A curious man

If you studied physics,and perhaps even if you didn’t,you probably know why. Feynman needs no introduction. The Feynman Lectures,based on his classes for undergrads at California Institute of Technology,are still the best guide to physics. He wrote works of popular science,like Surely You Are Joking Mr Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think,conveying his life as a scientist,explaining his physics as well as his life story — the life-long curiosity sparked by his father,the survival skills he picked up from his first wife while nursing her through terminal TB,even as he played a stellar role as a young physicist on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project team,his pranks at Los Alamos,his showman moment in the probe into the Challenger disaster (when he dramatically demonstrated the disconnect within NASA with little more than a glass of ice water for a prop),his irreverent reaction to a phone call that he’d got the 1965 Nobel (for his path-breaking work on quantum electrodynamics,or QED),his passion for bongo drums,his nude drawings,his still resonant thoughts on “the value of science”. How do you compete with that? Folks have tried.

Now,a new biography finally gets it right. In Quantum Man,Lawrence Krauss does not even try to meet his subject on his showman turns. In simple language — well,as simple as you can get while trying to convey the complexities of quantum mechanics — his is a profile of Feynman as a scientist and a human being who was less a prankster or attention-seeking celebrity but a remarkably focused thinker,who went first to principles to sort out his mind and his science. So what may have appeared to be an attention-grabbing QED moment was,in fact,the result of an immense amount of thought and application. Feynman’s scientific method was his code of living: a great amount of inquiry prepared him for every unforeseen moment. The point being,Feynman was an interesting personality,a man of diverse interests,and his science was the core to understanding all of him. He may or may not have become an iconic scientist because of his other interests and charisma — but certainly,in Krauss’s telling,his scientific method explained his multi-faceted profile.

A few quotes,away from details of his scientific research,are revealing. They address the criticism of Feynman’s obsessive need to start always at square one,but in fact demonstrate Feynman’s strength: “He was so talented and so versatile that he was able,if necessary,to reinvent almost any wheel and usually improve it in the process. But by the same token,reinventing the wheel takes time and is really worth the trouble. This was both a strength and a weakness. He really didn’t trust any idea unless he had worked it out from the first principles using his own methods. This meant that he understood a plethora of concepts more deeply and thoroughly than most others,and that he had a remarkable bag of tricks from which he could pull magic solutions to a host of varied problems. However,it also meant that he was not aware of brilliant developments by others that could have illuminated his own work in new ways,leading his further than he could have got on his own.”

Therefore the question: “Could he have done much more if he had agreed every now and then to build on well-trodden paths rather than seek new ones? We will never know. However,an honest assessment of his contributions to science from 1960 or so onward demonstrates several trends that continued to repeat themselves. He would explore a new area,developing a set of remarkably original mathematical techniques and physical insights. These would ultimately contribute to central developments by others,which would lead to a host of major discoveries and essentially drive almost every area of modern theoretical and experimental physics. This has ranged from his work in condensed matter physics to our understanding of the weak and strong interactions,to the basis of current work on quantum gravity and quantum computing.” As Krauss emphasises,this meant he led from the rear,or a side flank.

And perhaps that’s what made him such a star.

mini.kapoor@expressindia.com