. I had surgery for cancer in November. The Doctor took out everything he could see so I’m missing various organs and pieces of organs.The surgeon said he came very close to losing his first patient during surgery, but everything turned out OK.

Have you any plans to come back to Caltech in the near future? Perhaps I will see you in Geneva—I expect to go there around the first or second week in June.

Richard P. Feynman

P.S. I am teaching this quarter so I am back to 100% normal activity.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO FREDERIC DE HOFFMAN, MARCH 29, 1982

Mr. Frederic de Hoffman

The Salk Institute

San Diego, California

Dear Fiddle-dee-dee:

Thank you for your note of January 29 (it takes me a while to get around to my mail basket). I am feeling great and am going to be doing my normal teaching duties starting this week. I also regret that we haven’t seen each other for a long time.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO STUART ZIMMER, FEBRUARY 18, 1982

From a high school for students dedicated to future careers in science, science teacher Mr. Zimmer wrote to request an autograph. The school was creating an exhibit of American science, and Feynman’s autograph was to be part of a section of Nobel Prize winners.

Mr. Stuart Zimmer

Elwood, New York

Dear Mr. Zimmer:

I am not in sympathy with an exhibit which is devoted to “American Science.” Science is an international human effort and there would be no “American science” were it not for scientific development in the rest of the world.

Secondly, it bothers me that everyone always chooses “Nobel prize winners” as important examples of scientists. Why do we pay such attention to the choice of the members of the Swedish Academy? That may be OK for the unknowing public, but surely a science teacher can make his own independent choices of which scientists excite his imagination and which men he would like to call to the attention of his students.

Don’t mind my discourtesy—carry on with your good work. I just get tired of being a “Nobel Prize Winner” from time to time, and have to explode at somebody, so here is your autograph.

Richard P. Feynman

ALAN WOODWARD TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, DECEMBER 29, 1981

Dear Professor Feynman,

I write to you realising that Professors of Physics can be extremely busy people, but in the hope that some reply may be forthcoming at a future time.

I am only an undergraduate physics student at the University of Southampton, but already serious doubts are creeping into my mind. I see all these students, lecturers and professors engrossed in their subject, and not realising what is happening outside their laboratory door.

They do not seem to realise where the world is heading and would literally do anything in the name, and for the sake of their science. Surely this is wrong?

Yet, when one tries to broach the topic with them, everyone of them ignores their responsibility—I feel like a peculiarity.

Now, I read your books for my course, I am taught about your theories, and my Quantum Physics lecturer, Dr. Tony Hey, is constantly telling us what a great force in Physics you are, so you are obviously an authority in Physics. But, have you never had any such fears?

I used to be an officer in the Royal Navy, myself, until I decided to resign my commission and find a more humanitarian career. Unfortunately, the course that Physics is taking me on still seems to have something missing!

I am afraid I cannot explain such fears very eloquently but I hope you understand my meaning. Perhaps one day you might care to reciprocate your ideas as it confuses me terribly?

Yours sincerely,

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO ALAN WOODWARD, MARCH 31, 1982

Southampton, Britain

Dear Mr.Woodward:

Surely increased knowledge is not incompatible with a humanitarian career—no matter what it is you learn. And surely if your professor and fellow students seem to know some things, but seem to be oblivious to other things (“outside their laboratory door,” as you say) that does not exclude you from learning what they know whilst remaining deeply aware of what they are blind to.

Of course, the course that physics is taking you has something missing. You cannot develop a personality with physics alone, the rest of your life must be worked in.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO YETTA FARBER, MARCH 30, 1982

Ms.Yetta Farber wrote to remind Feynman that she had once dated him at Cornell. She also had a story to tell that made her laugh every time she saw Feynman’s name in the papers. Immediately after their enjoyable date, word had gone out that there was a rapist, described as wearing “a brown or brown leather-like jacket,” loose on the Cornell campus. “A-hah! I said—I went out with this nice fellow and he wore a brown leather-like jacket! Maybe it was he. When you called me for another date, I said, ‘No, I’m busy.’”

Ms. Farber had thought that Feynman was too young to be an assistant professor (in fact, Feynman was a full professor), so she was rather suspicious.

Naturally I could never understand why the girls I went out with in Ithaca wouldn’t go out with me again. At last I find out—it was my brown leather jacket!

So often, was I thus frustrated by pretty girls (like you) that I came out to California. Since the weather was so much better I threw away my leather jacket and at last found someone who would go out with me more than once—so I married her.

I always thought that the girls in California were more tolerant—but now I know the inner workings of the phenomenon.

Physics is much easier to understand.

Your former date,

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO RICHARD MARRUS, APRIL 30, 1982

Dr. Richard Marrus

Department of Physics

University of California

Berkeley, California

Dear Dr. Marrus:

A student of mine, Peter Thomas,²³ asked me to write to you in connection with his application to Berkeley to work in particle physics.

He is a good student (I assume you have his records) who showed considerable independence and initiative. We had many conversations as he learned the details of quantum chromodynamics (on which I was working). Things were going well and he was asking insightful questions. I am sorry to have lost him to you, but I should like to explain the circumstances.

Firstly, he had always been discouraged a bit by the social conditions at Caltech, particularly the lack of women. In addition, in that year we did not have many good students, and he was unable to find students to talk to profitably.Therefore, he often thought of going to Berkeley where the society is (believe it not) more normal. He never got around to it because he wanted to work with me.

In the Fall, however, I became seriously ill. I required extensive surgery, and there was a real chance I might not survive, or might never be able to teach again. (As it turned out I have temporarily recovered completely.)

This uncertainty plus certain personal disappointments (unsuccessful love, etc.) confused and discouraged him badly. He spent time working and taking classes at UCLA (I believe he also taught part time here at Caltech while he lived near UCLA).

