Richard P. Feynman
Richard P. Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynmanwas an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth11 May 1918
CountryUnited States of America
war discovery views
From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.
discovery views somewhere-else
If you can find any other view of the world which agrees over the entire range where things have already been observed, but disagrees somewhere else, you have made a great discovery.
discovery views law
From a long view of the history of mankind the most significant event of the nineteenth century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.
lying teaching views
The chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off chance that it is in another direction — a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory — who will find it? Only someone who has sacrificed himself by teaching himself quantum electrodynamics from a peculiar and unfashionable point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself.
views common-sense religion
[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.
science views law
There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.
common happening laws level lose order perceive phenomena quite replace system time took
Working out another system to replace Newton's laws took a long time because phenomena at the atomic level were quite strange. One had to lose one's common sense in order to perceive what was happening at the atomic level.
known phenomena physicists quantum
With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics.
bush fit leaves miracle natural rabbi shaking terms whose
When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn't any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena.
atoms calculate difficulty dot goes guess inside might understood
What goes on inside a star is better understood than one might guess from the difficulty of having to look at a little dot of light through a telescope, because we can calculate what the atoms in the stars should do in most circumstances.
gradually toward understanding
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
energy exciting great mysteries physics result studying therefore total
We get the exciting result that the total energy of the universe is zero. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries - and therefore one of the important questions of physics. After all, what would be the use of studying physics if the mysteries were not the most important things to investigate?
change fact solved
We do not know where to look, or what to look for, when something is memorized. We do not know what it means, or what change there is in the nervous system, when a fact is learned. This is a very important problem which has not been solved at all.
allowed catch eventually few watch
We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.