Richard Feynman was born on May 11, 1918 in Brooklyn to Lucille and Melville Feynman. Feynman's childhood home was in the community of Far Rockaway, in the outskirts if Manhattan.
When Feynman was born, his father, Melville, had already determined that Feynman would grow up to be a scientist. Melville had always dreamed to be a scientist. Unfortunately, Melville's dream was left unsatisfied only to live it through his son. Melville encouraged Feynman not to focus on things he knew, but rather things he did not know. This was the base of Richard Feynman's understanding. Feynman believed sincerely that what was important was not knowing the answers to questions, but instead asking the right questions. He believed that the answers wait patiently to be discovered.
Richard Feynman's mother, Lucille, also influenced his future success as a scientist. Lucille taught Feynman to take life lightly and to have a powerful sense of humor. While Melville allowed Feynman the tools to explore his future, Lucille taught him to laugh, take life lightly, and have courage in himself. Both of Feynman's parents played an important role in guiding their son to success.
When Feynman grew to be a young man in school, he fell in love with Arline Greenbaum, the girl of his dreams. It didn't take much for Arline to become the most important person in Feynman's life. Arline seemed to share his take on life. It is said that the pair were made for each other.
Later in his life, Feynman attended college as a physics major. He finished his first four years in 1939 at MIT, and then moved on to Princeton for graduate school. While at Princeton, Feynman proposed to Arline. The two planned to be married after hecom...
... middle of paper ...
...an Lectures on Physics,"
was published in 1963 and remains a leading text in physics classes. In "Lectures," Mr. Feynman responded to charges that
scientific understanding detracts from an esthetic appreciation of nature: "The vastness of the heavens stretches my
imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I was a part --
perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there . . . It does not do harm to the mystery to
know a little about it. Far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined!" Mr. Feynman leaves his wife,
Gweneth; a son, Carl; a daughter, Michelle, and a sister, Joan Feynman. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Württemberg, Germany, into a middle-class Jewish family that owned a small electrical equipment manufacturing shop. Einstein showed early signed of genius even though he did not talk until the age of three. Six weeks after he was born, his family moved to Munich; there he began school a few years later at the Luitpold Gymnasium.
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity has had a colossal impact on the world and is the accepted physical theory reg...
For his entire life, Houdini claimed that he was born on April 6, 1874 in Appleton Wisconsin. The fact was, however, that he was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. His father was a religious teacher , his mother a stay at home wife. He had six siblings that survived adulthood. His father emigrated to America and changed the spelling
Similar examples can be found in physics. Prior to the Michelson-Morley Experiment of 1887, which showed the constant speed of light, the experiments of FitzGerald and Lorentz, which explained the constant speed of light as the contraction of bodies and slowing of clocks, and the subsequent conclusion by Einstein that electromagnetic waves do not require a medium, scientists felt that light required a medium, and thus one was invented-ether (Hawking). These experiments demonstrate yet another aspect of a personal point of view in the pursuit of knowledge; the fact that despite the assumptions a personal point of view brings into a study, such as FitzGerald’s and Lorentz’s assumption that ether did, in fact, exist, knowledge can still be gained from such a study. Despite their assumption, they contributed, through their experiments, the knowledge that light does travel at a set speed. Thus, even when associated with false assumptions brought into an experiment, personal points of view are not always negative.
In the 1920s the new quantum and relativity theories were engaging the attentions of science. That mass was equivalent to energy and that matter could be both wavelike and corpuscular carried implications seen only dimly at that time. Oppenheimer's early research was devoted in particular to energy processes of subatomic particles, including electrons, positrons, and cosmic rays. Since quantum theory had been proposed only a few years before, the university post provided him an excellent opportunity to devote his entire career to the exploration and development of its full significance. In addition, he trained a whole generation of U.S. physicists, who were greatly affected by his qualities of leadership and intellectual independence.
Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, scientist, writer, statesman, printer, musician, philosopher, and much much more. Benjamin Franklin is best known as an inventor and scientist, however. In 1752, he conducted (no pun intended) a kite experiment. Ben was also one of America’s founding fathers. He helped draft the Declaration of Independance and the United States Constitution. He also negotiated the Treaty of Paris which concluded the Revolutionary War.
Part I: The Edge of Knowledge Chapter 1: Tied Up with Strings This is the introductory section, where the author, Brian Greene, examines the fundamentals of what is currently proven to be true by experimentation in the realm of modern physics. Green goes on to talk more about "The Basic Idea" of string theory. He describes how physicists are aspiring to reach the Theory of Everything, or T.O.E. Some suspect when string theory is completely understood that it might turn out to become the T.O.E.Part II: The Dilemma of Space, Time, and Quanta Chapter 2: Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder In the chapter, Greene describes how Albert Einstein solved the paradox about light. In the mid-1800's James Maxwell succeeded in showing that light was actually an electromagnetic wave.
arriving in New York City with four cents in his pocket, and many great ideas in
"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." Having followed his own words of wisdom, Benjamin Franklin made an everlasting mark on America since his early days as a printing apprentice.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955), was one of the greatest scientists of all time. He is best known for his theory of relativity, which he first advanced when he was only 26. He also made many other contributions to science.
In the world of science there are many discoveries. “A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy not induced by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature … and that often turns out to be more subtle and wonderful than anyone had imagined.” (Ferdinand Puretz). Most people in the world we live in lack to notice and or appreciate the gift of sight in life. By not cherishing the gift of sight and using it properly, many discoveries are left unfound. In the writing piece, Seeing, Annie Dillard speaks of nature and the small things that we all are unconsciously blind to and not appreciative of. Seeing explores the idea of what it means to truly see things in this world. Annie Dillard’s main point is that we should view the world with less of a meddling eye, so that we are able to capture things that would otherwise go unnoticed. There’s a science to how we view things in nature. Dillard attempts to persuade her reader to adopt to her way of seeing, which is more artificial rather than natural.
However, he claimed that his sense of wonder came from his father, who in his free time gave apples to the poor or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's garment industry.Although he was awed by Carl's intellectual abilities, he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride and saw it as part of his growing up. In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later
A hundred years ago, a young married couple sat at a kitchen table talking over the items of the day while their young boy sat listening earnestly. He had heard the debate every night, and while there were no raised voices, their discussion was intense. It was a subject about which his parents were most passionate - the electrodynamics of moving bodies in the universe. The couple were of equal intelligence and fortitude, working together on a theory that few people can comprehend even to this day. Mileva Maric Einstein was considered to be the intellectual equal of her husband Albert, but somehow went unrecognized for her contributions to the 1905 Papers, which included the Special Theory of Relativity. The stronger force of these two bodies would be propelled into the archives of scientific history, while the other would be left to die alone, virtually unknown. Mrs. Einstein was robbed. She deserved to be recognized for at least a collaborative effort, but it was not to be. The role which society had accorded her and plain, bad luck would prove to be responsible for the life of this great mathematician and scientist, gone unnoticed.
In his O Americno Outra Ves, the well-known scientist Richard Feynman writes about his experience from traveling to Brazil and sitting in on and teaching in university physics classes. Feynman becomes increasingly unimpressed with Brazil’s higher education as his travels continue. Feynman tells of a class he taught earlier on where students were unable to answer questions that related to concepts, but were perfectly capable of giving textbook definitions of the same concepts. Students there had been given the exact definition of physical laws and properties to memorize, but no more than that. Feynman reacts with, “I didn’t see how they were going to learn anything from that,” (Feynman 55). Feynman firmly believed it was unlikely that the students
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand” (Albert Einstein). Albert Einstein’s claim could be broken down into two segments; one is defining the term knowledge as being “limited to all we know” and the second defines imagination as “embracing the entire world.” His words are not meant to attack any other scientist out there, all he meant was that imagination initiates our curiosity which leads us to conduct studies that eventually reveal information that we know as knowledge. Come to think of it, all great breakthroughs in history came from these ‘Eureka’ moments instead of solely reason of logic.