“I’m an explorer, OK? I like to find out!” -- One of the towering figures of twentieth-century science, Richard Feynman possessed a curiosity that was the stuff of legend. Even before he won the Nobel Prize in 1965, his unorthodox and spellbinding lectures on physics secured his reputation amongst students and seekers around the world. It was his outsized love for life, however, that earned him the status of an American cultural icon-here was an extraordinary intellect devoted to the proposition that the thrill of discovery was matched only by the joy of communicating it to others. In this career-spanning collection of letters, many published here for the first time, we are able to see this side of Feynman like never before. Beginning with a short note home in his first days as a graduate student, and ending with a letter to a stranger seeking his advice decades later, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track covers a dazzling array of topics and themes, scientific developments and personal histories. With missives to and from scientific luminaries, as well as letters to and from fans, family, students, crackpots, as well as everyday people eager for Feynman’s wisdom and counsel, the result is a wonderful de facto guide to life, and eloquent testimony to the human quest for knowledge at all levels. Feynman once mused that “people are ‘entertained’ enormously by being allowed to understand a little bit of something they never understood before.” As edited and annotated by his daughter, Michelle, these letters not only allow us to better grasp the how and why of Feynman’s enduring appeal, but also to see the virtues of an inquiring eye in spectacular fashion. Whether discussing the Manhattan Project or developments in quantum physics, the Challenger investigation or grade-school textbooks, the love of his wife or the best way to approach a problem, his dedication to clarity, grace, humor, and optimism is everywhere evident..
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Finding out about someone by reading their correspondence is a fundamentally different thing than reading their biography. Letters offer both more intimacy with the subject and at the same time a crucial distance--the exact distance the letter-writer intended from the people to whom he was writing. In Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track, Michelle Feynman collects her famous father's letters to reveal a warm, honest man with high expectations for himself, his loved ones, and the human race. Long before Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize, he was a smart, skinny graduate student at Princeton, writing letters to his mother and relating the mundane details of college life. "Dear Mom.... The raincoat came O.K. It is very nice," he writes. By the time he finished his Ph.D., Feynman had fallen for Arline Greenbaum, who had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Their tragically short marriage is set in letters against Feynman's first job--working on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Even while working on top secret physics, Feynman was an enthusiastic correspondent, jumping eagerly at the chance to encourage a young scientist, correct a public misperception, or tell a goofy joke to his family. Self-effacing, charmingly down to earth, and occasionally cranky, these letters cover Feynman's entire career, although in the fits and starts one would expect from a collection such as this. His own words to students, spouses, daughters, and fellow scientists reveal Feynman's brilliance far more effectively than any biographical lens ever could. --Therese Littleton
From Publishers Weekly
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) has become an American scientific icon. He won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics; he became a bit of a television star with his shows explaining physical phenomena in readily understandable terms; and he became the hero of the federal committee investigating the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger when he demonstrated how O rings could fail under cold conditions. He was known as brash and iconoclastic, and a fabulous teacher. This collection of letters edited by Feynman's daughter presents brief glimpses into various facets of his personal and professional lives. Covering the years 1939 to 1987, the letters provide some insight into daily life during the Manhattan Project; others offer a behind-the-scenes look at the Challenger investigation. They also show Feynman to be a thoughtful educator, willing to write back to high school students asking for guidance in selecting a career and understanding physics. The energetic if decidedly colloquial prose underscores Feynman's exuberant nature and self-deprecating sense of humor, as well as his self-described "peculiarity" when he tried to resign from the National Academy of Sciences because he found it "psychologically distasteful to judge people's 'merit.' " 60 b&w photos. Agent, Melanie Jackson.$125,000 national marketing campaign.(Apr. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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More About the Author
Richard P. Feynman was born in 1918 and grew up in Far Rockaway, New York. At the age of seventeen he entered MIT and in 1939 went to Princeton, then to Los Alamos, where he joined in the effort to build the atomic bomb. Following World War II he joined the physics faculty at Cornell, then went on to Caltech in 1951, where he taught until his death in 1988. He shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965, and served with distinction on the Shuttle Commission in 1986. A commemorative stamp in his name was issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2005.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
48 of 48 people found the following review helpful
By Dave Tolle
Format:Hardcover
This is an excellent book that gives a compelling portrait of a great scientist, a fascinating personality, a decent human being. But it is a long book and gives far too much detail for anyone with a merely casual interest in Richard Feynman. Nearly 500 pages of letters to and from Feynman could either captivate you or bore you, depending on your level of interest. I was captivated. I wish I had known him personally; this book has reinforced that wish, and has partially satisfied it.
