Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Architect of quantum theories, brash young group leader on the atomic bomb project, inventor of the ubiquitous Feynman diagram, ebullient bongo player and storyteller, Richard Phillips Feynman was the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential physicist of modern times. This monumental biography provides a detailed account of the physicist's life and work. I am in awe of the amount of research the author must have done to capture Richard Feynman's extraordinarily busy science career and his unconventional personal story. I am also in awe of the author's ability to explain various concepts of modern physics. Even though I taught a basic college physics course a few times, my knowledge of modern physics is nil compared to Mr. Gleick's, who's not a physicist. In fact, I am worried that the biography may be a difficult read for anyone not in some way associated with science, particularly with physics.

The author quotes the Polish-American mathematician Mark Kac, who considered Feynman an extraordinary genius, unlike 'ordinary ones': An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. Indeed, the biography stresses the point that Feynman was not just many, many times better than other scientists, but that he was different. His genius often seemed to border on magic and wizardry.

As Mr. Gleick walks us through the main stations of Feynman's professional life—MIT, Princeton, Los Alamos, Cornell, and Caltech—I appreciate the author's efforts to show this extraordinary genius as a person, to portray his so-called human side, with human weaknesses, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies. The rivalries with Schwinger and Gell-Mann and the friendship with Dyson are presented vividly, as are the sometimes difficult relationships with women in Feynman's life. We can read two letters that Feynman wrote to his first wife, who died of tuberculosis at a very young age; reading them is a moving experience that reveals the depth of Feynman's love for Arline.

A slight personal connection: I have known of Feynman since 1969, when I was taking a general physics course at the university in Warsaw, and I supplemented reading the official textbook with studying the famous The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which provided an innovative, refreshing way of learning physics. Also, in the very late 1980s, PBS’ NOVA aired The Last Journey of a Genius, a television film that documents Feynman's final days and his obsession with traveling to Tannu Tuva, a state outside of Outer Mongolia, which then remained under Soviet control. The documentary made a deep, lasting impression on me.

I have reviewed three books by Feynman here on Goodreads: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out,

What Do You Care What Other People Think?,

Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Feynman.

View all my reviews