He also seems recovered from the shock and now appears definite in what he wants to do—study at Berkeley.

To summarize. He is a good student, and I am sorry to have lost him. I know that his application is late but I hope you can do something anyway. I think his talent should not be wasted. So I would be delighted to hear you have accepted him.

Sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO BLAS CABRERA, SEPTEMBER 7, 1982

In 1931 the great physicist Paul Dirac argued convincingly that there may exist in nature magnetic monopoles, fundamental particles out of which emerge radially pointing magnetic fields, analogous to the electric fields that stick out of an electron or proton, and he predicted the strength of such a monopole’s magnetic field. These predictions have motivated many experiments, over the seven decades since, to search for magnetic monopoles.

In 1981-1982, Dr. Blas Cabrera (a newly appointed assistant professor at Stanford University) carried out a high-sensitivity search for magnetic monopoles using an apparatus he had built that relied on a SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device). On February 14, 1982, Cabrera’s experiment exhibited a sudden excitation that was “consistent with the passage” of a magnetic monopole through the apparatus. Many physicists would have touted this excitation as the discovery of a magnetic monopole, but Cabrera did not. Instead, he published a paper in which he presented the details of his event forthrightly and clearly, explained that the sudden excitation was consistent with what one would expect of a monopole, and then used it to place an upper limit on the number of monopoles in the universe. Cabrera’s paper created great excitement in the physics community, and many physicists misinterpreted him as claiming a monopole discovery.

Cabrera presented the details of his “candidate” magnetic-monopole event in a physics colloquium at Caltech in May 1982. Feynman almost always attended Caltech’s physics colloquia and made them lively by his intense questioning of the speaker. At Cabrera’s colloquium, Feynman asked piercing questions about the experimental details. Cabrera, evidently dissatisfied with his on-the-spot answers, wrote to Feynman on June 24 with a follow-up clarification: “I want to answer the question you asked at the colloquium several weeks ago a bit more clearly. I first learned the theory of SQUID operation from Vol. III of your Lectures on Physics as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia. . . .Your three volumes had a profound influence on my early appreciation for the underlying unity of physics. I thank you.” He then went on with three pages of technical explanation, including six diagrams.

Dr. Blas Cabrera

Department of Physics

Stanford University

Stanford, California

Dear Dr. Cabrera:

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation of the working of your squid. Some days after your talk I realized how things worked and that my comments at the talk were dumb, that the true weakness was small sub-quantum changes in the flux through the squid coil.

(I found this above paragraph of an unfinished letter started months ago—and now I’ll finish.) May I say that your own evaluation and attitude toward your experiment is much more scientifically satisfactory and profound than what theorists say about you. “Cabrera says he found a monopole.” I defend you at each opportunity to explain that you don’t feel you can go so far—that it looks exactly like what a monopole should look like—but there is only one and you are uncomfortable. (Exactly as you say in your next to last paragraphs.)

Some days ago someone came in and said it has been recently shown that the theoretically expected monopole would interact strongly with protons and if there were as many as implied by your experiment we would have already seen them in apparent proton decays. “Won’t Cabrera be embarrassed?” he gloated. “Why?” I asked. “Because he claims to have seen the monopole.”

I carefully explained your position once again and then asked him whether he wouldn’t be embarrassed if you saw another one. Because there still might be such monopoles for reasons other than today’s brave new theories of unification. Some theorists do not understand the relation of theory and experiment—and where lies the true source and test of all their knowledge?

So keep up the elegant work and send me a telegram if Nature does it again!

Richard P. Feynman

Nature did not do it again. Cabrera’s event remains today, in 2004, the most convincing example of a possible magnetic monopole. Cabrera continues his experimental research on fundamental physics as a highly respected full professor at Stanford University.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO GWENETH AND MICHELLE FEYNMAN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1982

The following letter was written during a trip to Switzerland. Names have been changed.

Dear Gweneth and Michelle,

“The Curse of Riches”

Yesterday Donald took me to see a man he said I would find very interesting and I will tell you all about Jorge Rueda Orozco, one of the sons of a great Bolivian tin magnate, who inherited great wealth from his father. We drove over there with me driving Donald’s new Rolls Royce—because for safety sake on previous occasions where he was drunk I asked him to let me drive it, insisting it was not because he was incapable but because I enjoyed driving it so much, so to keep up appearances I asked to drive it that morning also even tho he was sober. Mr. Orozco had bought an estate—a farm really—nearby and was making over the old farm buildings into beautiful new buildings. So far he had been working on it seven years.

Expecting a beautiful entrance gate I was surprised when Donald announced suddenly that we had arrived—opposite a rickety jerry built gate of planks and chicken wire you might expect at the entrance to a construction site—but there was Mr. Orozco, a small thin but mildly handsome man of about 55 who appeared very gracious and intelligent and laughed when Donald told him of my comment—“Not a very elegant entrance.” We drove away to a nearby restaurant—where with his charm and good manners he began to impress me with his wit and intelligence. (While I was parking the car at the restaurant he asked Donald what I did—when told I was a professor he remarked in surprise,“How does a Professor come to be driving a Rolls?” not knowing it was Donald’s car.)

