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Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman Paperback – November 2, 1993

by James Gleick (Author)

4.5 1,502 ratings

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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.

Now James Gleick, author of the bestselling Chaos, unravels teh dense skein of Feynman‘s thought as well as the paradoxes of his character in a biography—which was nominated for a National Book Award—of outstanding lucidity and compassion.

Print length

531 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

November 2, 1993
Dimensions

5.23 x 1.26 x 7.96 inches
ISBN-10

0679747044
ISBN-13

978-0679747048
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read.

Review

[A] rare, jewel-like biography... terrifically readable. It achieves an almost perfect balance between the physicist's work and his life... Gleick [is a] consummate craftsman. -- Washington Post Book World

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (November 2, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 531 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679747044
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679747048
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 0.043 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.23 x 1.26 x 7.96 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #293,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #225 in History of Technology
- #297 in Quantum Theory (Books)
- #645 in Scientist Biographies

Customer Reviews:
4.5 1,502 ratings

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About the author

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James Gleick

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James Gleick was born in New York and began his career in journalism, working as an editor and reporter for the New York Times. He covered science and technology there, chronicling the rise of the Internet as the Fast Forward columnist, and in 1993 founded an Internet startup company called The Pipeline. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

His home page is at http://around.com, and on Twitter he is @JamesGleick.

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4.5 out of 5

1,502 global ratings

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Love Hearts

Intriguing Man

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2023

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I had read two of Feynman's memoirs and was intrigued and entertained by this man with a curious mind and a way of thinking that was light years ahead of his contemporaries. I just happened to be researching past Pulitzer price winners and this one was a finalist. Although I have studied some physics I found the science in this book difficult to understand. However, the biographical parts of the book were fascinating especially his youth and experience with the Manhattan Project while married to his sweetheart who was dying from tuberculosis. HIs womanizing was somewhat shocking but Feynman seemed to have no sense of shame in carrying on an affair with the wife of one of his colleagues in addition to other escapades. He settled down in Pasadena, CA at CalTech where he became legendary as a genius and showman.

One person found this helpful

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Henry Rosenberg MD

very good

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2023

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It’s tough trying to relate a life that a person lived combined with his contributions to physics. The author has done a good job, but some of the science requires a lot of concentration.
I certainly learned a lot about this brilliant, down to earth man. I thank the author.

2 people found this helpful

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Weimdogz

Everything and more about Feynman's life and work.

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2023

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A very comprehensive book covering Feynman's life and his work. However one needs to have some knowlege/practice of physics in order to understand a lot of the technical material. But the descriptions of his work with the Manhattan. Project and then the Challenger Disaster are more easily followed. Includes much physics history and developments of the last hundred years along with the giants of physics in those years -- Einstein, Dirac, Fermi, etc. One wishing to read about Feynman might rather read his own two books first (Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman and/or What Do You Care What Other People Think) before attacking this more technical volume. But this is an excellent book for those who can follow/understand the physics. (It covers a lot of atomic structure, electromagnetism, elementary particles, quantum theory, particle accelerators, etc.)

8 people found this helpful

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Andre N.

Great Book, Great Service and Fast Delivery

Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2023

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I am glad the hardcover version of the book was available for purchase. Richard Feynman was a true renagade Physicist, and an enlightened scientist. A truly inspirational and evolved human being.

One person found this helpful

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Beautiful, personal, multifaceted biography of the man at the heart of American quantum physics in the 20th century: Feynman.

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2011

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I picked this up because I'm a big fan of James Gleick, who I consider one of the best science writers around. His book on chaos theory, Chaos: Making a New Science , changed my life back in the 1980s. His special strength is that he glosses the mathematical tough stuff without losing the interesting heart of the topics at hand. I imagined that he was going to provide some deep insights into Richard Feynman's physics - and Gleick doesn't disappoint here - but this isn't the heart of this book. The heart of this book is Feynman the man - and that makes this much more a biography than a science book. It's tough to write a biography of Richard Feynman because Feynman did such a good job of bringing his personality to the public at large, in famous books of anecdotes such as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) . Gleick doesn't skip this charming content, but he puts it in a larger context of the details of Richard Feynman's life: his loves, his career, his challenges and triumphs. It's all here. Feynman's prodigal math skills and his oracular brilliance in his field; his titanic rivalries; particularly the long, sometimes collaborative one with the equally impressive Murray Gell-Mann at Cal-Tech. Gleick gives us a balanced account, moving smoothly from Feynman's colorful childhood in Far Rockaway to MIT to Princeton and his collaboration with his advisor and mentor, the great Archibald Wheeler. We get inside his tragic love with his first wife, Arline - which helps us understand his subsequent almost predatory lady killer ways before he finally settles down. We get deep inside his work on the Manhattan Project where his math genius and special skills on pragmatic real world problems were shown in high relief, along with his disregard for authority, sense of humor, and even his pathos. At the end we find him terminally ill (his recurrent cancers perhaps a distant consequence of his work with radioactive materials) but still the one with the penetrating eye for the heart of the problem and an iconoclastic disregard for sacred cows who cut to the heart of the issue of the Challenger disaster.

