Pleasure of Finding Things Out [Paperback]

Richard P Feynman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2001

This collection of the best short works of rule-breaking genius Richard Feynman shows his passion for knowledge and sense of fun at their most infectious. The revealing and inspiring pieces here span a lifetime of enthusiasm for discovering what makes the world tick - including uproarious tales of early student experiments; safecracking and outwitting US censors during the Second World War; his first lecture as a graduate student (to an audience including Albert Einstein); and the memories of the father who delighted in showing him the world and sparked his insatiable curiosity.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

One of the world's greatest theoretical physicists and a Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safe-cracker, practical joker and storyteller, his life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (April 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140290346
• ISBN-13: 978-0140290349
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,023,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars insightful observations, May 22, 2008

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W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pleasure of Finding Things Out (Paperback)

Let's be clear about one thing. Most if not all of the chapters in this book have appeared in various places before. Richard Feynman has been dead 20 years, and nothing here is newly discovered material. However, it does provide an insight into a gifted mind, who was also eloquent with the written word.

One chapter has been famous in computing for decades. "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" was a talk he gave in the early 60s. Where he speculated that circuits could be reduced in size by orders of magnitude, with concomitant effects on performance. A foreshadowing of Gordon Moore's observation several years later, that became Moore's Law.

Another related chapter has Feynman's predictions about future computers. Future, that is, from when he made his remarks. Read it and see how accurate he was.