But soon things began to deteriorate slightly with his statement that it is not good to eat light lunches, for it is not natural, the argument being bolstered by some vague reference to the habits of animals. It soon appeared that Mr. Orozco was a principled and moral man, with various definite pronouncements about the need for forbearance and sacrifice before gratification of desires, about the dangerous slippage of morals in America, about the fact that the main cause of all this is the press, and such things. Donald told him about my recent operation—which he found surprising because, he said, I looked so well.Then looking at me he very seriously told me that if I kept up my good attitude he was “absolutely certain” that the cancer would not return. He asked me why was I smiling—whether I was laughing at him. I said, “Yes, I feel like I am in the tent of a fortune-teller,” and explained I have found the world more uncertain. He countered with an example of his mother who was in perfect health at the age of 80 but who died then because she was hit by three blows. One I can’t remember. One was that he and his brother had a falling out and would no longer speak to each other. His brother filched all his fortune from him (and explained to me that “filch” is a slang expression meaning to steal). (His brother was an inefficient “filcher” because as I will tell you below, Jorge had a considerable fortune still.) Another blow was the kidnapping of his (Jorge’s) daughter Mercedes some years ago (she is now 15).

The latter is a tragic story. She was held several months, for a 2,500,000-franc ransom.The money was to be delivered in notes none larger than 100 franc and none with consecutive numbers. Checking and counting the 25 thousand notes for delivery to the kidnappers was so difficult his hands were bleeding after a while (Donald had told me all of this ahead of time). When he got his daughter back she would tell him nothing of her ordeal, except that they had warned her that if she told anything they would kill her father. He took a long time to get over the experience.

Mr. Orozco told me many things of his early life—of his governess who would berate him because he was small, partly Indian—and particularly how uncomfortable he has always felt about the fact that he inherited wealth but has done nothing to earn it.There were confessions of courses with a psychoanalyst to help him.There were stories of his Catholic bringing up—of his turning toward Protestantism as an improvement—but now of a disbelief in all religion—for how could a good God put men to test knowing beforehand who would fail, and yet it still bothered him—and he didn’t understand it—that during the kidnapping at one point he found himself on his knees and spontaneously praying. What could it mean, he asked me, was it proof it was really true in spite of his intellectual misgivings? I told him that I was as strong an atheist as he was likely to find—but that I could conceive of myself praying in such a situation.That it was the cry of anguish of an utterly helpless man in the face of a threatening tragedy. He seemed genuinely pleased with my answer and muttered, “Yes, that’s all it was.”

Well after lunch we returned to his house—the rickety gates were opened and we drove in past stoves, lumber, and operating cement mixers to a driveway in front of a large square building—which had previously been a great barn but now looked well enough but somewhat uninterestingly rectangular.The work going on was on other nearby buildings yet to be “restored.” Two massive snarling police dogs came out barking—but they only reminded me of Pasha—yet Donald was genuinely afraid. Mr. Orozco assured us there was nothing to worry about, and tried to hold their chain collars, but they were not particularly obedient. We walked out into a large area of the “estate” behind the house, an enormous well kept grass lawn on part of which was an orchard of fruit trees. Mr. Orozco led us out there, the dogs circulating around and barking loudly while Mr. Orozco only partly successfully held their collars with one hand while he picked plums and “rare mirabelles” for us with the other assuring us always that the dogs were no concern—a thing I fully believed for they looked playful and puppyish. I put out my hand for one to smell—and was warned frantically not to try to touch them.When one circled in front of Donald he stopped short in fear, but Mr. Orozco said, “Don’t stop suddenly” and “Don’t show fear because the dogs smell and sense that and become enraged.”The other escaped him and came up behind me and snuggled my leg with his snout—he only wanted to play—but Mr. Orozco continued his inconsistent patter about how there was nothing to worry about and don’t pay any attention to them or put your hand out to them or they may become vicious. I think he knew the former was true—they were gentle altho loudly barking dogs looking for a little love—and the latter he wished were true—that they were dangerous guard dogs.

We entered the house—marble floors—marble pillars—marble staircases and into an enormous “living room” ceiling 35 feet high! With great single pane glass opening (a better word than mere “windows” unless you thought of store windows—and even those are too small) at each end.The walls—flat fine cement or plaster—had six great medieval tapestries, and two large very strange gold plated chandeliers hung down. So far I had seen no furniture in the great empty barn of a marble house—and yet there was furniture everywhere for his mother’s collection was in large crates about in the “living room,” but could not be seen. There was much talk about how noisy the room turned out to be (before the crates. He has been working on this project 7 years—living in the house now for a year and a half) and what he might do about it. It probably bounced from flat ceiling to flat floor—which floor by the way was all in old worn terracotta tiles.

We then entered a normal sized but abnormally long but narrow room, in the center of which was a long antique 15 ft. narrow table (“feel the edge marks on the underside”) with six ancient chairs—a similar antique sideboard and an odd and ancient candlestick to hold 3 candles on the table. The walls of this room were grey and unpainted still carrying the pencil marks of the workmen who had lined up the pictures which hung on the walls.They were Roman paintings from the walls of Roman houses from Herculaneum or Pompeii. They were very strange “of mythological figures” he said. The nicest was simply a dove eating a fig. They all had weak flat colors surrounded by a border of yellow orange—the outside of which was irregular in shape as they had been removed from their original houses. On one wall was a larger fuller painting of three naked women at a fountain.There was very considerate discussion between Donald and Jorge as to whether the pictures were too high and should be moved down. I was surprised to realize that they were discussing only the motion of an inch and a half.

“Let us go into the kitchen,” said Orozco as he moved to one wall, which I now realized, contained a door, flat and unpainted like the walls (everything, so far, had this unfinished look) and with no door handle. Pushing thru, with amazing contrast we came into a modern, fully equipped kitchen with Formica counters, copper sinks, beautiful plastic faucets, etc. Everything “normal” except if you discount three large (4 ft. diameter) wooden barrels covered roughly with a piece of oilcloth (on which there was a partially eaten apple) and standing directly in the center of one of the kitchen rooms where you might expect, if anything, a table. There was a half loaf of bread—his wife made it—from which he cut and offered me a piece. I had it with jam—or rather with the foam of jam that forms while it was being made—his wife makes jam too—from the fruit trees. It was delicious.

