Motorhemp
07-31-2008, 01:11 PM
As Richard Feynman has just been referenced in another thread here is a link to the Wikipedia article on him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
A couple of quick quotes from the article:
"Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but later revised this to "all-genius, all-buffoon". During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world."
Once you've read about him you quickly realise that Feynman didn't consider the buffoon comment as derogatory)!
"At twenty-three ... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler-Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others.
– James Gleick , Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman"
p.s. I've put this in the technology thread (science) but really am not sure where it should go?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
A couple of quick quotes from the article:
"Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but later revised this to "all-genius, all-buffoon". During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world."
Once you've read about him you quickly realise that Feynman didn't consider the buffoon comment as derogatory)!
"At twenty-three ... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler-Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau—but few others.
– James Gleick , Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman"
p.s. I've put this in the technology thread (science) but really am not sure where it should go?