Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life [Hardcover]

Leonard Mlodinow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2003

Einstein's Dreams meets Tuesdays with Morrie in Leonard Mlodinow's touching memoir about the guidance granted him by his mentor, the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman. For some, it was that special connection with a grandparent or a football coach, a boss, or a cleric. For Leonard Mlodinow, as a young physicist struggling to find his place in the world, the relationship that would most profoundly influence his life was with his mentor, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Drawing on transcripts from his many meetings with Feynman during their time together at Cal Tech, Mlodinow shares Feynman's provocative answers to such questions as "What is the nature of creativity?" and "How does a scientist think?" At once a moving portrait of a friendship and an affecting account of Feynman's final, creative years, FEYNMAN'S RAINBOW celebrates the inspiring legacy of one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman has been virtually canonized as the People's Physicist-an earthy, bongo-playing free spirit who delighted in puncturing the pomposity of the establishment. In this memoir, by ex-physicist and Star Trek writer Mlodinow, of a stint as a post-doctoral colleague of Feynman's at Caltech, the aging physicist still cracks wise, crashes parties, works on his physics at a strip joint and needles stuffed-shirt academics. Mlodinow was something of a Feynman-esque character himself-he liked to smoke pot with the garbage man next door and was working on a screenplay-so he turned to the older scientist for life lessons. And that's where this otherwise engaging book goes wrong, because, truth be told, Feynman was at his best only when talking about physics. Mlodinow taped many of their conversations, and transcribes them at length here, to the book's detriment. Feynman holds forth on the creative process, art and modern novels ("The few that I've looked at, I can't stand them"), but as far as insights go, platitudes like "Remember, it's supposed to be fun" (a thought inspired by the titular rainbow) are about as good as it gets. Fortunately, Mlodinow's accessible style manages to convey Feynman's cantankerous appeal as well as some of the weirdness of theoretical physics without overtaxing lay readers, while his deft, funny, novelistic portraits of its practitioners, like the (as portrayed here) toweringly pretentious and touchingly human Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann, bring this seemingly gray sub-culture to vivid life.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“An accessible portrait of a brilliant man.” —Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time

“A very unusual memoir of a very unusual author’s revealing encounters with a very human legend.” —The Dallas Morning News

“This is a sweetly entertaining book about the weird, but engaging, world of physics. . . . Young scientists will find solace and perhaps inspiration here.” —American Scientist
 
“Mlodinow’s tribute to the man is set against an amusing, nicely drawn backdrop of campus life, and fleshed out with a very readable account of string theory, which developed into the most promising breakthrough of the century in theoretical physics.” —The Independent (London)
 
“Mlodinow’s accessible style manages to convey Feynman’s cantankerous appeal as well as some of the weirdness of theoretical physics without overtaxing lay readers, while his deft, funny, novelistic portraits of its practitioners . . . bring this seemingly gray sub-culture to vivid life.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“An exhilarating book . . . one that reflects the radiance of its subject and so warms as it instructs.” —David Berlinski, author of One, Two, Three: Absolutely Elementary Mathematics
 
“Mlodinow thinks in equations but explains in anecdote, simile, and occasional bursts of neon. . . . The results are mind-bending.” —Fortune --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; 1ST edition (May 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044653045X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446530453
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #559,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Feynman, Richard

More About the Author

Leonard Mlodinow was born in Chicago, Illinois, to immigrant Jewish parents who were holocaust survivors. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is now at Caltech. His book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives was a New York Times Bestseller, Editor's Choice, and Notable Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the Royal Society book award. His other books include two co-authored with physicist Stephen Hawking -- A Briefer History of Time, and The Grand Design. In addition to his books and research articles, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes magazine, among other publications, and for television series such as McGyver and Star Trek: the Next Generation. Visit my web site at: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~len/

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining May 11, 2003

By Shashikiran Kolar

Format:Hardcover

Well, this book makes an evening of good reading. Feynman fans would instantly identify with his vintage mannerisms such as scorn for psychology and philosophy, showmanship and his wonder of nature. It contains Feynman's views of how a scientists life should be, how he must go about choosing problems and the emphasis that he must lay on his belief of his capabilities and the problems tractability.

