Genius (83 page)

Authors: James Gleick

BOOK: Genius

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204 I
T WOULD SEEM TO ME THAT UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES
: Oppenheimer to Birge, 26 May 1944, in Smith and Weiner 1980, 276.

204 B
IRGE FINALLY CAME THROUGH
: Oppenheimer informed Birge of Feynman’s choice in a blisteringly formal tone: “I am glad that you are going to take steps to increase the strength of the department…. Several months ago Dr. Feynman accepted a permanent appointment with the Physics Department at Cornell University. I do not know details of salary and rank, but they are presumably satisfactory to him. I shall of course do my best to call to your attention any men who are available …”(5 October 1944, in Smith and Weiner 1980, 284). The California offer did prompt Cornell, at Bethe’s urging, to raise Feynman’s salary before he arrived. His “potential” salary was $3,000; when Berkeley offered $3,900, Cornell agreed to $4,000. Bethe had written: “I know that it is unusual to raise a man’s salary before he has even seen the University at which he is employed. The justification, I believe, is given by the unusual times and by the intimate knowledge that we here have acquired of Feynman’s qualities.” Bethe to R. C. Gibbs, 24 July 1945, and Gibbs to Feynman, 3 August 1945, CIT.

205 F
EYNMAN BECAME THE FIRST OF THE GROUP LEADERS
: Hawkins et al. 1983, 304.

205 I
T WAS ON HIS LAST TRIP
: WYD, 53.

CORNELL

Bethe provided access to his papers. Dyson shared copies of his remarkable letters home during these years (my portrait of him relies on these, on his various memoirs, on Brower 1978, and on Schweber, forthcoming). Schwinger collected the key scientific texts (1958) and gave his own rich perspective (1983). They and the other central figures in the postwar development of quantum electrodynamics all provided their oral recollections, as did Theodore Shultz, Michel Baranger, Evelyn Frank, Arthur Wightman, Abraham Pais, and others. Paul Hartman (1984) shared his entertaining history of the Cornell physics department and correspondence with Feynman about space flight. My discussion of scientific visualization is indebted to Arthur Miller 1984 and 1985, Bruce Gregory 1988, Schweber 1986a, Park 1988, essays by (and a conversation with) Gerald Holton, and Feynman’s own introspection. My accounts of Feynman’s relationships with women, in this chapter and the next, are based on correspondence in his personal papers and on my interviews with each of the women whose relationships are described in any detail; however, in the notes that follow, I usually omit individual citations of these letters and interviews for reasons of privacy.

207 A
MONG THE DIVINITIES
: Charles Clayton Morrison, “The Atomic Bomb and the Christian Faith,” The
Christian Century,
13 March 1946, 330.

207 W
HAT
O
PPENHEIMER PREACHED
: Oppenheimer 1945, 316.

208 I
T’S A TERRIBLE THING
: SYJ, 118.

208
AND RIGHTLY SO
: Oppenheimer 1945, 317.

208 W
HEN YOU COME RIGHT DOWN TO IT
: Ibid.

209 T
HE EVENTS OF THE PAST FEW YEARS
: Truman, “Problems of Post-War America,” 6 September 1945, in
Vital Speeches
11(1945):23.

209 B
EFORE THE WAR THE GOVERNMENT HAD PAID
: Kevles 1987, 341.

209
THE QUIET TIMES WHEN PHYSICS
: R. Wilson 1958, 145.

210 T
HE NATURE OF THE WORK
: Oppenheimer 1945, 315–16.

210 I
N THE FIRST, HE SAT DOWN
: Hartman 1984, 202.

210 I
N THE SECOND, TWO MONTHS AFTER HIROSHIMA
: Bishop 1962, 560; Hartman 1984, 238.

211 H
E DEBARKED WITH A SINGLE SUITCASE
: F-W, 415.

211 T
HE WEEK BEFORE
F
EYNMAN ARRIVED
: Bishop 1962, 556.

211 H
UGE RAKED PILES OF LEAVES
: F-W, 417.

212 L
OOK, BUDDY
: Ibid., 419; cf. SYJ, 149–51.

212 S
PEECH PATTERNS STRUCK HIM
: “It was completely—like the nervousness of working during the war. And this university in the backwoods … was going at the typical university rate … he’s talking so slowly and batting the breeze about the weather.” F-W, 418.

212 O
UTSIDE, THREE TENNIS COURTS
: Hartman 1984, 204–5.

212 M
ORRISON HAD BEEN LURED
: Philip Morrison, interview, Cambridge, Mass.

212 F
EYNMAN DEPRESSED IS JUST A LITTLE MORE CHEERFUL
: Quoted in Schweber 1986a, 468; Feynman said, “I got deeper and deeper into a kind of— I wouldn’t say depression, because I wasn’t depressed. I’m a lively and happy fellow….” F-W, 425.

