Genius (85 page)

278 H
E HAD ENDURED ONE TOO MANY DAYS
: F-W, 546; Bacher, interview.

278
ALL THE INS AND OUTS
: Feynman to Bacher, 6 April 1950, PERS.

278 I
DO NOT LIKE TO SUGGEST
: Ibid.

279 O
NCE (AND IT WAS NOT YESTERDAY)
: Cvitanoviç 1983, 6.

CALTECH

Three local histories are Judith Goodstein’s
Millikan’s School,
Ann Scheid’s
Pasadena: Crown of the Valley,
and Kevin Starr’s
Inventing the Dream;
they were useful background, as was Robert Kargon’s essay ‘Temple to Science.” I’ve also relied on the recollections of many present and former Caltech professors, students, and administrators. Some information on Feynman’s time in Brazil comes from the recollections of José Leite Lopes (1988 and personal communication), Cecile Dewitt-Morette, and others; from Feynman’s 1951 correspondence with Fermi; from Brownell 1952; from Feynman’s talk “The Problem of Teaching Physics in Latin America” (1963a), and from publications of the Centra Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas. Documentation of the government’s secret scrutiny of Feynman and of his consultation with the State Department on the advisability of travel to the Soviet Union came through my Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, CIA, Department of the Army, and Department of Energy in 1988 and 1989. Some of the State Department correspondence is also in CIT. On superfluidity, Robert Schrieffer, Hans Bethe, Michael Fisher, and Russell Donnelly were especially helpful. Donnelly sent written reminiscences by several colleagues. Andronikashvili 1990 is a remarkable memoir from the Russian perspective. For the particle physics of the 1950s and 1960s: the Rochester conference proceedings; John Polkinghorne’s witty memoir (1989) and Jeremy Bernstein’s “informal history” (1989); Robert Marshak’s account (1970); Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson’s symposium proceedings
Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s;
and interviews with the various scientists cited. Again, some material on personal relationships is based on letters and interviews that I cannot cite specifically for reasons of privacy. Feynman’s thinking on gravitation can be seen in a fifteen-page letter to Victor Weisskopf written in January and February 1961 (WHE) and in his Faraday lecture (1961b), as well as his one published paper (1965b) and various lecture notes in CIT. The development of quarks and partons has been well chronicled from different points of view by Andrew Pickering (1984) and Michael Riordan (1987); Feynman kept his notes from this period in unusually good order (CIT); Riordan and Burton Richter provided useful
on-site guidance
at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; James Bjorken, George Zweig, Sidney Drell, Yung-Su Tsai, and, of course, Murray Gell-Mann were among those with especially helpful reminiscences. For the record of Feynman’s illnesses I relied on notes and correspondence in his files and interviews with Drs. C. M. Haskell, William C. Bradley, and In Chang Kim. For the investigation into the
Challenger
accident: the hearing transcripts and documentation as published in the commission report; Feynman’s personal notes and commission memorandums (CIT and PERS); Ralph Leighton’s unedited transcript of Feynman’s oral account (later published in WDY); interviews with commissioners, NASA officials and engineers, and others (only William P. Rogers refused to make himself available, despite my repeated requests for an interview). Carl Feynman shared the manuscript of the paper Feynman was working on until he entered the hospital for the last time.

281 T
HE
C
ALIFORNIA
I
NSTITUTE OF
T
ECHNOLOGY
: J. Goodstein 1991, 180.

281 P
ASADENA IS TEN MILES FROM
L
OS
A
NGELES
: Morrow Mayo, quoted in Scheid 1986, 156.

281
EVERY LUNCHEON, EVERY DINNER
: Letter to the Editor, Los
Angeles
Times, 6 March 31, quoted in J. Goodstein 1991, 100.

282 C
OULD IT BE THAT NITROGEN HAS TWO LEVELS
: F-W, 559.

282 D
EAR FERMI
: Feynman to Enrico Fermi, 19 December 1951; Fermi to Feynman, 18 January 1952 and 28 April 1952, AIR Some of Feynman’s meson work that year emerges in Lopes and Feynman 1952.

282 D
ON’T BELIEVE ANY CALCULATION
: Feynman to Fermi, 19 December 1951.

283 I
N RECENT YEARS SEVERAL NEW PARTICLES
: Fermi and Yang 1949, 1739. 283
HE COULD SPEND DAYS AT THE BEACH
: Lopes, personal communication.

