Richard Feynman by John Gribbin

Author:John Gribbin [John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785783722
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2017-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

So he never did move back to Cornell, or on to anywhere else, in spite of offers. Nineteen fifty-four, halfway through the disastrous marriage to Mary Lou, the year in which Feynman received the prestigious Albert Einstein Award (not just prestigious – it brought with it $15,000 and a gold medal), was the year he finally made his own commitment to Caltech, and started to settle down, as far as Feynman could ever settle down.

It was easier to settle down at one permanent home base, of course, because he was in such demand to attend international conferences and to give guest lectures at other universities, not just in the United States but around the world. In September 1953, he visited Japan for the first time, for a meeting which took place partly in Tokyo and partly in Kyoto; Mary Lou stayed behind on this occasion. Typically, Feynman entered enthusiastically into the spirit of the adventure, learning some Japanese, practising eating with chopsticks before he left California, and insisting on staying in traditional Japanese-style hotels where he could absorb the atmosphere. He went back to Japan (this time with Mary Lou) in the summer of 1955, on a lecture tour of Japanese universities; in between, in March 1954, he visited the University of Chicago and gave a series of lectures as a guest professor. And he visited Europe on several occasions, as well as making trips back to Brazil – all officially working visits, quite separate from his real holidays.

There were, though, irritations associated with his growing fame. One of his most annoying encounters, to Feynman himself, was with the US National Academy of Sciences, which elected him a member in April 1954. He had never heard of the organization, which made no significant contribution to science, published what he discovered to be, when he looked at it, a distinctly second-rate journal, and seemed to be nothing more than an honorary society, which existed chiefly for the incestuous purpose of deciding who else was grand enough to be allowed to join its ranks. He was persuaded that by refusing to accept membership he would embarrass many of his friends, and that it was better to accept quietly. But when he went along to a meeting of the society, giving them a fair chance, it was deeply depressing. The main topic of conversation was who else should be elected to this honorary society, while the experiments that were reported were, in many cases, totally unscientific. Feynman was particularly unimpressed by an experiment in which rats had been observed drowning, with their efforts to survive being timed and monitored – a cruel and needless experiment with no scientific value.15 He eventually resigned from the NAS, but without making a great deal of fuss.

After the divorce from Mary Lou in 1956, he established a nice routine. He had his research to do at Caltech, ample opportunity to visit research centres around the world, and he could return to his old haunts in Las Vegas for relaxation.

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