Book Review: 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman, published by W. W. Norton, 1997. Paperback, 352 pages. (Amazon)
Richard P. Feynman was a physicist, probably most well known for working on the Manhattan Project, what's equally one of the greatest and worst achievements in science. A whole section in the physicist and teacher's autobiography is devoted to his time at Los Alamos, but rather than learning about his work on the bomb, the reader hears stories about him and his wife passing codes back and forth past the mail censors, the author's experiments with human smell, and cracking the safes of scientists and military men on the top secret project. That's not to say Feynman didn't work and excel at his work. He received the Nobel Prize, taught at Cornell and Caltech, and worked at the Center for Physical Research in Brazil, among many jobs. Like Los Alamos, his stories in Brazil deal more with his performing in a mambo band than any actual scientific work, though during his time there we see his devotion to science as he criticizes the country's education and educators -- to their face, not just in this book -- for teaching facts rather than understanding.
While Feynman does not try to educate the reader on science, he expresses a genuine exuberance for the physical world and understanding of the way it works, be it the behavior of ants in his apartment, gambling odds in Vegas, or the laws of beta decay. Eventually we come to understand that one cannot separate Feynman's work from his escapades; they are one and the same in the life of an adventurous and "curious character."
Richard P. Feynman was a physicist, probably most well known for working on the Manhattan Project, what's equally one of the greatest and worst achievements in science. A whole section in the physicist and teacher's autobiography is devoted to his time at Los Alamos, but rather than learning about his work on the bomb, the reader hears stories about him and his wife passing codes back and forth past the mail censors, the author's experiments with human smell, and cracking the safes of scientists and military men on the top secret project. That's not to say Feynman didn't work and excel at his work. He received the Nobel Prize, taught at Cornell and Caltech, and worked at the Center for Physical Research in Brazil, among many jobs. Like Los Alamos, his stories in Brazil deal more with his performing in a mambo band than any actual scientific work, though during his time there we see his devotion to science as he criticizes the country's education and educators -- to their face, not just in this book -- for teaching facts rather than understanding.
While Feynman does not try to educate the reader on science, he expresses a genuine exuberance for the physical world and understanding of the way it works, be it the behavior of ants in his apartment, gambling odds in Vegas, or the laws of beta decay. Eventually we come to understand that one cannot separate Feynman's work from his escapades; they are one and the same in the life of an adventurous and "curious character."
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