212 H
E SPENT TIME IN THE LIBRARY
: SYJ, 155.

212 H
IS DANCE PARTNERS LOOKED ASKANCE
: F-W, 423; SYJ, 154.

212 E
VEN BEFORE LEAVING
L
OS
A
LAMOS
: E.g. Olum, interview; Walker, interview. One physicist’s wife said, “He exploded like a sexual firecracker.”

213
NOW
I
WANT YOU TO KNOW
: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, 17 June 1945, PERS.

213 B
EGGING HIM TO COME HOME
: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, 21 June 1945, PERS.

213 T
HIS IS THE
P
RINCETON
T
RIANGLE
: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, 8 August 1945, PERS.

213 I
FELT THRILLED & FRIGHTENED
: Ibid.

213 B
Y THE WAY
: Ibid.

214 R
ICHARD
, W
HAT HAS HAPPENED
: Lucille Feynman to Feynman, n.d., PERS.

215 H
E PRIDED HIMSELF ON SPEAKING
: Schwinger, interview. 215
A MAN POSSESSED
: Polkinghome 1989, 14.

215 I
ABANDONED MY BACHELOR QUARTERS
: Schwinger 1983, 332. 215
THEIR FIRST ENCOUNTER
: E.g., Crease and Mann 1986, 129.

215 A
RE YOU A MOUSE OR A MAN?
: Norman Ramsey and Rabi, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming; Bernard T Feld, talk at Julian Schwinger’s 60th birthday celebration, February 1978, AIR

216 E
VEN BEFORE
S
CHWINGER GOT HIS COLLEGE DIPLOMA
: Schweber, forthcoming.

216 S
CHWINGER MADE ONE TOUR
: Schwinger, interview.

216 W
HEN HE HAD LONG SINCE
: Feynman 1978.

216 T
HE
H
ARVARD COMMITTEE
: Schweber, forthcoming.

217 P
HENOMENA COMPLEX—LAWS SIMPLE
: “Methods of Math Phys 405,” Notebook, PERS.

218 W
HETHER HE WOULD SUCCEED
: Robert Walker, interview.

218 I
N AN ATOM BOMB
: “Methods of Math Phys 405.”

218 A
NNOUNCER
: L
AST WEEK
D
R.
F
EYNMAN
: “The Scientist Speaks,” transcript, radio broadcast, WHCU, 26 April 1946, OPR

218
THE RAYS EMITTED
: Ibid.

218 A
T
L
OS
A
LAMOS HE HAD INVENTED
: Hawkins et al. 1983, 308.

218 I
BELIEVE THAT INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL
: Feynman to Paul Hartman, 5 December 1945, PERS.

219
FLYING UPSIDE DOWN
: Ibid.

220 H
E RETURNED HOME AND OCCASIONALLY SNEAKED OUT
: Joan Feynman, interview.

220 O
NE DAY
F
EYNMAN SAW HIM
: F-L.

220 I
T IS NOT SO EASY FOR A
D
OPE
: Melville Feynman to Feynman, 10 September 1944, PERS.

220 T
HE DREAMS
I
HAVE OFTEN HAD
: Ibid.

221 O
N
F
EYNMAN’S FACE WAS A LOOK
: Joan Feynman, interview.

221 C
ORNELL’S
1946
FALL-TERM ENROLLMENT
: Bishop 1962, 555.

221 D‘A
RLINE
, I
ADORE YOU
: Feynman to Arline Feynman, 17 October 1947, PERS.

223 F
EYNMAN’S VERSION OF THE STORY
: F-W, 620; SYJ, 137. The latter was dictated more than twenty years later but sometimes tracks the first version with uncanny, verbatim precision. The Selective Service files were destroyed, as the FBI discovered in assembling its dossier on Feynman. FOI.

226 F
EYNMAN WAS INVITED
: Princeton University 1946; F-W, 433–34; Wigner 1947; Feynman to Dirac, 23 July 1947, PERS.

226 D
IRAC’S PAPER
: Dirac 1946.

226 W
E NEED AN INTUITIVE LEAP
: Princeton University 1946, 15.

226 F
EYNMAN LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW
: F-W, 437.

226 H
E HAD A QUESTION
: Ibid., 272–73 and 437; Feynman 1948a, 378. Feynman cared about this detail of historical priority. He later emphasized it in his Nobel lecture: “I thought I was finding out what Dirac meant, but, as a matter of fact, had made the discovery that what Dirac thought was analogous, was, in fact, equal” (NL, 10). Schwinger, however, in a tribute delivered at a memorial service to Feynman, made a subtle point of dismissing the possibility that Dirac might not have understood the implications of his paper: “Now, we know, and Dirac surely knew, that to a constant factor the ‘correspondence’ … is an equality…. Why, then, did Dirac not make a more precise, if less general, statement? Because he was interested only in a general question.” Schwinger 1989, 45.