283 I
WISH
I
COULD ALSO REFRESH
: Fermi to Feynman, 18 January 1952, AIR

283 F
EYNMAN TAUGHT BASIC ELECTROMAGNETISM
: Feynman 1963a.

284 L
IGHT IMPINGING ON A MATERIAL
: Ibid., 26.

284 B
UT WHEN HE ASKED WHAT WOULD HAPPEN
: SYJ, 192.

284 T
HEY COULD DEFINE “TRIBOLUMINESCENCE"
: Even in his sixties he continued to consider ways of intensifying this phenomenon in the substances he described as “WL (Wint-o-green Lifesavers) and S (sucrose).” Feynman to J. Thomas Dick-enson, 13 May 1985, CIT.

284 H
AVE YOU GOT SCIENCE?
: SYJ, 197.

284 W
HAT ARE THE FOUR TYPES OF TELESCOPE?
: Feynman 1963a, 24.

284 H
E WOULD SIT IDLY AT A CAFÉ TABLE
: Joan Feynman, interview.

284
GIVES A FEELING OF STABILITY
: Feynman 1963a, 24.

285 P
HILIP
M
ORRISON, WHO SHARED AN OFFICE
: Morrison, interview.

286 H
E JOINED A LOCAL SCHOOL
: SYJ, 185.

286 I
N THE
1952
CARNEVAL
: Lopes, personal communication.

287 H
E HEARD FROM HARDLY ANYONE
: F-W, 564; Feynman to Oppenheimer, 27 May 1952, OPR

287 H
E HAUNTED THE
M
IRAMAR
H
OTEL’S OUTDOOR PATIO BAR
: Bertram J. Collcutt to Feynman, 2 December 1985, CIT.

287 H
E TOOK OUT
P
AN
A
MERICAN STEWARDESSES
: SYJ, 183–84.

287 T
HE OLD CERTAINTIES OF THE PAST
: Mead 1949, 4.

289 T
ELL ME WHAT IT IS LIKE
: Michels 1948, 16.

290 It
SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU GO TO LOTS OF TROUBLE
: Feynman, note, n.d., PERS.

290 H
OW IS IT POSSIBLE
: SYJ, 168.

290 Y
OU ARE WORSE THAN A WHORE
: Ibid., 169–70.

292 E
VEN BEFORE THEY MARRIED, THEY QUARRELED
: Mary Louise Bell to Feynman, 30 May 1950 and 24 March 1952, PERS.

292 T
HE PATTERN IS THAT THE GIRL
: Bell to Feynman, 26 February 1952, PERS.

292
THEY HONEYMOONED IN MEXICO
: SYJ, 286.

292 S
HE DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO THINK
: Mary Louise Bell, telephone interview.

292 S
HE LIKED TO TELL PEOPLE
: Bell, interview.

292 W
HERE THERE’S SMOKE THERE’S FIRE
: Gell-Mann, interview.

293
HAS WILFULLY, WRONGFULLY
: Complaint for Divorce, 6 June 1956, Superior Court, Los Angeles County. “Final Adjustment of Property Settlement,” handwritten agreement, 16 October 1956, PERS.

293 T
HE DRUMS MADE TERRIFIC NOISE
: “Beat Goes Sour: Calculus and African Drums

Bring Divorce,” Los
Angeles Times,
18 July 1956.

293
BEGGING FOR HIS OLD JOB BACK
: Feynman to Bethe, 26 November 1954, BET.

293 S
OON AFTERWARD, SOMEONE RUSHED UP
: SYJ, 211–12.

293 M
EANWHILE, ALTHOUGH
B
ETHE HAD BEEN THRILLED
: Bethe to Feynman, 3 December 1954, BET.

294
THE
U
NIVERSITY OF
C
HICAGO DECIDED
: Goldberger, interview; SYJ, 213.

295 A
HOST OF APPLIED SCIENCES
: Cf. Forman 1987 and Kevles 1990.

295 W
HEN SCIENCE IS ALLOWED TO EXIST
: DuBridge, quoted in Forman 1987.

295 T
HESE WERE NOT SO MUCH CRUMBS
: As the leading experimentalist Luis Alvarez told the physicist and historian Abraham Pais: “Right after the war we had a blank check from the military because we had been so successful. Had it been otherwise we would have been villains. As it was we never had to worry about money.” Pais 1986, 19.

295 I
N
1954
THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY
: Minutes of Executive Session, Army Scientific Advisory Panel, 17 November 1954, CIT; F-W, 599–601.

295 H
OT DOC
: Feynman to Lucille Feynman, n.d., PERS.

295 T
HE PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT CAME
: “Einstein Award to Professor, 35,” New
York Times,
14 March 1954; F-W, 673.

