Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

There’s presumably a rule where only smart people are awarded Nobel Prizes in Physics. Richard Feynman was no exception. This memoir is filled with anecdotes from his childhood spent fixing radios, his experiences as a young man doing bomb research at Los Alamos up through his days as a renowned professor at Cal Tech. The central theme was always that this is one smart cookie. It was interesting to pick up on his thought processes. It probably didn’t feature as much pure science as most of his other books, but at least you could appreciate his intuition into the physical world’s biggest puzzles. Rather than emphasizing the technical details of physics, most of his stories were focused on his other interests and his geeky humor.

While some of the stories were entertaining, and the lumens of candle power abounded, it didn’t always work for me. I kept getting the feeling that had the same stories been told in the third person, they would have been better � less egotistical sounding. In every one of his sidelines, he was masterful. It was like he was still driving home the point of how brilliant he was even when he was slumming it. After a while, I got tired of hearing how he became fluent in Portuguese when he taught in Brazil, or impressed the locals to no end with his distinctive style of bongo playing, or could dance like a professional, or got just about any woman he wanted to sleep with him. It was this last one that left the worst taste in my mouth. Some of his tales of attraction and conquest occurred when one of his wives was on her death bed.

He was probably not as bad as I’ve made him sound. Like I said, we can certainly appreciate his intellect. He had a rare ability to explain difficult concepts in laymen’s terms, too. I got a confirmation of this a week after I finished the book when we were interviewing a former student of his from Cal Tech. He mentioned the “Feynman Effect�: a phenomenon whereby someone asking him a question got answered in such a clear and intuitive way that it was only later that they realized they still didn’t know exactly how it all tied to their existing understanding.

So, count me as a fan of his scientific contributions and his ability to communicate, but not of his swagger. If it had all been a bit of a joke (you know, physicist � funny hair � limited social skills � but a would-be Lothario in spite of it), I would have laughed along with him, but I don’t think that was his intention.