Feynman was single-minded in his devotion to science: "This [physics research] is, in my mind, of even more importance than my love for Arline" (his first wife). Yet he was surely loving and devoted to her, as is particularly clear in a heart-breaking letter he wrote to Arline after her death.
He was willing to correspond with ordinary people---particularly young people and teachers---about science, giving them good advice about what science is and how it should be studied and how it should be taught. "Stay human and on your pupil's side" was one bit of advice he gave to a mathematics teacher struggling to help his students with "new math." "You must fall in love with some activity" was a recurring theme in his advice to young people.
Feynman even responded to at least one crank (who accused Feynman and others of suppressing the crank's views on relativity), pressing him respectfully but persistently to answer a simple question that got to the heart of the scientific issue. (He evidently never got an answer.)
He refused all offers of honorary degrees, as a matter of principle, knowing how hard he had worked to get his earned degree.
He refused all requests from institutions for letters of recommendation concerning their own people: "What's the matter with you fellows, he has been right there the past few years---can't you "evaluate" him best yourself?"
He was often wry, as in this response to one congratulatory note when he won the Nobel prize: "I am sorry that I am unable to accede to your desire that I do not answer your note, as the machinery that I have set up for answering congratulatory letters does not permit that degree of flexibility. We suffer from the computer age."
He was deeply concerned when he thought he might have caused unhappiness. One former student, for instance, thought little of his own ability to work on "worthwhile" problems; Feynman wrote at length, fearing that he as a teacher had given the student a false idea of what was worth working on, and trying hard to reassure him that the worthwhile problems are the ones you can solve.
He could be touchy when the media wanted to prove that Feynman-the-scientific-genius was human by showing a picture of him playing the bongo drums: "I am human enough to tell you to go to hell" was his response on one such occasion.
He was not a religious man (" I told him that I was as strong an atheist as he was likely to find ..."), but he was a highly principled man, who refused, for instance, to be included in a book of Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize, for reasons that he carefully delineated in a long letter to the author of that book. A single quote from that excellent letter will have to suffice here: "... intelligence, good will, and kindness is not, thank God, a monopoly of the Jewish people but a universal characteristic of mankind in general." When the author a year later asked permission to include him in a similar publication, he told her to see his previous letter "to understand why I do not wish to cooperate with you, in your new adventure in prejudice."
He was a model of brevity: "Dear Malcolm: I did work on the atomic bomb. My major reason was concern that the Nazi's would make it first and conquer the world. Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman."
He was kind and encouraging to laymen who wrote him with scientific ideas: "So your idea is at the forefront of high energy physics today. I hope you are not too disappointed that it had already been thought of."
He was always willing to admit his own ignorance and his own errors: "I made a mistake, so the book is wrong ... and you goofed too, for believing me," he wrote to one student at another college, who had gotten an exam question wrong after trusting a book he wrote.
He could be modest: "I judge from your letter that in Venezuela you are teased badly if you are a professor and you say you don't know or are not sure. I am glad that I am not so teased because I am sure of nothing and find myself having to say "I don't know" very often. After all, I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there."
He could be blunt: "Thank you for your letter. Write me again, and lose a little weight!"
He could be charming: "Maybe it would help you with your problem about my being an American to know that my wife is an Englishwoman from Yorkshire. She has probably improved me greatly."
He could accept chastisement: "Thank you for your observations of my behavior at the Colloquium. You are probably right." "Thank you for your letter concerning my remarks in the L.A. Times. You are right, I am a jerk for telling the reporter my personal feelings and reactions to the Nobel Prize."
