Fun Facts About Richard Feynman
- Richard Feynman, a future Nobel laureate in physics, scored only 125 on a high school IQ test. Years later he declined to join Mensa, saying his IQ was too low.[1]
- At Los Alamos, Feynman amused himself by figuring out his colleagues' combination locks. He opened one cabinet by guessing a physicist would use the digits of e, the base of natural logarithms.[1]
- Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely to be a spy, Klaus Fuchs pointed to Feynman's safecracking and trips to Albuquerque. Fuchs himself later confessed to spying for the Soviet Union.[1]
- Feynman claimed to be the only person who watched the Trinity atomic test without dark glasses, reasoning that a truck windshield would screen out the harmful ultraviolet light.[1]
- Investigating the Challenger disaster, Feynman showed at a televised hearing that the shuttle's O-ring material lost its resilience in the cold by dunking a clamped sample in ice water.[1]
- Near the end of his life Feynman tried to visit Tuva in the Soviet Union. The Soviet letter authorizing his trip arrived the day after he died.[1]
- Richard Feynman was alive at the same time as Lady Gaga — their lives overlapped for 2 years (1986–1988).[1][2][3][4]
- Richard Feynman shares a birthday with Salvador Dalí: both were born on May 11.[1][2][5][6]
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He is also known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and the parton model. Feynman developed a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams and is widely used.[1]
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Questions About Richard Feynman
When was Richard Feynman born?
Richard Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, and died on February 15, 1988.
How old was Richard Feynman at death?
Richard Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, and died on February 15, 1988, at age 69.
What was Richard Feynman known for?
Richard Feynman was known for: Quantum electrodynamics, bongo-playing physicist. Richard Phillips Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles". He is also known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and the parton model. Feynman developed a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams and is widely used.
Who was alive at the same time as Richard Feynman?
Richard Feynman's closest contemporary was Hirohito. Their lives overlapped for 70 years.
Sources
- Richard Feynman — Wikipedia. Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0
- Richard Feynman (Q39246) — Wikidata
- Lady Gaga — Wikipedia
- Lady Gaga (Q19848) — Wikidata
- Salvador Dalí — Wikipedia
- Salvador Dalí (Q5577) — Wikidata
- Portrait: RichardFeynman-PaineMansionWoods1984 copyrightTamikoThiel bw.jpg — Wikimedia Commons. Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984, CC BY-SA 3.0