296 T
HE
AEC
BEGAN FOUR WEEKS OF HEARINGS
: Atomic Energy Commission 1954.

296 Y
OU SHOULD NEVER TURN A MAN’S GENEROSITY
: A decade later, he was uncomfortable with his decision. “I knew what had happened to Oppenheimer, and that Strauss had something to do with it, and I didn’t like it…. O.K.? And I thought—I’m going to fix him. I mean, I was not nice. I don’t want to take it from him. The hell with it. And I thought: maybe I won’t take the prize. All right? And I worried about it, because in a certain sense I felt that was unfair. The guy is offering the money—you know, he’s trying to do something nice— and it isn’t that he just did it because of this, because he’s done it before. There were previous Einstein Awards, as far as I know, or something…. I was kind of confused. “F-W, 673–74.

296 F
EYNMAN’S OWN FILE AT THE FBI
: 497 pages, partly expurgated, FOI.

296 P
ROFESSOR
F
EYNMAN IS ONE OF THE LEADING
: Bethe to M. Evelyn Michaud, 7 April 1950, and Michaud to Bethe, 27 March 1950, BET.

297 O
NE OF ITS PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS
: Sakharov 1990, 190–91.

298 I
THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED
: Feynman to Atomic Energy Commission, 14 January 1955, CIT. Also: “Is there danger that I would be kept there and not return?” Feynman to State Department, 14 January 1955, FOI.

298
PROPAGANDA GAINS
: Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., “Invitation to United States Physicist to Attend Scientific Conference,” confidential memorandum, Department of State, 21 January 1955, FOI; Stoessel, Jr., to Feynman, 15 March 1955, CIT.

298
CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE ARISEN
: Feynman to A. N. Nesmeyarrov, 14 March 1955, CIT.

298 T
HIS IS A CLEAR CASE
: “Scientist at Caltech Warned,”
Los Angeles Times,
8 April 1955.

299 W
HEN
F
EYNMAN TALKED ABOUT FLUID FLOW
:
Lectures,
II-40–1.

299
THEORISTS OF “DRY WATER"
:
Lectures,
II-40–3 and III-4–12.

300
TWO CITIES UNDER SIEGE
: Feynman 1957a, 205.

300 N
ORWEGIAN
I
AND
N
ORWEGIAN II
: Donnelly 1991b.

300 T
HE MOST BASIC CLUE
: Feynman 1955b, 18.

301 T
HE SPEAKERS HAD NO IDEA
: Russell Donnelly, telephone interview.

301 H
E HAD TRIED TO PICTURE
: Feynman 1953c, 1302.

302 T
HE CHALLENGE WAS TO DRIVE
: “The hardest part of the helium problem was done by physical reasoning alone, without being able to write anything…. it was very very interesting to be able to push through that doggoned thing without having stuff to write.” F-W, 739.

301 H
E LAY AWAKE IN BED
: F-W, 693–95.

302 T
HE RINGS OF ATOMS WERE LIKE RINGS OF CHILDREN
: Feynman 1958a, 21.

302
TYPICAL
F
EYNMAN
: Donnelly, interview.

303 P
OSSIBLY
I
UNDERSTAND
: Note, “Possibly I understand …” n.d., CIT.

303 T
HE YEAR BEFORE
, S
CHRIEFFER HAD LISTENED
: Robert Schrieffer, telephone interview; Feynman 1957a.

303 W
E HAVE NO EXCUSE
: Feynman 1957a, 212.

304 B
Y THE FIRST OF THESE MEETINGS
: Pais 1986, 461; Polkinghorne 1989, 20.

304 W
ITHIN A FEW YEARS PARTICLE TABULATIONS
: Polkinghorne 1989, 21.

304 G
ENTLEMEN, WE HAVE BEEN INVADED
: C. F. Powell, at a 1953 conference, quoted in Polkinghorne 1989, 48.

305 O
NE EXPERIMENTALIST
, M
ARCEL
S
CHEIN
: Crease and Mann 1986, 178.

305 You have a different theory: F-W, 603–5.

306 If a C
altech experimenter
: Barry Barish, interview, Pasadena.

307 H
E THOUGHT
P
AIS WAS WRONG
: Cell-Mann 1982, 399.

307 A
T FOURTEEN HE HAD BEEN DECLARED
:
Columbiana
1944 (Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School), 28; Bernstein 1987, 20.

308 T
HE ONLY PERSON WHO WILL KNOW
: Ralph Leighton, interview, Pasadena.

308 I
T WAS THE CLOSEST TO SUCCESS
: Cell-Mann, interview.

308 I
T WAS HIS BROTHER
: Gell-Mann 1989b, 3.

309 W
HEN
W
EISSKOPF ADVISED HIM
: Gell-Mann, interview.

309 F
EYNMAN FELT A FLICKER OF ENVY
: F-W, 670; SYJ, 223.

309 G
ELL
-M
ANN, IN
C
HICAGO, FELT EVEN MORE
: “Jealousy was another reason … I resented the publicity being given to the scheme of Pais, which I was convinced was wrong!” Gell-Mann 1982, 399.