Then to the library.To get there you must climb a set of very high and particularly narrow marble steps that reminded me of the Mayan pyramids. It was an enormous room with brown carpeting on a floor of different levels high in the barn—bookshelves all around with many books. On antiquities “Animals in Roman Art,” “Greek Vases,” about things of all times—of all ages in several languages.The house had been finished thus now for a year and a half. No, he had not gotten a chance to sit down in his library (there were no chairs—but you could sit on steps) to read any of the books. I suggested to him that there he might find the answer to a question he asked me about what the writing might be about on a door he had showed us that had a circle around which were written 1562, 1563, etc. and other things we couldn’t make out.

During all this time there was a perpetual tapping of a chisel on plaster coming from somewhere in the house. Well, there was a (marble, or course) stairway leading to a great (now empty) vault with two steel doors 20 inches thick one at each end, each containing the locks and equipment of a bank vault door (but these were wider than any vault door I had previously seen).There was a workman chiseling into the concrete wall a long channel for the drain from the air conditioner that was to be installed in the vault. On passing thru the vault you climbed up another set of marble steps to another part of the house.

There were rooms full of crated and partly crated material. “What do you think these are?” he asks pointing to some oddly carved wooden panels. I guess wrong. “No, Polynesian” but he is very upset that he cannot remember the name of the island, except that it begins with T, but although we guess Tahiti, Truk, Torya and the Trobriand islands he knows that it is not one of those.

I will not lead you up and down thru any of the other rooms—but just as we are about to leave and he has given me some plums (which I am eating now) he suddenly remembers that he has forgotten to show me the Mayan statue (he knew from our lunch conversations that I had Mayan interest). Another room, under a semitransparent plastic sheet covering there it is. With the cover off I see it is a nearly (perhaps 2/3) full size sculpted figure of a man in a somewhat curved odd position with one hand gracefully curved out above his head—and the neck twisted to one side as if it is too weak to hold the head straight up.The thing is of white plaster-like stone (probably soft sandstone) evidently late for altho there are earplugs there is none of the elaborate carving of headdresses, etc. of the usual stelae. But the most remarkable unusual feature is the large patches here and there still remaining of the original painting—all dark red—which presumably covered it. How could it have been preserved? There was only one possibility—it was from Bonampak (or possibly some more recently discovered cave) where actual wall paintings have been found. And the figure—of course—was exactly the pose of the prisoners depicted on the Bonampak painting. I asked him where it was from, suggesting Bonampak, but he didn’t know—had it written down somewhere, he said. But maybe he knows but didn’t want to tell me because it’s all illegal to take that stuff out of Mexico (Donald says it is equally forbidden to take Roman paintings out of Italy—and he often hears Orozco on the phone talking to the lowest of the low making deals. He adds that Jorge’s wife and daughter Mercedes are friends of Maya and Donald’s daughter—and that Jorge insists that his wife make bread and the jam—I guess such activity is good for her, keeps her closer to Nature).

As I left and thought about it later I realized how my first favorable impressions of Jorge Orozco had turned into a vision of surrealistic horror—as I imagined the three—he, his wife and daughter (the other children are off at college) eating alone in that long room with unpainted walls, with the Roman paintings looking down on the dark scene lit only by candles (electricity isn’t installed in that room yet) in an ancient candlestick. For such they do.This is the pleasure of the autocratic, self-righteous, moralistic man with his principles—which include the requirement that his wife bakes the bread and serves the dinner. Meanwhile his guard dogs are outside and his vaults are being readied to contain the robbed remnants of other people’s culture.The tin mines of Bolivia slaved for this—that money he did not earn is spent in his “collection” in a crescendo of single minded-ness to try to expiate the guilt he feels from not having earned it.

He has no friends. His world is so distorted as to border on the insane. Such, in this case, is the curse of wealth.

Which reminds me—I hope you got our bank balance problem straightened out?

RICHARD C. HENRY TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, DECEMBER 2, 1982

Dear Professor Feynman:

I am an astronomer located in a Physics department, and experiencing ever increasing joy at teaching physics (as opposed to astronomy). Some of that joy expressed itself in an article for “The Physics Teacher” (copy enclosed); if you have time to read it and have any corrective comments, I would be very glad.

The reason I write to you is that I vacationed in Florida over Thanksgiving, and for light reading had Eddington’s The Mathematical Theory of Relativity. He puts words to equations extraordinarily well; almost as well as the Feynman Lectures. But even he is not able to verbally discuss, and does not try to mathematically discuss, a fascinating question: what would it be “like” to inhabit a world with 3 space dimensions and two time dimensions (see enclosure from Eddington’s book)?

This was a question I asked myself in grad school, and that I once asked Charlie Misner at a party; I’ve never gotten an answer. At first I asked myself whether there might not be two time dimensions, and that’s where the quantum-mechanical funny business comes from! More lately I think the answer might be much duller: identical clocks running at different rates, and changing rates if they collide.

If the answer is interesting, would it make a good article (for you to write!) for the Physics Teacher? Just a suggestion!

Thanks for your attention.

Richard C. Henry

Professor of Physics

P.S. I am not making the Editors of the Physics Teacher aware of this letter, so no disappointment is possible.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO RICHARD C. HENRY, JANUARY 7, 1982

This response to Dr. Henry is perhaps the only letter that hints at the unique relationship between my father and my brother. While always close, during Carl’s teenage years they became collaborators.They went for long walks together, discussing highly technical ideas (I know, for I sometimes tagged along and regretted it).