I was expecting a dissection of Quantum Electrodynamics from Gleick. We get a little bit of that - but ultimately we get a living, breathing human being, drumming away with relentless energy and precise measured timing. This is a tour de force work of biography. Months later, I am still haunted by it. Feynman had such a rare set of abilities, yet ultimately he was all flesh and blood and mortal. As the world reels from the huge challenges ahead I find myself aching for someone like Feynman to slice into the biggest problems with such ninja flair. I put this in my top ten books I've read in the last decade.

17 people found this helpful

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LA in Dallas

Good on the facts, relentlessly infuriating interpretation

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2023

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I read James Gleick's Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman not long after it came out in 1993. I read it because of my interest in Feynman, but I went into it with some trepidation, because I had read Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science, and I did NOT like it. Here is what I think of Gleick: he's a writer who thinks he's smarter than his readers. He is not content to give you just the facts and allow you to draw your own conclusions -- he wants to have INSIGHTS, which he insists on pressing on you in such a way as to cause you to marvel at his, Gleick's, brilliance.

But I will say this for him -- he's a thorough researcher. If you want the facts about something and can ignore Gleick's insights, you may benefit from reading him. I learned things about Feynman that I didn't know before reading Genius.

Gleick's deep insight about Feynman is that he worked to present a certain image of himself, as a physics genius. What this really comes down to is that Feynman liked to brag. If you have followed Feynman's writings and public lectures you know this already. He was not subtle, and his friends and colleagues will tell you the same. That Gleick treats this as a deep insight about Feynman says much more about Gleick than about Feynman.

Genius is a good source of information about Feynman. Like any nonfiction book, it should be approached with skepticism.

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Amazon Customer

Excellent Book

Reviewed in Canada on November 29, 2020

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This is an excellent piece of literature. It does take longer to read than most other books, as it forces you to process the information being discussed. Personally, I enjoyed the mental stimulation it provided. Overall it is very well written and provides meaningful insight into Richard Feynman's life.

Amazon Customer

A tribute that does justice...

Reviewed in India on July 22, 2022

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I have put off reading this book for decades, having read Surely You're Joking... long ago. It is a book to be read when you have time, time to linger, to read and re-read and appreciate the point of view that made him who he was. All I can say is that it doesn't disappoint in any part.

A sublime experience.

One person found this helpful

Douglas Teixeira

Muito bom, mas de difícil leitura

Reviewed in Brazil on October 4, 2017

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O livro conta a história do físico Richard Feynman e traz um panorama dos desenvolvimentos da física no século passado. Como os demais livros do James Gleick, este livro é bem escrito e interessante, mas é bastante denso em alguns pontos (principalmente nas explicações dos conceitos físicos), o que torna a leitura difícil. Mas no geral o livro é muito bom. E o Richard Feynman é uma pessoa interessantíssima!

2 people found this helpful

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Liam

Essentially great, if occasionally wondering off topic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2019

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This book seems incredibly well researched and although some of the ideas are complex, I think they are well explained. It also offers nice insights to Feynman's mind, and I especially enjoyed the segway where he learnt to crack safes and essentially used logic to more or less be able to access most of the safes at a research centre for the nuclear bomb. There's a number of these where Feynman demonstrates his mischievousness.

That said, occasionally the book meanders a little too off topic. There's literally a 30 page segment on what constitutes a genius around page 300 that for me was like wading through treacle. Perhaps that's a worthy thing to explore, but not here, and it's not done especially well, offering nothing really new. A sop to the book title, I thought... I don't think it's needed at all to clumsily demonstrate just what a genius Feynman was when the rest of the book establishes it plenty. There's a time and a place for the thoughts of Dyson or Oppenheimer, or a funny anecdote or a quote, but this just seemed overblown.

I considered giving it 4 stars but that felt harsh, and I couldn't do 4.5, so it squeaks in with 5. Seriously good, insightful and informative. You really start to appreciate just what Feynman did, leading a team into the explosive components in the atom bomb before he was 25, redefining quantum physics, improving nuclear storage processes (something the author states people working with it were sure he'd saved their lives) to the rocket programme.

As such I would totally recommend. It explains not only Feynman but those central to his life. I have subsequently started reading up on Freeman Dyson, but there's tonnes of other characters to explore.

2 people found this helpful

César Gámez

A true scientist

Reviewed in Mexico on August 26, 2017

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Very well written and documented. I enjoyed it. While learning about his life and achievements, also learned some physics too.

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