Actually, string theorist John Schwarz now occupies Richard Feynman’s old office at Caltech.
But…
I got Feynman’s desk.
Caltech has a room devoted to Feynman memorabilia, and they really want this desk. (Feynman-worship is quite the industry here; the bookstore has a section labeled “Feynman” in the same way an ordinary bookstore would have sections labeled “Physics” or “Women’s Studies.”) But Helen Tuck, who was Feynman’s secretary and still occasionally visits, insists that the desk be used by a working physicist. My impression is that the desk is given to the most senior person in the theory group who is not sufficiently senior to get all brand-new fancy furniture; at the moment, that person is I. (In the background, one can discern the winner of the ultimate showdown.)
I looked for little diagrams carved into the wood, but haven’t found any yet.
Perhaps there ARE carvings in the desk – Feynman diagrams which just happen to follow the grain of the wood which makes them difficult to discern. Either very strange wood and/or very strange interactions represented.
Bob.
Where is Murray Gell-Mann’s office in relation to Feynman’s?
I think Gell-Mann’s office was two doors down from Feynmans with Helen Tuck in between the two. Why is my brain filled with this junk?!
Why would anyone get brand-new fancy furniture when they could have Feynman’s desk?
I interviewed Feynman for a radio biography of Einstein I did for Canadian Broadcasting and National Public Radio in 1979 for the centenary of his birth. The majority of physicists I interviewed had European accents (Wigner, Bethe, Bergmann, Strauss, Pais, etc.). Feynman’s Brooklyn accent was a vivid reminder that the centre of gravity of physics had moved from Europe to the U.S., partly as a result of the Nazi scourge in the 1930s. He was very direct and forthright, and could explain physics better than most anyone I’ve ever met.
Jeff (19) — Sure, always happy to come up to JPL. Not that I know very much about actually propelling any jets.
JoAnne (21) — I’ve been leaving blank pieces of paper all over the place, but so far they’re still pretty blank.
Gell-Mann’s office is indeed two doors down; John Preskill is there now.
And everyone — don’t believe anything Peter (20) says! He didn’t “beat” me, I just thought it would be gracious at my last poker game in Chicago to let someone else win for a change.
I got the Classic Feynman hardback for Christmas; it’s a compendium of the Surely You’re Joking and What Do You Care What Other People Think? stories meant to last for the ages. Ralph Leighton adds an interesting footnote after one of Feynman’s sexcapade stories, in which he notes that Feynman insisted those stories be included to prove that “this purported hero had feet of clay” (or words to that effect).
Y’know, if my wife had just died, and I thought myself even a tiny bit responsible for a tool which I felt would destroy human civilization — even if I started work on it to defeat the Nazis — I would probably hit the New Mexico nightclubs too. Of course, I wouldn’t have the good luck that Feynman did.
At the time Leonard Mlodinow was going through trying issues about the direction of his career in writing and science. His conversations with Feynmen were really quite interesting.
Like the desk, this brings a certain nostalgia to the topic of, whose coffee stains will join those of the giants on whose shoulders Sean is standing?” Oh, and no “Philosophical pandering” while your in Feynman’s chair(assuming it belongs too?).
At that time, Feynman was fighting the cancer? The secretary, might remember Leonard?
Euclid’s Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyerspace by Leonard Mlodinow FreePress 2001 is another fine book to read.
Nope! As I look, chair would have been made of “real wood” with some cushions?
Sean, maybe you gotta leave the exact same type of paper (and nearby pen) that Feymann used!
And also some fancy door lock for your office to lure Feynman geist in!
i’m currently desk challenged, how much do you want for it?
“Sean, maybe you gotta leave the exact same type of paper (and nearby pen) that Feymann used!”
If an inkblot appears spontaneously on a piece of paper on Feynman’s desk will that be proof of a reverse microstate blackhole?
Are we looking for ghost particles, or gravitons?
Are we trying to open a portal into other dimensions and let ghost particles into our four dimensional space?
Didn’t someone say (spirits) and ghosts don’t exist.
Well I guess Feynman should know (one way or another).
—
As for which computer Feynman would have, I recall that his accident involving a street-curb was related to his excitement on getting a new PC. If memory serves, this was in early 1984. Not too many interesting MS-DOS PCs were coming out then…
Is it just me or do others here also share the following sentiment?:
Feynman’s ‘Lectures’ (on Physics) aren’t all that good when you take a *fair* and *objective* look at them; it’s one of those “classics” which gain their prominence because of the author’s notoriety.