Richard’s renewed interest in computers was sparked by Carl’s passion, and the two kept a notebook together of computer problems and solutions they had tried. When Carl was at MIT, he sent home handouts from his computing courses for Richard to read. In the Caltech Archives, there is a long, completely technical letter about algorithms from Richard to Carl during this time. At the end of the typed letter, Richard wrote in his own hand, “TO BE CONTINUED. Love, POPPA FEYNMAN.” It was one of the deep joys in our father’s life to have a son like Carl, who spoke his language. To say he was proud of Carl would be an understatement.

Professor Richard C. Henry

Department of Physics

The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Professor Henry:

My son Carl Feynman and I discussed the case of two time and two space dimensions for a few days at our beach house in Mexico. It certainly is fun to think about. He developed a way of geometrically visualizing things—involving something like a small two-dimensional picture at each point of a plane that we found useful for kinematic considerations. I forget exactly how it worked, and I don’t know if he pursued it any further. If you want to ask him his address is below.

Richard P. Feynman

Professor Henry did not pursue this question with Carl.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO BEATA C. KAMP, FEBRUARY 28, 1983

Beata Kamp wrote to say she had watched The Pleasure of Finding Things Out all three times that it aired on her local PBS station. Other than expressing her appreciation for the show, she explored the idea that an “explorer of the spirit” like herself (and her cousin) and someone like Feynman, who pursued hard knowledge, were doing much the same work. “You unravel mysteries contained in matter, thinking you do it all with your own brainwork, while I listen for the soundless voices that teach me the mysteries behind matter.”

Mrs. Beata C. Kamp

Chico, California

Dear Mrs. Kamp:

Thank you for your fan letter.

There certainly are more mysteries than knowledge and, perhaps, more ways of finding things out than science. I like science because when you think of something you can check it by experiment; “yes” or “no”, Nature says, and you go on from there progressively. Other wisdom has no equally certain way of separating truth from falsehood. So I have taken the easy course with easy methods, while you and your cousin are pursuing far more difficult matters with less to guide you.

Good luck in your endeavors.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO CHRISTOPHER SYKES, MARCH 11,1983

Christopher Sykes

London, England

Dear Christopher,

Well, they showed it on NOVA, and we wowed them!

It was a big success. I got all kinds of great comments from my friends, and very many fan letters... all good. I get the compliments, and all you get is some remark like “and there was no buffoon commentator asking you dumb questions,” or the like. Little did most people (even some in the business) realize how it was actually done.They all believed the illusion that all I had to do was open my mouth and talk for an hour. Like all true art, the artist disappears and it looks natural and wonderful.

You and I know better. Three days of interviews, and four hours in the can to make one hour of program. But your original idea, so carefully considered and worried about, to make a talking head seems to have made it an unusual program. Congratulations on the American success of “your program.”

The people at Nova claim it made a record.There were more requests for transcripts than for any previous Nova program. But I saw one of these transcripts. Boy, are they a disappointment. They are hard to read, the sentences are incomplete, the grammar is murderous, etc.

I don’t think much of the new little programs. But I have learned to trust your judgement far above my own. So if you say they are O.K. they are O.K. by me. All the sweat is in the cutting room. Good luck!

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO DOROTHY W. WEEKS, FEBRUARY 25, 1983

“Your NOVA program was superb,” Dorothy Weeks wrote. In response to a segment in which Feynman spoke about the different ways Carl and I responded to his stories, she added that she too had noticed differences in the ways boys and girls learned about the physical world. She also wanted to know if he had been acquainted with Norbert Weiner, founder of cybernetics and eccentric genius in his own right.

Dr. Dorothy W. Weeks

Wellesley, Massachusetts

Thank you for your note.

The way my two children responded to my stories was very different but I don’t know that it was because one was a boy and the other a girl. I just think people are very different and that if I had two sons they would respond differently too—maybe.

Norbert Wiener was at MIT when I was a student. I saw him often, but didn’t know him very well.

Richard P. Feynman

ROBERT L. CARNEIRO TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, FEBRUARY 1, 1983

Dear Dr. Feynman,

A few days ago I saw the Nova television program devoted to your life and work in physics and found it most absorbing and enlightening. Having a one-year-old son whose education I must now begin to consider, it was of great interest to me to hear how your father directed you toward scientific thinking and a career in science. His methods worked so well in your case that I am thinking of borrowing and applying them myself!

But now to the substance of this letter. At one point in your conversation you belittled the idea of a social science.This was nothing new to me. Over the years I have heard this feeling expressed by a number of physical scientists. However, I would like to see if I can make you reconsider this attitude.

The rejection of social science by physicists (or anyone else) must have at least one of two bases: either a social science is inherently impossible because of the nature of man and society, or else it does not exist because those who have practiced it have done so incompetently. Let us briefly examine both these assumptions.

It would be very strange indeed if evolution, having produced a series of levels of organization of increasing complexity, should, once it reached the level of culture, suddenly suspend the operation of cause and effect and preclude pattern, order, and regularity—the stuff of which science is made at all other levels. I don’t think evolution has done this, and I daresay you don’t think so either.

Now, let us consider the other possible basis for denying social science. It is perfectly true that much of what is called by that term is not science at all. But can you, or any other physicist, necessarily acquainted with but a tiny fraction of what is being done in the field of social science, really assert that none of it can pass muster as genuine science? I don’t think you can.

Having said all this, I am emboldened to enclose reprints of a few articles of mine in which I have tried to look at certain aspects of social systems from the point of view of science. In my opinion, some of the regularities uncovered during the course of this work and expressed as scientific generalizations, have a valid claim to being considered science.

I know you are exceedingly busy with more important things, but perhaps you have enough curiosity about what is happening in newer disciplines with scientific pretensions to look briefly at what I am sending you. Then you may conceivably find reason to reexamine the question of whether social science is possible or not.

Needless to say, whatever your conclusion, I would be most interested in your reply.

