Case Study about Richard P. Feynman
Submitted by Sylvia Zinser, Nov. 19 2003
1. Introduction
Richard P. Feynman is one of the best known physicists of the 20th century. He held several awards including the Nobel Prize in 1965, together with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger, for his work in quantum electrodynamics. Feynman also is known by physicists and non-physicists for his autobiographies (‘Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman’ and ‘What Do You Care, What Other People Think’). The purpose of this study is to outline Feynman’s social and emotional life and development - the part of his life which commonly is overlooked, because the focus of most biographies lies on his academic achievements.
2. Education and positions held by Feynman
Feynman went to school in Far Rockaway, a little town near New York. In High school an IQ test was administered to the class. Feynman scored 125. He was a very good student in science and math, and a regular student in the other subjects. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at Princeton University, finishing his PhD in 1942. After working as a group leader in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cornell University (1945-1950) and the California Institute of Technology (from 1950). Feynman is also known for his Lectures of Physics, which he held at Caltech from 1961-1963, which became and still are standard textbooks for aspiring physicists. Feynman received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965.
In 1986 he took part in a hearing about the Space Shuttle Challenger accident investigation. He shocked the world by demonstrating the failure of the O-rings1 . Feynman died February 15, 1988 at the age of 69, from several rare forms of cancer (Web pages of the Nobel-Foundation, the Atomic Archive and Geocities).
3. Social and personal history
3.1 Richard Feynmans childhood
Feynman was born 1918 in New York as the son of Lucille and Melville Feynman, both Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. He grew up in a very supportive middle class family. While his mother was still pregnant with him, his father claimed the child would be a scientist, if he was a boy. Richard Feynman grew up in a Far Rockaway, a small village on Long Island’s south shore. He did not start talking before he was two, but after this he did not stop talking. From early on his father taught him about patterns, the art of asking the right questions and everything about nature, that he knew. One episode tells that Richard’s father taught him several names in different languages for the same bird, only to show him that names for anything do not help to understand this thing. Richard grew up to be a flexible person, who never cared about standards. He only accepted them as necessary to communicate. When he was about eleven or twelve he had a self made lab. He played and experimented a lot with electricity and soon it was known all over his home town, that he could fix broken radios. He always loved puzzles and would not stop until he had solved them. In this respect he was very intense and determined. Many episodes in his autobiography tell of him solving different kinds of puzzles, like picking locks and cracking codes. He taught himself all kinds of math, e.g. algebra and calculus, while he claimed that he usually did not use the algebraic methods, but just ’saw’ the answers and the overall concepts. He wrote the same about his physics work. These reports suggest that Feynman was a highly visual spatial learning person. Feynman was not athletic. He had trouble finding his position as a boy in school. After writing some poetry, while he was in school, he decided that it was nothing boys were supposed to do and wrote no more poems. Sometimes he was bullied. For example, some children took his brand new chemistry set and pretended to do an experiment, destroying the complete set. Despite of all this he became essentially independent of what his schoolmates thought of him, partially by creating his own image and behaving accordingly. He found his place in a school math club, which was successful in competitions. He defined himself as ‘uncultured’, denying all interest in the fine arts, because they seemed not fitting for boys to him. Even later in his life, Feynman defined the character he wanted to appear as and worked towards it. Richard Feynman was a very creative person. This he showed already, when he worked at his aunt’s restaurant inventing a new way of cutting beans, but also in the experiments he did in his lab at home. For example he wired the complete house of his family and constructed a burglar alarm.
3.2 Richard Feynman as student at MIT and in Princeton
Feynman joined a Jewish fraternity (Phi Beta Delta) immediately after coming to MIT. It was ideal for him, because this organization had an internal agreement that the more social students helped the more academically oriented students to find dates, and therefore taught them how to be social. In return, the more academically interested students helped the others out with their subjects. In the beginning Feynman got his dates organized, so he could go to dances with different girls. In one hazing incident he was the only one of his group, who fought back, which he did to create his own reputation of being a fighter. In this time he started to play tricks on other people. He learned the melody of the Italian language and pretended to speak Italian. He developed a reputation of a faker, so nobody believed him at all, even when he honestly admitted he had done another trick.
