Genius (54 page)

Playing the bongos: “On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.”

Talking with a student as Murray Cell-Mann looks on: “Murray’s mask was a man ofgreat culture… Dick’s mask was Mr. Natural—just a little boy from the country that could see through things the city slickers can’t.”

With his hero, Paul A. M. Dirac, in Warsaw, 1962.

With Carl Feynman, three years old, facing photographers on the morning of the Nobel Prize:
“Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn’t be worth the NobelPrize.”

Celebrating the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, 1965, with Gweneth Feynman (above) and a princess (below).

With Schwinger: “I thought you would be happy that I beat Schwinger out at last,” Feynman wrote his mother after winning one award, “but it turns out he got the thing 3 yrs ago.Of course, he only got 112 a medal, so 1guess you'll be happy. You always compareme with Schwinger.”

Shin’ichirō Tomonaga, whose work in an isolated Japan paralleled the new th eories of Feynman and Schwinger: “Why isn’t nature clearer and more directly comprehensible?”

With Carl and Michelle (right), and on a desert camping trip.

Standing at a Cal tech blackboard and playing a chieftain in a student production of South Pacific.