Robert L. Carneiro

Curator of Anthropology

American Museum of Natural History

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO ROBERT L. CARNEIRO, FEBRUARY 28, 1983

Dr. Robert L. Carneiro

American Museum of Natural History

New York, New York

Dear Mr. Carneiro:

You are, of course, completely correct.

My reference to “social sciences” just before I talked about pseudo-science was inappropriate. I was thinking as I spoke and had in mind the “much of what is called by that term which is not a science at all,” and forgot things like anthropology, history, archaeology, etc., which I admire and would not wish to criticize in such a blanket manner. By such carelessness, I have done your field and others a considerable disservice. I apologize (but it does no good now!)

With some remorse, yours sincerely,

Richard P. Feynman

P.S.This evening I am going to relax & read the articles you sent me.

JUDAH CAHN TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, JANUARY 26, 1983

In 1946, Dr. Cahn presided over the burial of Melville Feynman, Feynman’s father.

It is many, many years since we have written to each other. Last night however I was fortunate enough to hear and see you on television and you were superb. I was enthralled not merely with your recollections of your father, but with the manner in which you presented your thesis and philosophy of education and life.

I am happy to tell you that my own sons are following in your footsteps. My elder son, Steve, was Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the University of Vermont and he is now a Director of the National Endowment Foundation for the Humanities in Washington. My younger son is teaching English at Skidmore.

I am enclosing a copy of a book I wrote. It isn’t very much but it indicates my own thinking on some of the matters I deal with. I hope you find the time to read portions of it and perhaps let me know what you think of it.

The last time I wrote to you I told you that I had traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and had held seminars with faculty and students at various universities. I did not mention that I had the opportunity of meeting with Lev Landau for a short period of time. It was before his terrible accident and I just felt privileged to be in his presence. I don’t know whether you ever met him and I really find it impossible to classify him in any way. I’m sure he had a sense of humor or else he couldn’t possibly have lived through the trials he experienced.The enclosed book tells his story.

I have not retired from the active Rabbinate and am enjoying the pleasures of reading and writing. I shall never forget the evening you spoke to the congregation at Temple Israel. I have often referred to it. I wonder whether you remember it.You were speaking about the atom bomb.Your notes were well prepared. At some point in the sermon you wandered from your notes and you began to talk not to the congregation but simply aloud, to no one in particular. I still remember your words not literally but approximately.You said, “I was asked to assist in the creation of the world’s most destructive machine but I was never asked how to use it. Now I realize what I have done and what that machine could do, and I am afraid.” With those words, “I am afraid” you sat down. Dick, I will never forget the look on your face when you came back to the seat and sat down next to me.You are not a religious man and in the acceptable term, neither am I. But you were quite prophetic. Except that now not only you are afraid but all of us are afraid.

I have reread your letter in which you said that you could understand religion perhaps if there were no God in religion. It is for that reason that I send you a book by my elder son containing answers to your questions. Incidentally he possibly will be out in California some time in the future and if he has the time and you have the time, I would be very pleased indeed if he were able to call you and spend a little time with you.

My younger son,Victor, who teaches English at Skidmore, will not be happy with the choice of book I sent to you. It was an early work of his but I enjoyed it so much that I felt that someone with your capacity of laugh would enjoy it equally as much. His other books are on Tom Stoppard, the field of Absurd Drama, etc.

I hope you and your family are well and that you will continue to enjoy the success which obviously you have attained.

With my best wishes.

Sincerely yours,

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO JUDAH CAHN, MARCH 15, 1983

New York, New York

How very wonderful to hear from you! You are rightly proud of your children—and so am I. I also have two children, a boy (21) and a girl (14). The boy studies computers at MIT and will soon graduate. My daughter is “into” horses and cello.

You probably remember my mother. She died a year ago. She liked you very much and we often reminisced about you and Temple Israel.

I am most curious and interested in your remembrance of my Temple Israel talk. I don’t remember the exact remark—had you asked me I would have said that what I said was something like this: it was “brotherhood week” and I had explained how serious the bomb was and therefore on how important it was to try to get along with our enemies.Then I said “but there is something wrong about all this—for brotherhood should be based on love and not fear,” and sat down.

I am very curious on how reliable old memories are and wonder how much we make up in our own mind when we review events. Maybe we remember saying what we would have liked to say.Your memory is probably more accurate—and there is no doubt I could have said things just as you say—because it does express my sentiments then.

Thank you for writing.

Richard P. Feynman

HEIDI HOUSTON TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, MAY 2, 1983

Dear Dr. Feynman,

I believe that your comments at last week’s Physics Colloquium were arrogant, rude, and disruptive. In addition your attitude appeared to encourage the students (or post-docs?) sitting near you. Their persistent giggling and snickering was annoying and rude. Please consider this.

I remain, however, a great admirer of yours.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO HEIDI HOUSTON, MAY 13, 1983 INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM

Thank you for your observations on my behavior at the Colloquium. You are probably right.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO BOB VALLEY, OCTOBER 14, 1983

Mr. Valley, my Algebra II teacher, had marked me down for using “incorrect” methods in his math class (the resulting encounter is discussed at greater length in the introduction).

John Muir High School

Pasadena, California

Dear Mr.Valley:

I should like to apologize for the personal remarks I made about you last Tuesday. They were entirely uncalled for, and as I find from speaking to others who know you better, entirely unjustified. I was quite wrong. I hope you will accept this apology for my unwarranted remarks.

If you have any mathematical interest in the point I was trying to make, it is explained on the accompanying sheet.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO FRANCES BEST, NOVEMBER 2, 1983

Nineteen-year-old Miss Best had recently started reading The Feynman Lectures on Physics and discovered that she loved the subject. Her parents arranged for an hour per week with a physics tutor, which she thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, she had to give that hour up to cram for finals, finals that she did not do very well in, and as a result she was not able to go to university as she had hoped. She wrote to Feynman, seeking some advice.

