Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

It was so helpful to have a scientist, write this biography. Gleick actually understood, and then translated the scientific concepts of subatomic physics for a lay audience.The section on the concept of “genius” is outstanding. It could stand on its own and contains amazing insights.An important work about an important man who is not overly taken with his own Importance.

It’s tough trying to relate a life that a person lived combined with his contributions to physics. The author has done a good job, but some of the science requires a lot of concentration.I certainly learned a lot about this brilliant, down to earth man. I thank the author.

I picked this up because I'm a big fan of James Gleick, who I consider one of the best science writers around. His book on chaos theory, Chaos: Making a New Science, changed my life back in the 1980s. His special strength is that he glosses the mathematical tough stuff without losing the interesting heart of the topics at hand. I imagined that he was going to provide some deep insights into Richard Feynman's physics - and Gleick doesn't disappoint here - but this isn't the heart of this book. The heart of this book is Feynman the man - and that makes this much more a biography than a science book. It's tough to write a biography of Richard Feynman because Feynman did such a good job of bringing his personality to the public at large, in famous books of anecdotes such as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). Gleick doesn't skip this charming content, but he puts it in a larger context of the details of Richard Feynman's life: his loves, his career, his challenges and triumphs. It's all here. Feynman's prodigal math skills and his oracular brilliance in his field; his titanic rivalries; particularly the long, sometimes collaborative one with the equally impressive Murray Gell-Mann at Cal-Tech. Gleick gives us a balanced account, moving smoothly from Feynman's colorful childhood in Far Rockaway to MIT to Princeton and his collaboration with his advisor and mentor, the great Archibald Wheeler. We get inside his tragic love with his first wife, Arline - which helps us understand his subsequent almost predatory lady killer ways before he finally settles down. We get deep inside his work on the Manhattan Project where his math genius and special skills on pragmatic real world problems were shown in high relief, along with his disregard for authority, sense of humor, and even his pathos. At the end we find him terminally ill (his recurrent cancers perhaps a distant consequence of his work with radioactive materials) but still the one with the penetrating eye for the heart of the problem and an iconoclastic disregard for sacred cows who cut to the heart of the issue of the Challenger disaster.I was expecting a dissection of Quantum Electrodynamics from Gleick. We get a little bit of that - but ultimately we get a living, breathing human being, drumming away with relentless energy and precise measured timing. This is a tour de force work of biography. Months later, I am still haunted by it. Feynman had such a rare set of abilities, yet ultimately he was all flesh and blood and mortal. As the world reels from the huge challenges ahead I find myself aching for someone like Feynman to slice into the biggest problems with such ninja flair. I put this in my top ten books I've read in the last decade.

I had read two of Feynman's memoirs and was intrigued and entertained by this man with a curious mind and a way of thinking that was light years ahead of his contemporaries. I just happened to be researching past Pulitzer price winners and this one was a finalist. Although I have studied some physics I found the science in this book difficult to understand. However, the biographical parts of the book were fascinating especially his youth and experience with the Manhattan Project while married to his sweetheart who was dying from tuberculosis. HIs womanizing was somewhat shocking but Feynman seemed to have no sense of shame in carrying on an affair with the wife of one of his colleagues in addition to other escapades. He settled down in Pasadena, CA at CalTech where he became legendary as a genius and showman.

Well researched and thorough. Describes complex physics in a mostly understandable way where it is required for the story. Seems to convey Feyman’s personality as well as can be expected from a biography.

I really wanted to like this book. I have liked other books by the author, and after reading "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" I consider Richard Feynman a personal hero.But ultimately I don't feel that this book did him justice, at least to my eyes as a non-physicist lay reader.This quote, about Feynman, appears near the end of the book: "They knew they had a remarkable central figure, a scientist who prided himself not on his achievements in science—these remained deep in the background—but on his ability to see through fraud and pretense and to master everyday life."Yes. This is the Feynman I want to read about. Not about his scientific achievements in all their technical detail, but about his method and approach to science and life. Unfortunately, though, the book is bogged down in long sections of technical abstraction. No doubt these sections are interesting to physicists or physics graduate students, but I'm not one of them.Perhaps this is a great book that simply did not meet my unrealistic expectations for it. But for me, I'd recommend "Surely You're Joking" absolutely without reservation, but this book only to technical readers. "Surely You're Joking" is a book about an interesting character where you learn a bit of science along the way. "Genius" is a book about science where you learn about an interesting man along the way.

I have put off reading this book for decades, having read Surely You're Joking... long ago. It is a book to be read when you have time, time to linger, to read and re-read and appreciate the point of view that made him who he was. All I can say is that it doesn't disappoint in any part.A sublime experience.

Loved this book. Richard Feynman was a fascinating and brilliant person, and James Gleick captured it well. I appreciated that he didn't downplay Feynman's more problematic characteristics.If you also enjoyed this book, and you want more, there are lots of YouTube videos and a couple of documentaries about Richard Feynman that I encourage you to look for.

O livro conta a história do físico Richard Feynman e traz um panorama dos desenvolvimentos da física no século passado. Como os demais livros do James Gleick, este livro é bem escrito e interessante, mas é bastante denso em alguns pontos (principalmente nas explicações dos conceitos físicos), o que torna a leitura difícil. Mas no geral o livro é muito bom. E o Richard Feynman é uma pessoa interessantíssima!

This book seems incredibly well researched and although some of the ideas are complex, I think they are well explained. It also offers nice insights to Feynman's mind, and I especially enjoyed the segway where he learnt to crack safes and essentially used logic to more or less be able to access most of the safes at a research centre for the nuclear bomb. There's a number of these where Feynman demonstrates his mischievousness.That said, occasionally the book meanders a little too off topic. There's literally a 30 page segment on what constitutes a genius around page 300 that for me was like wading through treacle. Perhaps that's a worthy thing to explore, but not here, and it's not done especially well, offering nothing really new. A sop to the book title, I thought... I don't think it's needed at all to clumsily demonstrate just what a genius Feynman was when the rest of the book establishes it plenty. There's a time and a place for the thoughts of Dyson or Oppenheimer, or a funny anecdote or a quote, but this just seemed overblown.I considered giving it 4 stars but that felt harsh, and I couldn't do 4.5, so it squeaks in with 5. Seriously good, insightful and informative. You really start to appreciate just what Feynman did, leading a team into the explosive components in the atom bomb before he was 25, redefining quantum physics, improving nuclear storage processes (something the author states people working with it were sure he'd saved their lives) to the rocket programme.As such I would totally recommend. It explains not only Feynman but those central to his life. I have subsequently started reading up on Freeman Dyson, but there's tonnes of other characters to explore.

Very well written and documented. I enjoyed it. While learning about his life and achievements, also learned some physics too.