Michelle Feynman has done an admirable job of assembling this revealing and entertaining collection of letters, shedding light on the life and character of one of the great scientists of the 20th century.
Feynman was single-minded in his devotion to science: "This [physics research] is, in my mind, of even more importance than my love for Arline" (his first wife). Yet he was surely loving and devoted to her, as is particularly clear in a heart-breaking letter he wrote to Arline after her death.
He was willing to correspond with ordinary people---particularly young people and teachers---about science, giving them good advice about what science is and how it should be studied and how it should be taught. "Stay human and on your pupil's side" was one bit of advice he gave to a mathematics teacher struggling to help his students with "new math." "You must fall in love with some activity" was a recurring theme in his advice to young people.
Feynman even responded to at least one crank (who accused Feynman and others of suppressing the crank's views on relativity), pressing him respectfully but persistently to answer a simple question that got to the heart of the scientific issue. (He evidently never got an answer.)
He refused all offers of honorary degrees, as a matter of principle, knowing how hard he had worked to get his earned degree.
He refused all requests from institutions for letters of recommendation concerning their own people: "What's the matter with you fellows, he has been right there the past few years---can't you "evaluate" him best yourself?"
He was often wry, as in this response to one congratulatory note when he won the Nobel prize: "I am sorry that I am unable to accede to your desire that I do not answer your note, as the machinery that I have set up for answering congratulatory letters does not permit that degree of flexibility. We suffer from the computer age."
He was deeply concerned when he thought he might have caused unhappiness. One former student, for instance, thought little of his own ability to work on "worthwhile" problems; Feynman wrote at length, fearing that he as a teacher had given the student a false idea of what was worth working on, and trying hard to reassure him that the worthwhile problems are the ones you can solve.
He could be touchy when the media wanted to prove that Feynman-the-scientific-genius was human by showing a picture of him playing the bongo drums: "I am human enough to tell you to go to hell" was his response on one such occasion.
He was not a religious man (" I told him that I was as strong an atheist as he was likely to find ..."), but he was a highly principled man, who refused, for instance, to be included in a book of Jewish Winners of the Nobel Prize, for reasons that he carefully delineated in a long letter to the author of that book. A single quote from that excellent letter will have to suffice here: "... intelligence, good will, and kindness is not, thank God, a monopoly of the Jewish people but a universal characteristic of mankind in general." When the author a year later asked permission to include him in a similar publication, he told her to see his previous letter "to understand why I do not wish to cooperate with you, in your new adventure in prejudice."
He was a model of brevity: "Dear Malcolm: I did work on the atomic bomb. My major reason was concern that the Nazi's would make it first and conquer the world. Sincerely, Richard P. Feynman."
He was kind and encouraging to laymen who wrote him with scientific ideas: "So your idea is at the forefront of high energy physics today. I hope you are not too disappointed that it had already been thought of."
He was always willing to admit his own ignorance and his own errors: "I made a mistake, so the book is wrong ... and you goofed too, for believing me," he wrote to one student at another college, who had gotten an exam question wrong after trusting a book he wrote.
He could be modest: "I judge from your letter that in Venezuela you are teased badly if you are a professor and you say you don't know or are not sure. I am glad that I am not so teased because I am sure of nothing and find myself having to say "I don't know" very often. After all, I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there."
He could be blunt: "Thank you for your letter. Write me again, and lose a little weight!"
He could be charming: "Maybe it would help you with your problem about my being an American to know that my wife is an Englishwoman from Yorkshire. She has probably improved me greatly."
He could accept chastisement: "Thank you for your observations of my behavior at the Colloquium. You are probably right." "Thank you for your letter concerning my remarks in the L.A. Times. You are right, I am a jerk for telling the reporter my personal feelings and reactions to the Nobel Prize."
Michelle Feynman has done an admirable job of assembling this revealing and entertaining collection of letters, shedding light on the life and character of one of the great scientists of the 20th century.