London, England

Dear Miss Best:

I received your letter with its unhappy cry about the difficulty of entering the University to study physics. It is all to the good that you find fascination in physics and enjoy studying it so much. Nature is wonderful indeed.

The best place to study it is a University of course. It must have been devastating to discover you didn’t get in.

I am not familiar with the system in England. Here in this country we have very many schools large and small, state financed or private, specializing in this and that.Therefore even if someone doesn’t get accepted by the school he chooses, he can find another. I’m afraid I cannot help you. I can only give the obvious advice that all is not yet lost, you are still young and strong, and persistence will win out in the end. I’m sure you have thought and heard all that before—and youth is impatient and anxious with time.

I am very sorry that I cannot help you with more than sympathy and platitudes. I am very glad to hear you found my book useful, but hope that it has not simply led you into desperation and frustration—but rather introduced you to the delight we can all get from a close scrutiny of Nature’s patterns.

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO PAUL PRIVATEER, NOVEMBER 9, 1983

After seeing The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Dr. Privateer wrote to tell Feynman how delighted he was by the program. He wondered if the rift between science and literature was a true one, citing, as a historical example, “William Blake’s open hostility to Newton who he saw as. . . mechanically defining the universe in laws that denied the imagination its supreme place in human experience.”

Dr. Privateer believed there were similarities between the language of science and the language of literature, and he wanted Feynman to speak at a conference on the subject. “I would personally be elated to have you as a guest speaker on this topic and even if you fain a complete lack of knowledge about literature I will know you are being unnecessarily humble.”

Dr. Paul Privateer

English Department

San Jose State University

San Jose, California

Dear Dr. Privateer:

Thank you very much for your long letter commenting on my NOVA program and inviting me to a conference on science and literature. I am, of course, dishonored for I cannot accept, for as you guessed, I fain a complete lack of knowledge of literature. But not, as you guessed, because I am humble. The faining is not feigning. I heard about Blake’s view of Newton only because this professor of literature here is such a wonderfully attractive woman that I took her out to lunch. She is a Blake fiend.

Richard P. Feynman

The professor of literature at Caltech that Feynman referred to was Jenijoy La Belle. She discussed Blake’s view of Newton with Feynman and showed him Blake’s color print of Newton under the sea, which he loved.

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO JACK M. RICE, JR., NOVEMBER 11, 1983

After reading the Los Angeles Times article, “Nobel Prize: Another Side of the Medal,” in which Feynman expressed a certain ambivalence about having received the award, Mr. Rice wrote a blistering letter to Feynman. He concluded: “You may wish, in saying ‘to Hell’ with Nobel and his prize, to come across as a curmudgeon.You succeed instead at demonstrating what a jerk you are.”

Mr. Jack M. Rice, Jr.

Los Angeles, California

Thank you for your letter concerning my remarks in the L.A.Times. You are right, I am a jerk for telling the reporter my personal feelings and reactions to the Nobel Prize. I realized this after I spoke to him and tried to call him back to ask him not to print the interview—but couldn’t reach him.

My feelings are perhaps childish or foolish but they are sincere. I was first notified of the prize at 4 A.M. by a New York newspaper. I was not asked by the Nobel committee whether I wanted to receive it. I wanted to quietly demur the honor, but it was already too late to be possible. It would have been an even greater publicity annoyance if I said no in public after newspapers knew I’d won it. It would be a worldwide sensation.

It has been a mild annoyance to me ever since. Never mind whether it should be or not—or whether you think it would not be to you—or whether it is ungrateful of me—it is, to me, an annoyance. On the other hand, as you imply, I am a jerk to say so publicly. An illogical jerk, certainly, to complain to a newspaper publicly about not wanting publicity.

On the other hand you seem to think my criticism of the prize is a criticism of the Swedish people, or of Alfred Nobel himself. I didn’t mean to imply that.The one delightful compensation for the trouble of the prize was the wholehearted and open friendly welcome of all the Swedish people when my wife and I went there. I have many Scandinavian friends and students and they are marvelous people. I am sorry if you thought I believed otherwise.

I don’t know Mr. Nobel’s life or motives for giving the prize, so if I criticized him personally in my remarks I didn’t know what I was talking about.

May I wish you many honors in your life, for I know you will accept them far more graciously than I.

From the curmudgeon,

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO DAVID MERMIN, MARCH 30, 1984

David Mermin is an eminent physicist and professor at Cornell who, like Feynman, takes delight in finding simple, elegant explanations for surprising physical phenomena. In 1981 he published an article on quantum mechanics that delighted Feynman and moved him to write the following letter.

Dr. N. David Mermin

Lab. of Atomic and Solid State Physics

Cornell University

Ithaca, New York

Dear Dr. Mermin:

One of the most beautiful papers in physics that I know of is yours in the American Journal of Physics 49 (1981) 10.

All my mature life I have been trying to distill the strangeness of quantum mechanics into simpler and simpler circumstances. I have given many lectures of ever increasing simplicity and purity. I was recently very close to your description (down to six states, instead of three, etc.) when your ideally pristine presentation appeared.

I have since copied it almost exactly (with attribution, of course) in several recent lectures on the subject.Thank you.

I have been making a similar series of attempts to explain the relation of spin and statistics. Can you do as well there? Perhaps if we meet someday we can discuss it together and create a clear explanation of why exchanging two particles implies a tacit rotation of the axes of one by 360 degrees relative to the other.