How many here would actually contend (with reasonable certaintly) that Feynman’s ‘Lectures’ are as good as Landau / Lifschitz’s ‘Course of Theoretical Physics’ (despite the latter being a formidable reading)?
I really don’t know – or even understand – why there is such enthusiasm over these particular (reading) books; in fact, when I first read them – actually I read the first 10 chapters of vol. I before becoming overly bored by their silly brooklyn-style approach to explaining rather simple mechanics concepts – I really didn’t feel I was reading anything profoundly important – just standard concepts explained in Feynman’s idiosyncratic style.
Does anyone here also feel the same?
Dave C.
#39: No, I definitely do not share your view on the Feynman’s Lectures. While Landau’s books are definitely great in their own way, Feynman’s Lectures are amazing for clarity and depth.
My clear favourite is Volume III; I have yet to come across a quantum mechanics book that explains so much with so little math pre-req.
The `weakest’ was Vol. I, but even that had so many gems, like SR, radiation, stat. mech, thermodynamics… But even the other chapters had more depth than you can find in books to this day. Above all I immensely enjoyed his philosophy in giving the lectures— ” I tried very hard to make all the statements as accurate as possible, to point out in every case where the equations and ideas fitted into the body of physics, and how–when they learned more–things would be modified.” All this is a freshman physics course—amazing!!
I think prior to this, all physics books were very dull.
#39: I admit I don’t actually own all the Feynman Lectures but I definitely think that Landau and Lifshitz fit the description as a “classic” that gains “prominence because of the author’s notoriety.” L&L is obtuse and brief to the point of handwaving. Few dare criticize it, though, else they appear too stupid to do physics.
Hey Sean, speaking of poker. I’m playing NL hold’em the other day and
am in late position with A4s. A loose player limps in before me, I raise
and he calls. Flop comes rainbow 532. Loose limper goes all in. I’m
thinking he is loose, but not loose enough to call my raise with 64 and
so he must have flopped a set. I call. Loose limper shows pocket J5!
He’s all in with 5’s and a J kicker! Turn and river come J,5 to give him
a boat on the river. What are the odds?
Everyone loves a bad beat story. The oracle tells me — he had about a 3% chance of beating you, and about a 2% chance of tying. But I’m guessing he figured he had top pair and was trying to steal.
It was Peter, wasn’t it?
Re the psychic physics writing: perhaps you should start something, get stuck and leave it out overnight. This might tempt the ghost of Schwinger, who would be used to nocturnal working practices, to pop in and whack out a full solution, much a he was reputed to do rather more often than was good for his colleagues’ self esteem, when he was young. It might also give him the opportunity to put onover on Dick, not that he was unduly competitive
Great, since you got his desk maybe you have the best excuse to do another post about Feynman’s reasons for saying string theory is held together with bits of [imaginary] string, can’t predict anything (despite having the extra dimensions specially selected to make it compatible with particle physics and gravity), and is overhyped. I know you did a post before on string, but it is lingering on like a sick Dodo. Maybe you can put it out of its misery? 😉
I’m interested in what physicists think of Feynman’s lectures. My impression is that the books never worked very well as textbooks, in part because, despite their rather modest math level, they attempted to convey the meaning of physical ideas, i.e. they were too ambitious.
I know from my days as an editor of math and stat textbooks that most undergrads would rather memorize seven pages of formulas than wrap their heads around the meaning of one equation–they learn proofs the way that traditional Muslims learn the Koran. Books that focused on conceptual understanding were often flops in the classroom, even if they were widely admired by profs. Is that the problem with Feynman?
Jim: that’s the brains of his lectures, not the problem with them. Those with a poor memory for equations have to make do with understanding the physics, so we can derive equations whenever needed. (Not obviously the case for string theorists, who don’t have any solid equations, at least not any predictive ones.)
nc, if you want to bash string theory, go ahead, but I suggest you look
for better arguments than Feynman didn’t like it. First of all, he didn’t want
to be an Eddington in his old age so he avoided all formal topics and worked
on subjects of immediate phenomenological interest (like QCD jets). He would
have been as wary of supersymmetry, supergravity, loop quantum
gravity, or anything else. Second,
he knew little about the theory and was no position to judge. And finally,
he was more sympathetic in private than you might guess.
Forza Feynman, Forza his desk, and Forza Italia!
J, gets your facts straight please. Kaku states in a forthcoming New Scientist article that privately Feynman was far LESS sympathetic than in public!
‘(Schwarz remembers meeting Richard Feynman in the elevators during these dark years. Feynman would say to him, with a smirk, “And how many dimension are we in today, John?”)
– http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=457#comment-15841