75 of 84 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I am an avid reader of letters written by the famous and intelligent--TH Jefferson, Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Einstein, JRR Tolkien, Mozart--to name a few. If you wish to get to know a person, read their letters, I say.
I am also a fan of Richard Feynman. I voraciously read "Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman!" and "What do You Care What Other People Think?".
So, when my friend accidentally found "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman" at Borders bookstore, my eyes opened wide and my heart skipped a beat! Had someone edited a new book of collected letters written by Feynman himself? My two favorite mediums--Letters and Feynmanisms--in one wonderful book.
Thank the editors! They have amassed a treasure indeed. Here you will be able to get to know with even greater depth, the man that is Richard Feynman. A must have for all Feynman lovers across the globe!
I am also a fan of Richard Feynman. I voraciously read "Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman!" and "What do You Care What Other People Think?".
So, when my friend accidentally found "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From The Beaten Track: The Letters Of Richard P. Feynman" at Borders bookstore, my eyes opened wide and my heart skipped a beat! Had someone edited a new book of collected letters written by Feynman himself? My two favorite mediums--Letters and Feynmanisms--in one wonderful book.
Thank the editors! They have amassed a treasure indeed. Here you will be able to get to know with even greater depth, the man that is Richard Feynman. A must have for all Feynman lovers across the globe!
43 of 47 people found the following review helpful
By M. Waldhoer
Format:Hardcover
I have read everything out there that has ever been published from/about Richard Feynman.
This book consisting of letters to and from this sharp, funny, sensistive and most curious human being is yet the most personal. Thank you, Michelle Feynman, for reading through mountains of paperwork and putting together such a wonderful book. These letters make you wonder, think, sometimes even cry -but most of all, laugh!!!
This book consisting of letters to and from this sharp, funny, sensistive and most curious human being is yet the most personal. Thank you, Michelle Feynman, for reading through mountains of paperwork and putting together such a wonderful book. These letters make you wonder, think, sometimes even cry -but most of all, laugh!!!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marvelous, best insight into Feynman yet
Although there are a lot of book about Feynman, this one, in his own words, is the best yet. The strongest part of the book is the section describing the letters between Feynman... Read more
Published on March 6, 2011 by rbnn
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your time
I won't repeat the many good points other reviewers have made. This book is truly a gem. Will just add that Feynman's letters also provide a wonderful glimpse into how not to... Read more
Published on February 13, 2011 by Ken Rider
5.0 out of 5 stars
a good complement to the Feynman books
Even if you've got all the Feynman books, these letters teach you even more. Not all of the letters contain new information, but some are quite helpful.
Published on January 29, 2011 by L.Z.
5.0 out of 5 stars
If youre a Feynman fan you must get this book!
Im from the Uk and firstly I'd like to say thank you to Michelle Feynman (Richard Feynmans Daughter) for putting this book together. Read more
Published on November 26, 2010 by Lee London
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great dissertation companion
I was struggling with writing my PhD dissertation and found this book near another reference I was looking for in the library. Read more
Published on June 16, 2009 by MM
5.0 out of 5 stars
if your into feynman.. this is it!
First off, im a rather large fan of richard feynman. He is a very interesting individual with a lot of good input about science and more importantly life. Read more
Published on April 3, 2009 by Jacob W. Dolecki
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Isn't Nature Wonderful To Make Something With 42 Zeroes!"
Michelle Feynman has provided an important service in collecting the letters of her father in "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations. Read more
Published on August 19, 2008 by Robert I. Hedges
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feynman raw
If you are familiar with feynman this is just what you would expect from this great man. This is him uncut and uncensord. Read more
Published on September 28, 2007 by Matthew Reister
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feynman on Feynman
My main motivation for reading "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations" was to gain further insight into Feynman's personality and value system by the direct and reliable method of... Read more
Published on January 26, 2007 by Jeremy M. Harris
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wit, wisdom, and always humble affection for people from the genius of...
If there was one intellect that dominated the latter half of the 20th century, it would be Dr. Richard Feynman. Read more
Published on January 2, 2007 by Stratiotes Doxha Theon
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