When he was working on any task, scientifical or puzzle, he would not stop until he had a solution or a good reason to stop. This shows his perfectionism and the determination to get things solved. At MIT his only academical interests were science and math. In the other classes he still got good grades, although he made changes in the topics of his assignments. For a time he became very interested in the subject of consciousness and what happens when a person goes to sleep. He was experimenting with himself, documenting his dreams and his sleep patterns. He got himself hypnotized, because he was interested in the sensation.
Feynman changed to Princeton for his graduate studies. He was known for being able to solve all kinds of integrals other physicists could not solve. He explained that with his self taught math, he was using another box of math tools than everybody else. At the end of his time there he married Arline Greenbaum against the will of his mother. At this time Arline was sick with Tuberculosis. This caused a split with his family, especially with his mother who feared for Feynman’s health. The split never healed despite all her tries to apologize to him after Arline’s death 1945.
3.3 Los Alamos
Feynman’s decision to work on the Manhattan Project was caused by the fear of Hitler developing an atomic bomb. At this time he did not think about the consequences this weapon would have. He wrote that even later, when they had done the first experiments, he saw the science about it and did not think about anything else. Only after Hiroshima and after leaving Los Alamos he started getting visions of New York and how this city would be affected by a similar bomb - sometimes even doubting the necessity of building new bridges and houses.
When in Los Alamos he used his free time to write letters to his sick wife, solving the codes she made up for him (which did not make the security personnel too happy - Feynman was reprimanded several times). Otherwise he used his time teaching everybody about security measures. Los Alamos had a very rigid security, but Feynman pointed out every loophole he found. For instance, he found a hole in the outside fence, walked out of the facility using this hole, and walked in again using the regular entrance. This he did several times until he was commanded to explain what he was doing. This way nobody could overlook this hole. He also pointed out that locking in important documents was not useful, if locks could be picked and safes could be cracked.
The strategy at this time was to keep all scientific information at Los Alamos, not allowing the other participating laboratories any knowledge. When he was told to negotiate a freer flow for information towards these labs, he doubted he would have enough authority. He often felt inadequate when he was asked to give professional advise to higher ranking people. However, when he finally gave advise, he only did it scientifically, not being concerned if it was according to the current political views. The tendency to always tell what he considered the truth was to be seen throughout his life.
3.4 Cornell and Caltech
Richard Feynman wrote, he could not do without teaching, because he did not know what he would do if he did not have good ideas in physics. Being so young, he did not think himself fit to have the position he had; it took the head of the laboratory in Cornell to convince him that he was fulfilling his part of the contract, and that it was the lab’s risk if he should make no progress scientifically. Feynman decided to start playing again with physics without being success oriented, just like he used to when he was a child. So he started thinking about spinning plates and other questions, things that just happened to interest him. In this way he found his own method of surviving the high expectations he had to himself. At Cornell, he experienced a wild competition about his quantum electrodynamics. Julian Schwinger had been working on the same topic as Feynman and both men competed to present their work. He felt a deep rivalry when Schwinger finally seemed more convincing than he himself.
Feynman spent his sabbatical year in Brazil, after being accepted at Caltech. In Rio de Janeiro he had to educate students to ask more questions - the tradition there at this time was to memorize facts more than understanding them. In Brazil Feynman also discovered music for himself. Up to then he had disliked any kind of music, but he found his love to rhythmical Brazilian drum music. He learned to play the drum very well. Feynman spent a lot of time with women staging ‘this male thing’. He dated Mary Louise Bell, whom he had met in a cafeteria at Cornell. She had followed him all the way to Rio. They married after his return to the USA. This marriage was not a good one - Feynman rather seemed to have looked for an replacement for Arline. They eventually divorced four years later.
