Richard Feynman

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A Very Brief Synopsis of His Life

Fantsay Feynman Stamp Richard Feynan was born may 11, 1918 in Manhattan,. He received his Bachelors of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939, and Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1942. At Princeton he worked on the atomic bomb project and revolutionized scientific approaches to quantum mechanics.

He then worked, for two years, as the youngest member of the team at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, that developed the first atomic bomb.

For the next five years he worked as the chair of theoretical physics at Cornell University, and then as such at the California Institute of Technology, where he continued working until the end of he life.

He received numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965, wrote many best selling books, helped a small country named Tuva, was noted for his bongo drumming skills and witty lectures, and played a key role in the Rogers Commission hearings on the Challenger space shuttle accident in 1986.

He was married three times, succeeded by Gweneth Howarth and his two children by her, Carl Richard, and Michelle Catherine.

He died at age 69 of abdominal cancer, eight years after diagnosis.

On winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Feynman holds brain of Gregg From his doctoral work on quantum mechanics, he developed Feynman Diagrams" to explain rates for electromagnetic and weak interaction particle processes. One of the things that made Feynman Diagrams, and much of his other work, remarkable was the fact that Feynman took a more visual approach to physics, avoiding complicated manipulation of equations in favor of more easily understood diagrams. Feynman Diagrams are still used as the standard method for describing particle inte...

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...s in a form that's still widely used throughout theoretical physics, in every field."

Richard Feynman: "My mother [Lucille Phillips] taught me that the highest forms of understanding that we can achieve are laughter and human compassion".

General Donald Kutyna: "Feynman had three things going for him. Number one, tremendous intellect, and that was well known around the world. Second, integrity... Third, he brought this driving desire to get to the bottom of any mystery. No matter where it took him, he was going to get there, and he was not deterred by any roadblocks in the way. He was a courageous guy, and he wasn't afraid to say what he meant."

MIT physicist Philip Morrison : "[Feynman was ] extraordinarily honest with himself and everyone else, . . . he didn't like ceremony or pomposity . . . he was extremely informal. He liked colorful language and jokes."

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