An autobiography by one of the creators of quantum electrodynamics would likely have to be as serious as the name of the scientific field itself. Perhaps even boring for the average reader in the sections dedicated to scientific work. Yes, it could easily become a perfectly decent dust collector on a bookshelf. If not for its author, Richard Feynman.
A renowned scientist, Nobel laureate; the youngest member of the team working on nuclear weapons; the founder of a field of physics that not everyone can understand. Yet at the same time—a mischievous young man, a man with a dramatic personal life; a lover of original jokes, about whom one could say, "Not a day without adventure."
One and the same world can be full of boredom or sorrow for one person, and full of mysteries and puzzles to solve for another. Any phenomenon that seems routine may contain undiscovered patterns.
Almost every one of Feynman’s "adventures" seems like a joke at the expense of readers’ confidence in the unchanging nature of the world, the truth of superficial knowledge, and the assumption that tomorrow will be the same as today. "Mutual aid" among ants and the use of atomic energy in engines, reverse mutations in DNA, the influence of electrons, and "mind reading"—for Feynman, all of this looks like fascinating puzzles that beg to be solved. The solutions are clever, and the results are often unexpected.
From a psychological perspective, the conditions in which a person grows up are very important. In particular, the influence of environment and family.
As for Feynman’s environment, it was simple. A small town during the Great Depression. For most people, only activities with visible results are understandable.
The family was not wealthy. Their only wealth was a wooden house inherited by them, where they lived. The entire house was tangled in wires, plugged into homemade outlets, because twelve-year-old Richard was already fascinated by radio. He also set up his own "lab" at home—a wooden packing crate, an electric stove, a car battery, and a vacuum tube unit. The results of his "lab work" sometimes extended beyond the lab itself. They certainly did not add to the peaceful life of those around him.
What about his parents? They did not scold the young researcher or tell him he was wasting his time. Instead, when they came home late and found him asleep with headphones on, they simply removed them. They were concerned "about what was happening in my head while I slept" (quote). They simply gave their son the opportunity to find his own answers to the questions "Why?" and "How does it work?" And they did not object when the boy was asked to fix someone’s radio. Decades later, such an approach would be called person-centered. Psychologists and psychotherapists would begin teaching the client-centered approach.
One of the owners of a damaged radio perfectly captures the mindset of the environment in which Richard Feynman grew up. Astonished that the boy did not immediately grab his tools and start working on the device, the man indignantly asked if he was even going to fix the radio. The twelve-year-old "master’s" response—"I’m thinking!"—left the client speechless with shock. Later, the same man told everyone, "What a great genius he is" (quote), and repeated, "He fixes radios with his mind!" (quote). As Feynman wrote, the man never once considered that fixing a radio might require thinking.
Thinking was the most interesting work and the greatest pleasure for Richard Feynman. "If I come across a problem, I simply cannot ignore it" (quote). His lifelong passion for deciphering codes—whether Mayan hieroglyphs, ultra-secure safe codes, or foreign languages—was a constant with Feynman. When one day he caught himself wanting to drink, he was so frightened that he gave up alcohol forever. Because "I love thinking so much that I’m afraid of damaging this wonderful 'thinking machine' that brings me so much joy. For the same reason, I later did not experiment with LSD—despite my curiosity about hallucinations" (quote).
Originality of thought, wit, and honesty—this combination adds different flavors to the life of a scientist. Probably only Richard Feynman could, for a prank, remove the door of a dorm room at MIT, hide it, and then publicly confess, receiving in response: "Stop it, Feynman, this is serious! Sam, did you take the door?".
Who else would have thought, after being assigned an essay by a philosophy professor (due to the teacher’s poor diction, Feynman could not understand a single word of his lectures), to observe changes in his own consciousness while falling asleep? For four weeks, student Feynman observed and then wrote a study on dreams. He completed it in verse. He recognized his own work by the poetic rhythm when the professor read it aloud to the class (again, the words were impossible to make out).
Who else could have participated in the Manhattan Project during World War II, working on the creation of the atomic bomb (under conditions of strict secrecy), and then earned a "D" in the "Psychiatry" section of a military medical commission’s evaluation—meaning "defective" in terms of mental health?
Prolonged tension, "everything was done at breakneck speed" (quote), personal loss (the death of his wife), followed by a relatively calm and comfortable teaching position at Cornell University. It seemed like he should have been able to work and create with pleasure. But no—no ideas, no research being written, dark thoughts. In other words, professional burnout had set in. "The pattern" of this state is clear from an outside perspective. But not for the person experiencing it. And honesty only fuels what we now call "imposter syndrome." After all, the scientist was well aware that the university had not invited him just to teach. The institution expected scientific work, research, and discoveries to take place within the walls of Cornell. Numerous job offers from other places—with higher positions and salaries—only added to his sadness: "They think I’ve achieved something, but I haven’t achieved anything! I have no ideas…" (quote). "The final straw" was an invitation from the Institute for Advanced Study. To work with great scientists—Einstein, von Neumann, Weyl! Under special conditions, in a position even better than Einstein’s!
Perhaps someone with ordinary thinking would have been sent into a depressive abyss by such an "ultimate offer." But for Feynman, the absurdity (in his own self-perception at the time) of the invitation became the push he needed to climb out of the "depths" and gain insight. "…Their perception of you is completely fantastical; you are unworthy of it. But you are not obligated to be worthy. …You are not obligated to live up to others’ expectations of what you can achieve. I am not obligated to be what they want me to be. That is their mistake, not my flaw" (quote).
On the same day, the head of the Cornell lab put Feynman’s "enlightenment" into different words. "…And his words freed me from the feeling of guilt."
After this, Feynman was able to remember why he had once enjoyed physics. Because for him, it was a game. "I did what I liked, and what mattered to me was not the significance of my work for nuclear physics, but how interesting and fun my 'games' themselves were" (quote).
And so, a plate tossed into the air in a cafeteria as a joke became the starting point for new research. Simply because it was interesting. As Richard Feynman wrote, he barely had time to recover before he was already "playing" with problems that had actually interested him before he worked on the bomb. "The significance of what I was doing had none at the time—the significance came later. My diagrams—and in fact everything for which I received the Nobel Prize—grew out of those antics with the wobbling plate" (quote).
"An interesting game"—for Richard Feynman, both words in this phrase are key. It was interesting to play the drums and "play" his way into performing music in a professional ballet. It was interesting to take up painting and "paint" his way into a prestigious exhibition. It was interesting to figure out the patterns of an unfamiliar language.
It was very interesting to finally find his own answer to the question: "How does it work?"