Richard P. Feynman

The “relation of spin and statistics” to which Feynman refers is the fact that fundamental particles whose spin angular momentum (in units of Planck’s constant) is an integer want, in a statistical (probabilistic) sense, to be in the same quantum state (do the same thing at the same place at the same time as each other), while half-integer-spin particles can never be in the same state. This relation between spin and statistics underlies many important phenomena—such as the lasing of lasers and the fact that solid objects cannot easily be squashed—and so Feynman wanted to find a simple explanation for them.

Feynman and Mermin knew an explanation that relied on one simple property of all fundamental particles: when two particles, with any spin, are interchanged, the result is the same as not interchanging them but instead rotating one of them through 360 degrees. Feynman hoped Mermin could explain that weird rotational property in a simple way.

DAVID MERMIN TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, APRIL 11, 1984

Dear Dr. Feynman:

Thanks for the letter about my gedanken demonstration. I’m fond of that paper myself, but I’ve learned that there are two kinds of physicists: those who enjoy it and those who utterly fail to get the point. I thought you’d be the first kind, but I’m glad to know for sure... I have nothing simple to say about why interchanging two particles involves a tacit rotation of one by 360° relative to the other. I don’t even have a satisfactory complicated understanding. If you ever write anything about that please send me a copy. . .

Thanks again for the very nice letter. Since you, through your writings, have influenced the way I try to write and think about physics more than anybody else, I’m delighted to have had at least one chance to return the favor.

Cornell University Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO WILLIAM G. BRADLEY, JULY 13, 1984

As a reminder to the reader, the “event” in question is the examination following the nasty bump on the head that the excited customer received on his way into the computer store.

Dr.William G. Bradley

Director, NMR Imaging Laboratory

Huntington Medical Research Institute

Pasadena, California

Dear Dr. Bradley,

Thank you so much for sending the NMR pictures of my brain. The instrument is sensational in the detail and resolution you can see.

But you can’t see what I am thinking—for apparently I still have some functional failure as I remember the event as on 25-Jun-19:33:24 whereas your instrument says it occurred on 06-Jun-19:33:18. The 6 second doesn’t concern me, for my time errors already averaged 10 sec. standard deviation before the accident (a deleterious effect of age, I think) but the 19 day error is evidence of severe functional disability (resulting from hematoma, probably).

Richard P. Feynman

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO ERIC W. LEULIETTE, SEPTEMBER 24, 1984

Mr. Eric Leuliette, a sixteen-year-old high school student, wanted advice on how to prepare for college and a career in physics.

Eric W. Leuliette

Clarksburg,West Virginia

Among the many things I know very little about, one is what one should do to prepare oneself to be a theoretical physicist. My best guess is to do with energy and zest whatever interests you the most. If it turns out not to lead you toward theoretical physics but to, say law, or electrical engineering instead, go that way. It is wonderful, if you can find something you love to do in your youth which is big enough to sustain your interest through all your adult life. Because, whatever it is, if you do it well enough (and you will, if you truly love it) people will pay you to do what you want to do anyway.

About college financial support questions, I am asking the proper office to send you any information they have available.

Richard P. Feynman

P.S.Try taking my Feynman Lectures out of the library.You might enjoy parts of them—if not they will help you decide what you want to do.

FRANK POTTER TO RICHARD P. FEYNMAN, NOVEMBER 15, 1984

Professor Feynman.

I wish to sincerely thank you for your influence on my life and my career.You may not remember me well, but I was that ignorant Cal Tech undergraduate who often rode to the Hughes Research Labs with you and Bruce Winstein each week in 1965 through 1967.You were then lecturing on the fundamentals of physics and later, I think, on astrophysics. During these journeys in your car or van you told anecdotes and discussed physics concepts—a short “trial run” for your two hours at Hughes.

The excitement and the genuine interest you displayed in posing the problems and then immediately attacking them eventually affected me so much that I changed objectives. From an EE major as an undergraduate, I earned a Ph.D. in Physics in 1973.That spirit which I saw you display continues to infect me in my career as a Lecturer in Physics here at UC Irvine.

There is one conversation in the car which I distinctly remember because I have tried to practice the ideas we discussed. Bruce asked you:“If you could do anything different in your career, what would it be?”You replied with very little hesitation:“I would try to forget how I had solved a problem. Then, each time the problem arose, I might solve it in a different way—I wouldn’t be thinking about how I had solved it before.”

I can honestly report to you that I have attempted to achieve that goal—at least as far as physics is concerned. At first, as a graduate student, this manner of doing things was a great burden, since I ended up starting from the very fundamentals quite often. Eventually, after years of practice, I have grown to enjoy thinking freshly each time a problem arises. In fact, it is a real challenge to find a variety of ways to solve problems. It has even led to my own alternative ways to think about traditional physics as well as contemporary ideas.The pleasures I have enjoyed from this one idea of yours has made me realize how indebted to you I really am.

I may not make any significant contributions to physics in my career, but I have no great concern over that. I find Nature fascinating and challenging, and I have some of that spirit which I saw in you. I have a family which I enjoy, and I have the freedom and the time to think about anything I wish.

I hope that you receive other letters of this nature, for you truly deserve them.You have strongly influenced many people, and you have given us remarkable guidance and instilled a spirit which will last forever.

With great appreciation,

RICHARD P. FEYNMAN TO FRANK POTTER, NOVEMBER 21, 1984

Dr. Frank Potter

University of California

Irvine, California

Gee, Frank, that was a nice letter.

Of course I remember you and Winstein (and Schlichter) going to Hughes. I don’t remember that particular remark, about wanting to forget solutions, but I agree with it.Your letter surprised me, and I am often surprised, to discover that other people don’t ordinarily do things the way I do. It is my greatest pleasure to think anew about things and I am delighted to discover that I have infected you with the same pleasure.

Naturally I have read your letter over several times—it makes me feel good.Thank you.

Richard P. Feynman