After his return to Caltech, Feynman studied superfluidity, trying to calculate the dynamics in these liquids, and quantum field theory. As he had been all his life, he was interested in everything that had to do with science. Several times he struggled to decide what to work on. He was known in his institute for being sceptical about every experimental result, asking questions and trying to find flaws.
Feynman married a third time. His wife was Gweneth Howarth from England who came to the US at first as his housekeeper. They had two children together (one adopted), whom he educated in a similar way as his father had educated him.
Feynman still kept up a mask for himself: He visited strip clubs, but did not drink and was faithful to his wife. He did not behave like everybody thinks a theoretical physicist must behave. He emphasized that he was never exactly the same as anybody else. He tried ways to solve problems always differently than anybody else. This seems to have been his way to find his very own position in life. In this way he constructed his own image as he had done already in school. He identified with physics, this was for him the best thing to do, not only because he could do it well, but because he had fun doing it. Feynman never in his life seemed to want to do something else. Asked if he regretted anything in his life, he only mentioned that he would never see his daughter grow up. This was late in his life, when he was very sick already.
4. Personality variables and signs of giftedness
• Creativity: Feynman had no respect for standards. He knew that he had to use them, because he wanted others to understand him. He created own notations, first for sine and cosine, later space-time diagrams about movement and changes of elementary particles. He used another name (partons) for the newly found quarks. Despite his claim to be not interested in the fine arts, he learned how to drum and how to draw. He even sold some of his pictures. Feynman worked at everything at once, being very productive in this way. He also saw himself as creative and that creativity was essential for a scientist.
• Humor, playfulness: Feynman enjoyed physics the best when he could just play and explore. He was also always ready to play tricks on others and to laugh. Some of his jokes were unintentional (like asking for tea with lemon and cream), but he recognized the comic of this situation immediately. Davis and Rimm describe humor and playfulness as a trait which gifted individuals often show [Davis, 1997].
• Determination, Focus: Feynman would not pass any puzzle without working on it. Once started he would not stop until it was solved. These puzzles could be anything: difficult integrals, combination locks, codes which his wife sent to him to Los Alamos, etc.
• Perfectionism: Talking late, but then a lot, was a first hint on Feynmans perfectionism. Working on a problem until it was totally solved in his opinion was another hint.
• Eagerness to learn: Feynman put a large pressure onto himself, he took graduate classes, while he was still undergraduate. He studied biology, learned to draw, learned how to play the drum, experimented with his own conciousness, just for the fun of it.
This also could be a sign of an intellectual overexcitability (O.E.), which is characterized by ‘strongly questioning, analytical minds accompanied by a longing and capacity to search for knowledge and truth’ [Morrissey, 1996]
• Independence: Feynman had no respect for authority or standards. He used his own signs for sine and cosine (s. 4). Only in communication with a classmate he realized the necessity of standards. He also did not respect the standards in his fraternity - once he got his friends angry, because he selected a waitress as his date (she was not accepted at their level). He also showed independence from his parents, when he married his first wife who is sick with Tuberculosis.
• Honesty, search for truth: Feynman showed honesty in all situations. Asked, if he committed some trick on another person, he admitted it - only nobody believed him. Also, Niels Bohr and his son explicitly asked to discuss physics with him, because he would ask them anything not clear to him and not back off, even though they were so well known. When V. Weisskopf corrected Feynman’s work Feynman did not accept the correction. After Feynman noticed his mistake he apologized to Weisskopf. On his father’s funeral he refused the religious ceremony, because he knew that his father was not believing in God.
• Visual-Spatial: Feynman described his own learning as ‘just seeing it’ while the others did not see the solutions. Usually he was faster in learning than his classmates. This learning style is described by Silverman as visual-spatial [Silverman2002].
• Self esteem / “imposter syndrome”: When Feynman was still young he several times shied back from speaking to celebrities and people of authority. He did not see himself fitting to these persons (e.g. asking: ”should I, little Richard,tell them....”). Feynman had one major crisis, underestimating himself strongly. His boss approached him and had to reassure Feynman, that he was really in the position where he belonged. These feelings of inadequacy Feynman showed can be caused by constant self-evaluation and self-judgment in a context of an emotional O.E. [Silverman2000]. It might be also caused by him being a visual spatial-learner and thus not being able to retrace his ways of finding out things step by step [Silverman, 2002].