226 O
PPENHEIMER HAD INVITED HIM
: Feynman to Oppenheimer, 5 November 1946, CIT

226 T
HE CHAIRMAN OF THE
U
NIVERSITY OF
P
ENNSYLVANIA’S PHYSICS DEPARTMENT
: G. P. Harnwell to Bethe, 25 February 1947, and Bethe to Harnwell, 4 March 1947, BET.

227 O
PPENHEIMER HAD NOW BEEN NAMED
: SYJ, 155; Smyth to Feynman, 23 October 1946 and 22 April 1947, CIT.

227 H
E EXPERIMENTED WITH VARIOUS TACTICS
: F-W, 426.

227 F
OR A MOMENT HE FELT LIGHTER
: Ibid., 427–28.

227 D
ON’T WORRY SO MUCH
: SYJ, 156; F-W, 428.

227
A
C
ORNELL CAFETERIA PLATE
: F-W, 430; SYJ, 157. Also, Benjamin Fong Chao, “Feynman’s Dining Hall Dynamics,” letter,
Physics Today,
February 1989, 15.

228 W
ELTON WAS NOW WORKING
: Welton, interview.

228 I
AM ENGAGED NOW
: Feynman to Welton, 10 February 1947, CIT.

228 I
AM
F
EYNMAN
: Pais 1986, 23.

229 S
PIN WAS A PROBLEM
: Schweber 1986a, 469.

229 N
O WONDER HIS EYE
: “Within a week, altogether, this question of the rotation [of the plate] started me worrying about rotations, and then old questions about the spinning electron, and how to represent it in the path integrals and in the quantum mechanics, and I was in my work again. It just opened the gate.” F-W, 430.

230 F
EYNMAN DID NOT ATTEMPT TO PUBLISH
: F-W, 444.

230 T
HE CHALLENGE WAS TO EXTEND
: Ibid., 443; Schweber 1986a, 472.

232 T
HINKING
I
UNDERSTAND GEOMETRY
: Feynman to Barbara Kyle, 20 October 1965, CIT.

232 T
HE LAST EIGHTEEN YEARS
: K. K. Darrow diary, 14 April 1947, AIP.

232 T
HEORETICIANS WERE IN DISGRACE
: Gell-Mann 1983a, 3.

232 T
HE THEORY OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
: Weisskopf 1947.

233 S
O TWO DOZEN SUIT-JACKETED PHYSICISTS
: Schweber 1983, 313.

233 W
HEN THEY GATHERED FOR BREAKFAST
: Robert Marshak, telephone interview.

233 I
T IS DOUBTFUL IF THERE HAS EVER BEEN
: Stephen White, “Top Physicists Map Course at Shelter Island,”
New York Herald Tribune,
3 June 1947, 23.

233 F
EYNMAN TRIED HIS METHODS OUT
: Pais 1986, 452.

234
A CLEAR VOICE, GREAT RUSH OF WORDS
: K. K. Darrow diary, 14 April 1947, AIP.

234 L
AMB HAD GONE TO BED
: Lamb 1980, 323.

234 T
O
S
CHWINGER, LISTENING
: Schwinger 1983, 337.

234 T
HE FACTS WERE INCREDIBLE
: Quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

234 A
S THE MEETING ADJOURNED
: Schwinger 1983, 332. Shortly afterward he was married; or, as he put it, “I abandoned my bachelor quarters and embarked on an accompanied, nostalgic trip around the country that would occupy the whole summer.”

234
DEBACLE
: Polkinghome 1989, 12.

235 I
T WAS HARDLY A COMMON NAME
: Morrison, interview.

235 W
HAT THEY DID THERE
: Michel Baranger, interview. New York.

235 I
EXPECT HER TO BE
: Alice Dyson, quoted in Schweber, forthcoming.

235 I, S
IR
P
HILLIP
R
OBERTS
:
Sir Philip Roberts’s Erolunar Collision,
in Dyson 1992, 3–4.

236 H
E READ POPULAR BOOKS
: Dyson 1979, 12.

236 T
HAT SAME YEAR, FRUSTRATED
: Schweber, forthcoming.

236 S
HE CONTINUED BY TELLING HIM
: Dyson 1979, 15.

236 A
T
C
AMBRIDGE HE HEARD
: Brower 1978, 16.

236 D
YSON’S WAR
: Dyson 1979, 19–21.

237 A
MONG THE BOOKS
: Ibid., 4.

237 M
Y WISH FOR SOMETHING TO SERVE
: D. H. Lawrence,
Study of Thomas Hardy,
quoted in Dyson 1988, 125.