What most people outside of the physics community are likely to be least familiar with is the work that counts as Feynman’s crowning scientific achievement.
Feynman will also be remembered for his teaching: The lectures he delivered to Caltech freshmen and sophomores in 1962 set the gold standard in physics instruction and, when later published as a three-volume set, sold millions of copies worldwide. His colleague Freeman Dyson described him as “half genius and half buffoon.” At times, his oxygen-sucking arrogance rubbed some the wrong way, and his performative sexism looks very different to modern eyes. He was a fun-loving, charismatic practical joker who toured America on long road trips. In his 1993 biography Genius, James Gleick called Feynman “brash,” “ebullient” and “the most brilliant, iconoclastic and influential physicist of modern times.” Feynman captured the popular imagination when he played the bongo drums and sang about orange juice. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Hans Bethe, the scientific leader of the project who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 (two years after Feynman did), has been quoted on what set his protégé apart: “There are two types of genius.
Early in his career, he contributed to the development of the first atomic bomb as a group leader of the Manhattan Project.
As one of the most famous physicists of the 20th century, Richard Feynman was known for a lot.
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