• Other signs of O.E.s: At Cornell, Feynman derouted ants who are in his food locker. This he did without harming them. Other people just would have put out poison. This action might have been due to sensitivity, to the wish, not to destroy anything living. After the war, pictures of a possible devastation of New York by an atomic bomb haunted him for some time, which could be a sign of imaginational O.E.
Feynman was a person who would pace while teaching; he is described as never sitting still on is chair. Mlodinow compared him with an ‘electron, shooting around the universe in a cosmic dance from present to future’. This suggests that Feynman had psychomotor O.E. [Silverman, 2000]. Feynman showed a high level of energy throughout his life.
5. Conclusion
Feynman was a highly gifted person who had found his position in life. Coming out of a very supportive environment he was free to explore all directions of science and life. He created an image for himself - the way he wanted to be seen by others. This image included behaving like nobody expected him to behave. But this self-image also lead Feynman into believing that he was not at the right place in his young age. He saw himself as a ”faker”. Despite this he kept showing this image to the outside throughout his life.
The support Feynman received in his childhood helped him to cope with his unique position in school and at the different universities. Feynman never showed the need for any counseling besides of the one occasion, when he felt unproductive and needed to be reassured by his supervisor. Maybe good counseling could have freed him from the urge always to appear as a different person. The author cannot determine if Feynman is a ‘Successful Learner’ or a ‘Autonomous Learner’ [Betts, 1988] but tends more toward an autonomous, for he is highly self motivated.
No part in his autobiography or in interviews shows that he was unhappy with his self-constructed way of life. Interestingly Feynman never mentioned how much impact Arline’s death had on him. Nor are his relation to his two later wives and toward his children mentioned at all. He made sure that people only know facts about him he wanted them to know. Feynman suffered over the death of his first love, Arline with whom he had had the happiest time in his life. When he later married Gweneth he finally found some family happiness with her and their children.
Professionally, Feynman was most successful and was happiest when he could be a child who was playing with new things exploring all possibilities in all directions. Several times he struggled to find a new topic to work on. This was difficult for him, because the choice of topics was huge and because he wanted to avoid too strong competition.
Feynman’s dying words were: ”I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring”.
References
[atarchiv] www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Feynman.shtml. Atomic Archive Biographies.
[vien]www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/1715/a_memorial_to_richard_phil.html. Geocities Feynman Site.
[nobel] www.nobel.se. Official Web Site of the Nobel Foundation.
[Betts, 1988] Betts, G. Neihart, M. 1988. Profiles of the Gifted and Talented. Gifted Child Quarterly, 32(2), 248-253.
[Davis, 1997] Davis, G. A. Rimm, S. B. 1997. Education of the Gifted and Talented. Boston, London, Toronto: Allyn and Bacon.
[Feynman, 1985] Feynman, R. P. 1985. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. London: Vintage.
[Feynman, 1999] Feynman, R. P. 1999. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Perseus Publishing.
[Gleick, 1992] Gleick, J. 1992. Genius, The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Pantheon Books.
[Mehra, 1994] Mehra, J. 1994. The Beat of a Different Drum. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
[Mlodinow, 2003] Mlodinow, L. 2003. Feynman’s Rainbow. New York: Warner Books, Inc.
[Morrissey, 1996] Morrissey, A.-M. 1996. Intellect as Prelude. Advanced Development Journal, 7, 101-116.
[Silverman, 2000] Silverman, L. K. 2000. Counseling the Gifted and Talented. Denver: Love Publishing Company.
[Silverman, 2002] Silverman, L. K. 2002. Upside Down Brilliance. Denver: DeLeon Publishing.
1Rubber o-rings are commonly used for sealing vacuum equipment. The rubber gets hard when the temperatuer drops so that the seal can break
