Last night I finished reading “Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman” by T. Ferris (forward), R.P. Feynman (of course!), and M. Feynman (editor). I wouldn’t recommend this collection of letters to everyone, but it is interesting for those who have read a lot of the other stuff about or by Feynman as the letters help flesh out Feynman’s character. There really aren’t that many “anecdotal” letters in the book, which is, of course, what everyone comes to expect from a Feynman collection (to be known as one gigantic anecdote generating machine…what a legacy). However, the following letter, in which information was requested about the infamous Lars Onsager, is rather amusing:
On one occasion when we were standing together, a young man came up to explain his ideas on superconductivity to us both. I didn’t understand what the fellow was saying-so I thought it must be nonsense (a bad habit I have.) I was surprised to hear Onsager say, “Yes, that seems to be the solution to the problem.” Did he mean the puzzle of superconductivity was solved-and I didn’t even know what the young man said? I guess so. I have never been sure-I think the young man could have been Cooper. Could you check?
This reminds me of a picture of Feynman’s blackboard at the time of his death. On this blackboard is a list of things “TO LEARN.” Included on the list are “the Bethe Ansatz Prob.”, “Kondo”, “2-D Hall”, “accel Temp.”, “Non-linear classical Hydro”. “Kondo” has been crossed out. This list is amazing, first in that it contains probably some of the most interesting problems in physics (“accel Temp.” refers to the Unruh effect where a uniformaly accelerating observer observes the vacuum as a thermal bath with a temperature proportional to the acceleration.) But even more amazing is that the great Richard Feynman, who legend has always portrayed as knowing everything there is to know about physics, still had “to learn” these famous problems. One wonders if Feynman’s “to learn” was a lot different than everyone elses “to learn?”
At a pragmatic level Feynman must have meant the same thing about these topics as anyone else: He wanted to read some papers and maybe do some calculations himself. Feynman was of course brilliant, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t need to read papers. He wasn’t an NP oracle.
Undoubtedly, when Feynman read a paper, he understood it better than most other people, often better than the author himself. But haven’t you also had that experience? I would think that most people have.
I think you may be a little bit distracted by the human interest story, just as you and Feynman criticize in your next post.