Prof. Feynman100 @ Caltech

Prof Feynman was remembered as a magician who did lots of tricks by using (e) laws of Applied Physics. He was remembered as a very fun professor in the Caltech campus. He was also remembered as a key member of US space shuttle 'Challenger' disaster (The 1986 space shuttle explosion in which teacher Christa McAuliffe and six other astronauts lost their lifes) panel


To his colleagues, Richard Feynman was not so much a genius as he was a full-blown magician: someone who “does things that nobody else could do and that seem completely unexpected.” The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel Prize-winning theory of quantam electrodynamics to his devastating exposé of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. At the same time, the ebullient Feynman established a reputation as an eccentric showman, a master safe cracker and bongo player, and a wizard of seduction.


Richard P Feynman in 1965 narrative

Richard P. Feynman (Feynman 100 @ Caltech)

Richard P. Feynman was born in New York City on the 11th May 1918. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained his B.Sc. in 1939 and at Princeton University where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1942. He was Research Assistant at Princeton (1940-1941), Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cornell University (1945-1950), Visiting Professor and thereafter appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (1950-1959). At present he is Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Professor Feynman is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the National Academy of Science; in 1965 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, London (Great Britain).

He holds the following awards: Albert Einstein Award (1954, Princeton); Einstein Award (Albert Einstein Award College of Medicine); Lawrence Award (1962).

Richard Feynman is married to Gweneth Howarth, they have a son, Carl Richard (born 22nd April 1961), and a daughter Michelle Catherine (born 13th August 1968).

From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1963-1970, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Richard P. Feynman died on February 15, 1988.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1965