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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mixture of affection and respect for a scientific giant, May 26, 2003
Author and physicist Leonard Mlodinow shares his experiences as a young post-doc at the California Institute of Technology, where he had an office just up the hall from Richard Feynman, in this candid and funny memoir. Feynman - who, when Mlodinow showed up at Caltech, was already living with the cancer that eventually took his life - was an inspiration to the young physicist, who first discovered an interest in physics when while working at a kibbutz in Israel. An old copy of Feynman's book The Character of Physical Law was part of the kibbutz's small library, and it helped Mlodinow decide on his next step - a Ph.D. in the sometimes strange field of particle physics. When the newly minted Doctor's thesis caught the attention of some of Caltech's faculty, Mlodinow found himself offered an unusually plum position on Caltech's faculty. While at Caltech, Leonard struck up an acquaintance with Feynman, even coaxing the opinionated, occasionally cranky genius to commit his thoughts to cassette tape in a series of interviews. What might have turned into an abstruse version of Tuesdays With Morrie set in the halls of elite academia becomes - thanks to Mlodinow's courage in including himself as a player in the story, and through the graces of Feynman himself, who had little patience for mentoring or moralizing - a cleanly direct exploration of career anguish and punctured hero worship that ripens into a true affection. It's also about more than Professor Feynman: the book takes his attitudes and his reflections to heart (none more so than the pure and concentrated pleasure Mlodinow observes Feynman taking in the small details of everyday life), but Mlodinow makes room in his account for a small cast of characters that broaden and enrich the story by providing context, contrast, and unexpected sympathies. When the young post-doc, fretting over the physicist's version of writer's block, takes his stoner buddy Ray to a physics lecture, only to run into both Feynman and Murray Gell-Man, Feynman's (mostly) friendly rival and counterpart on campus, Mlodinow forgets to worry about his stalled professional arc from brilliant post-doc to Next Big Thing, and sweats instead over what Ray might come out and say to the touchy, curmudgeonly Grand Old Man of physics. Naturally - and behind young Leonard's back - the two strike up an instant rapport. Mlodinow's sometimes prickly encounters with Feyman's secretary and self-appointed watchdog are a hoot, as are the passages in which Leonard (and we, his readers) meet the various chaps all up and down the hallway - Constantine, a flashy sort with a fabulously glorious actress girlfriend and a penchant for panache and adventure, John Schwartz (yes, that John Schwartz, the fellow who came up with string theory), and one unnamed chap who, mired in limbo with no Big Idea to pursue, seems to spend his hours tending to a small plant nursery in his office. Young Leonard fears that he will end up a mirror image of this last, whom he dubs "Dr. Gardner," but a brush with his own mortality - and Feynman's sometimes brusque influence - exert themselves, and Mlodinow quits worrying quite so much and learns to follow his bliss. Along with his small, memorable roster of dramatis personae, Mlodinow folds into his story a fair amount of modern physics theory, making the mysteries of the mathematical universe and the tantalizing goal of a Grand Unified Theory of nature resonate with his own youthful quest for truth, beauty, and happiness. There is also an instructive rumination present on the different philosophies in science - the "Greek" versus "Babylonian" points of view. (The know-better Murray Gell-Man follows the rational, experiment-oriented Greek model, while the more playful Feynman embodies the Babylonian appreciation of intuition and phenomenon.) "The forces of nature are disparate, but in fine balance," Mlodinow writes at one point, and in his effortlessly charming style, he seems to adopt this as his slogan: for all its assorted and not obviously connected themes, Feynman's Rainbow moves gracefully and with a tender mixture of respect and affection for a man who shone with a child's sense of wonder, and who was also one of the twentieth century's great scientific minds.
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25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, May 11, 2003
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.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Advice to a Young Physicist, August 13, 2003
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.
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