Genius (86 page)

310 T
HE EDITORS OF THE
P
HYSICAL
R
EVIEW
: Gell-Mann 1953; Gell-Mann 1982, 400.

310 W
HY SHOULD A BROAD-MINDED THEORIST
: Quoted in Polkinghorne 1989, 49. Similarly, the historian ). L. Heilbron: “‘Strangeness,’ a word barely utterable in Romance languages and expressive of a surprise only briefly felt…. Does the new terminology express cynicism or disdain by particle theorists toward their own creations?” “An Historian’s Interest in Particle Physics,” in Brown et al. 1989, 53.

310 T
HE WINTER
F
ERMI DIED
: Gell-Mann, interview.

311 M
OST OF HIS BODY WAS CREMATED
: Thomas S. Harvey, telephone interview; William L. Laurence, “Key Clue Sought in Einstein Brain,” New
York Times,
20 April 1955; Steven Levy, “My Search for Einstein’s Brain,” New Jersey
Monthly,
August 1978, 43.

311
VARIOUS NINETEENTH-CENTURY RESEARCHERS
: Could 1981.

312 I
S THERE A NEUROLOGICAL SUBSTRATE
: Obler and Fein 1988, 6.

313 E
NLIGHTENED, PENETRATING, AND CAPACIOUS MINDS
: Duff 1767, 5.

313
RAMBLING AND VOLATILE POWER
: Ibid., 9.

313 I
MAGINATION IS THAT FACULTY
: Ibid., 6–7.

314
IN POINT OF GENIUS
: Gerard 1774, 13.

314
A QUESTION OF VERY DIFFICULT SOLUTION
: Ibid., 18.

315 I
T IS ONE OF THE HOPES
: Quoted in Root-Bernstein 1989, 1.

315 A
PHYSICIST STUDYING QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
: Coleman, interview.

315
FROM
G
EOMETRY TO
L
OGARITHMS
: Hood 1851, 10–11.

316 T
HE ASTROPHYSICIST
W
ILLY
F
OWLER
: Thorne, interview; Fowler, interview conducted by Charles Weiner, 30 May 1974, AIP: “I just thought Feynman’s talking through his hat, what can he possibly mean, what can general relativity have to do with these objects?”

316
THAT
F
EYNMAN HAD SIGNED
: John S. Rigden, interview, New York.

317 W
HY DO
I
CALL HIM A MAGICIAN?
: Quoted in Dyson 1979, 8–9.

317
MAGICAL MUMBO-JUMBO
: Dyson 1979, 8.

318 B
ETWEEN THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE MAN
: Lombroso 1891, xiii.

319 L
ET
E
UROPEAN ROMANTICS CELEBRATE
: Currie 1974.

319 I
SPEAK WITHOUT EXAGGERATION
: Quoted in Grartan 1933, 156.

319 M
R.
E
DISON IS NOT A WIZARD
: Quoted in LaFollette 1990, 97.

320 E
DISON WAS NOT A WIZARD
: Grartan 1933, 151.

320
HONEST CRAFTSMEN
: Dyson 1979, 9.

321 H
E WAS SEARCHING FOR GENERAL PRINCIPLES
: Ibid., 62–63.

321 S
O WHAT IS THIS MIND OF OURS?
: WDY, 220.

322 K
NOWING WHAT
F
ERMI COULD DO
: Zuckerman 1977.

323 I
THINK IF HE HAD NOT BEEN SO QUICK
: Coleman, interview.

324 T
HE WHOLE QUESTION OF IMAGINATION
: Lectures, II-20–10.

325
NOT JUST SOME HAPPY THOUGHTS
: Ibid.

325 O
UR IMAGINATION IS STRETCHED
: CPL, 127–28.

325 W
E KNOW SO VERY MUCH
: Feynman to Welton, 10 February 1947, CIT

326 T
HERE ARE SO VERY FEW EQUATIONS
: Ibid.

326 M
AYBE THAT’S WHY YOUNG PEOPLE
: Feynman 1965c.

326 W
ELTON, TOO, WAS PERSUADED
: Welton, interview: “I said, ‘Dick, think in retrospect what would have happened if I had taught you the Q.E.D. that I knew— you would have known too much, and you wouldn’t have been able to innovate as much,’ and he said, ‘You’re right.’”