But, more than all the above, this book is about the authors struggles with high expectations. He portrays the emotional lows that graduate students and fresh graduates undergo when they step out to the real world. It tells you that no matter how smart you are, which school you went to, or the quality of work you produce, there would always be moments of self doubt. Feynman himself faced such fallow times more than once, even after he won the Nobel.

Surprisingly, the author does not mention that Feynman went through exactly the same dilemma when he got out of Los Alamos. He was being offered positions with high salary from Berkeley, Institute of Advanced Study, Cornell etc. Feynman felt that he did not deserve these posts as he would not produce any good work any more in his life. How he got over this feeling is a wonderful story in itself.

Overall, I guess the book is worth buying if you are interested in the life of a scientist in general, especially a young one.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Advice to a Young Physicist August 13, 2003

By R. Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

There were plenty of famous physicists in the twentieth century, but none as endearing and downright funny as Richard Feynman. If you have ever read his wonderful memoir _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_, you know plenty about the humorous side of the serious physicist, the man who originated quantum electrodynamics as well as plenty of other accomplishments within his field, to say nothing of playing the bongos. Now there is an unusual memoir, a tribute from a young physicist who came within Feynman's orbit at Caltech in the early 1980s. _Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life_ (Warner Books) by Leonard Mlodinow gives us another snapshot of Feynman, which would always be welcome, but this one is special. Mlodinow was starting up to be an academic physicist, and got to get advice from Feynman on the task, as well as on what is important in life. Mlodinow presciently taped many of the sessions, and got around to transcribing them only recently. Feynman has lots to teach us still, even if we aren't physicists.

Part of the attraction of this little volume is that while it is about Feynman, it is also about Mlodinow's discomfort as a whiz kid brought in to work at Caltech. He was glad to get the appointment, but also intimidated. "These people at Caltech might actually expect something of me." He didn't know how to start, and floundered for months, until he decided to talk with Feynman, just down the hall, about what he thought about string theory. "Look," Feynman said dismissively, "If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn't come here asking me. You'd come here _telling_ me." The lesson was, find something you believe in and go to work. In Feynman's view, it wouldn't do to work on just anything. If you weren't working on something beautiful, and something you believed in, then the work wouldn't be fun. And fun was essential: "For me, physics is more fun than anything else or I couldn't be doing it." Feynman isn't the only curious character in this memoir. Next door to Mlodinow's office is another Nobel winner, Murray Gell-Mann who had brought the unifying theory of quarks to subatomic particles. John Schwarz, working alone for many years, finally brings out string theory. Stephen Wolfram appears, before "Mathematica" and his own rewrite of science, to eat a pound of rare roast beef. There is also a good deal of science in the book, a brief summary of where physics stood at the end of the millennium.

Mlodinow had a hobby of writing during the time, writing screenplays, which some of his fellow physicists must have thought beneath him. Feynman didn't influence him directly to go into writing, but at least partially because of Feynman's teaching about going after the work that is fun, he wound up writing rather than doing physics. He left Caltech to write an acclaimed history of geometry, and even scripts for _Star Trek_. It is obvious he absorbed the lessons he has generously shared with us in this amusing book, for he left Caltech hoping that he could do something Feynman would admire. "And then I thought, no, even better, I hope that someday I will write something that I would admire." Very nice work, Mr. Feynman.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Moderately enjoyable. November 30, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This is a short book, which is good because there's really not a lot of meat to it. It consists of the author's recollections of his uncertainty about his early career and his qualifications to be a physics researcher, interspersed with conversations with Richard Feynman and observations about Murray Gell-Mann. The book would have been better had it focused more on Feynman and Gell-Mann and less on the author's dope-smoking, garbage-collector friend Ray.
It appears the author left the physics field, due to some combination of losing interest in it and being unable to find a research project that would justify his hiring by Caltech. He later wrote a screenplay that was never made into a movie (I believe thousands of people have done that); co-wrote a mediocre episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation; wrote a book I haven't yet read on the history of geometry; and wrote this modest book. All of this probably means he's accomplished more of note than I have, but probably considerably less than he had hoped as a young physics Ph.D.