326 W
OULD
I
HAD PHRASES
: Attributed to Khakheperressenb, quoted in Lentricchia 1980, 318.

326 T
HERE ARE NO LARGE PEOPLE
: Quoted by Scott Spencer, “The Old Man and the Novel,” New
York Times Magazine,
22 September 1991, 47.

327 G
IANTS HAVE NOT CEDED
: Gould 1983, 224. 329
THOSE COUNTLESS FOOTNOTES
: Merton 1961, 72.

329 I
ALWAYS FIND QUESTIONS LIKE THAT
: Feynman to James T. Cushing, 21 October 1985, CIT.

330 W
EISSKOPF DECLARED AT ONE MEETING
: Polkinghorne 1989, 61.

331 F
EYNMAN HIMSELF CONFESSED
: Millard Susman, personal communication, 29 May 1989.

331 E
VERYTHING’S REALLY ALL RIGHT
: Untitled videotape, n.d., recorded for the British Broadcasting Corporation; cf. Gardner 1969, 22–23.

331 C
HEMISTS CAN MAKE THEM WITH EITHER HANDEDNESS
: Feynman 1965e, 98–100.

332 G
ELL
-M
ANN SPENT A LONG WEEKEND
: Gell-Mann, interview.

332 B
Y THE TIME THE
1956 R
OCHESTER CONFERENCE
: Pais 1986, 524.

333 B
E IT RECORDED HERE THAT ON THE TRAIN
: Ibid., 525.

333 A
N EXPERIMENTER ASKED
F
EYNMAN WHAT ODDS
: “I mention this story because I was prejudiced against thinking that parity wasn’t conserved, but I knew it might not be. In other words, I couldn’t bet one hundred to one, but just fifty to one.” F-W, 721.

333 P
URSUING THE OPEN-MIND APPROACH
: Ballam et al. 1956, 27.

333
SOME STRANGE SPACE-TIME
: Ibid., 28.

333 T
HE CHAIRMAN
: Ibid.

334 I
DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE
L
ORD
: Quoted in Bernstein 1967, 59–60.

334 W
E ARE NO LONGER TRYING TO HANDLE SCREWS
: Sheldon Penman, quoted in Gardner 1969, 244.

334 A
T THE
1957 R
OCHESTER CONFERENCE
: Polkinghorne 1989, 65.

334
BUSY EXPLAINING THAT THEY PERSONALLY
: Ibid., 64–65.

335
HE REFUSED TO REFEREE PAPERS
: “To me there’s an infinite amount of work involved…. I’m not built that way. I can’t think his way. I can’t follow and try to go through all these steps. If I want to worry about the problem, I read the paper to get the problem, and then maybe work it out some other way…. Now, to read and just check steps is— I can’t do.” F-W, 715.

335 M
R.
B
EARD IS VERY COURAGEOUS
: Feynman to Theodore Caris, 5 December 1961, CIT.

335 Y
OU’VE DONE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN,
: F-W, 727–28; Joan Feynman.

336 A
S
L
EE POINTED OUT
: In Ascoli et al. 1957.

336 I
N READING
L
EE AND
Y
ANG’S PREPRINT
: F-W, 724.

336 H
E LIKED THE IDEA ENOUGH
: F-W, 725–26; SYJ, 228.

336
A TWO-COMPONENT EQUATION
:

336 S
UPPOSE THAT HISTORICALLY
: Feynman 1957b, 43.

337 O
F COURSE
I
CAN’T DO THAT
: Ibid.

337 M
ARSHAK AND
S
UDARSHAN MET WITH
G
ELL
-M
ANN
: An unhappy tangle of priority concerns followed. Marshak and Sudarshan were concerned to point out that Gell-Mann had learned of their work in progress in July; Gell-Mann was concerned to point out that he had been thinking about V-A “for all these years.” Marshak and Sudarshan had missed the opportunity to speak at the Rochester meeting in April—when Feynman described his two-component Dirac equation—and forever after found themselves rehearsing their reasons for remaining silent. To their deep dismay, most physicists cited the Feynman-Gell-Mann paper, not the Marshak-Sudarshan paper (Sudarshan 1983, 486; Sudarshan and Marshak 1984, 15–20). They liked to quote a generous remark of Feynman’s long afterward: “We have a conventional theory of weak interactions invented by Marshak and Sudarshan, published by Feynman and Gell-Mann, and completed by Cabibbo….” Feynman 1974b.

337 I
FLEW OUT OF THE CHAIR
: F-W, 729–30.

337 G
ELL
-M
ANN, HOWEVER, DECIDED
: Gell-Mann, interview.

338 B
EFORE THE TENSION BETWEEN THEM
: Gell-Mann, Bacher, interviews.

338 C
OLLEAGUES STRAINED TO OVERHEAR
: Matthew Sands, interview, Santa Cruz, Calif.

338 G
ELL
-M
ANN SOMETIMES DISDAINED IT
: Gell-Mann 1983b; Gell-Mann, interview: “He wrote his version using a two-component formalism, of which he was very proud. I disliked the approach: I found it clumsy and unnecessary. I added a lot of material to the paper, some good and some bad, but I didn’t succeed in changing the emphasis on the two-component formalism. That was sort of unfortunate.”

338 O
NE OF THE AUTHORS HAS ALWAYS
: Feynman and Gell-Mann 1958a, 194.

338
HAS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF THEORETICAL
: Ibid., 193.

338 T
HERE WAS A MOMENT WHEN
I
KNEW
: Edson 1967, 64.

339 W
E ARE WELL AWARE OF THE FRAGILITY
: Feynman and Gell-Mann 1958b.

339
IMPRESSING LISTENERS WITH THE BODY LANGUAGE
: Polkinghorne 1989, 72.

339 Y
OU SPEAK
E
NGLISH
: Gweneth Feynman, interview.

340 F
EYNMAN ARRIVED AT A PICNIC
: Susman, personal communication.

340
A NEW ERA IN HISTORY
: “Red Moon over U.S.,”
Time,
14 October 1957, 27.

340
ALL THE MASTERY THAT IT IMPLIES
: “The Red Conquest,”
Newsweek,
14 October 1957, 38.

340 W
ELL, LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT
: Quoted in “The Feat That Shook the Earth,”
Life,
21 October 1957, 25.

340
OUR WAY OF LIFE IS DOOMED
: Ibid., 23.

340 C
URLY-HAIRED AND HANDSOME
: “Bright Spectrurn,”
Time,
18 November 1957, 24.

341 S
CIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP IS SLIPPING
: “In Science,”
Newsweek,
20 January 1958, 65.

341 T
HEY WILL ADVANCE SO FAST
: “Knowledge Is Power,”
Time,
18 November 1957, 21.

341 N
O
T
IME FOR
H
YSTERIA
:
Reader’s Digest,
December 1957, 117.

341
A
S
TATE
D
EPARTMENT OFFICIAL LET
C
ALTECH KNOW
: Feynman: “… someone from the State Department asked that Murray’s name be on it also, in order to impress. This was very unfortunate altogether. I don’t mind Murray’s name on it, that’s not the point, but this kind of crap. They call up—so many Russians are going to talk about this thing, they have to have more Americans talking about something scientific … this stuff about propaganda mixing up with the science, you know.” F-W, 744.

341 I
T REMINDED HIM OF THE FLOPHOUSES
: WDY, 63–65.

341 S
HE TOLD HIM SHE WAS MAKING HER WAY
: Gweneth Feynman, interview.

342 I’
VE DECIDED TO STAY HERE
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 13 October 1958, PERS.

343 H
E CONSULTED A LAWYER
: Sands, interview.

343 F
EYNMAN CALCULATED FARES
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 1 November 1958, PERS.

343 Y
OU’LL WRITE & TELL ME
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 1 December 1958, PERS.

343 I’
M IMPROVING, AM
I
NOT
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 2 January 1959, PERS.

344 Y
OU DO NEED SOMEONE
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 14 January 1959, PERS. 344
SHE IS AN INTELLIGENT GIRL
: Feynman to American Consulate General, Zurich, 22 January 1959, PERS.

344 S
HE HAD TO AVOID
E
NGELBERT
: Gweneth Howarth to Feynman, 14 February 1959.

344 F
ROM WHAT MORAL HIGH GROUND
: Gweneth Feynman, interview.

345 B
UT
F
EYNMAN’S ATTORNEYS ADVISED HIM
: Samuel C. Klein to Robert F. Diekman, 22 September 1959, and Robert F. Diekman to Feynman, 30 September 1959, PERS.

345 W
ELL, AT LAST
: Feynman to Gweneth Howarth, 28 May 1959, PERS.

345 S
HE SURREPTITIOUSLY INTRODUCED COLORED SHIRTS
: Gweneth Feynman, interview.

346 A
T FIRST HE KEPT HER PRESENCE SECRET
: Gweneth Feynman, Gell-Mann, interviews.