Tuva or Bust!: Richard Feynman's Last Journey

Unlike what its subtitle suggests, this book is not another story about the physicist Richard Feynman based on his own words, as were prior books for the general public edited by his friend, fellow drummer, and son of a colleague, Ralph Leighton. Rather, it is about the eleven-year campaign to circumvent Soviet bureaucracy, waged by Leighton, Feynman, and Glen Cowan to visit a country in the far south of central Siberia, next to the northwest of Mongolia, known during the 1977-1988 period of this book as Tuva ASSR (now the Tyva Republic of the Russian Federation). The idea for the visit came from a challenge made by Feynman to the thirty-year younger Leighton, then a high-school teacher, about such a country, which Feynman knew from his stamp-collecting days as Tannu Tuva. Somehow both were very surprised in finding that the name of its capital city was Kyzyl. To Leighton it was "crazy" that it didn't have "a legitimate vowel anywhere" -- an ignorant remark by a teacher whose native English language includes the words SYZYGY, flyby, gynny, glycyl, pygmy, nymphly, slyly, shyly, spryly and thymy, not to mention a hundred odd words with only a Y as the single vowel. To Feynman, who agreed with his wife's suggestion that they had to go there, a city whose name was spelled that way had to be interesting. (The city, built between 1914 and 1917 on a place called Vilany by Russians and Khem Beldyr by Tuvans, was originally named Belotsarsk in honor of the tsar, but in 1920 it was renamed Red City [Krasny Gorod in Russian, and Kyzyl in Tuvan] by the bolshevik partisans. The name Kyzyl --which means red in Tuvan and other South Siberian Turkic languages, just as 'kizil' means red in Turkish-- became official in 1922.) The various attempts to implement this whimsical goal, commonly considered examples of impulsive adventurous spirit, are the story Leighton narrates. Here, Feynman quite often simply pops in and out the chapters, playing a secondary role in the activities despite being annoyingly referred to as "the Chief" in a nearly constant manner by Leighton. Some descriptions seem contemporaneous notes, as otherwise makes no sense, for example, the use of quotes in "space shuttle" when speaking about the first flight of Challenger in p. 87, at a time the shuttle program had been in actual operation effectively for two years, but abandoning the quotes forty-five pages later for the same shuttle when mentioning its explosion four years later in p. 132. The book also lacks updated information about some significant milestones of the story, which by 1990 would have been available to Leighton from the Tuvan visitors with whom he spoke. An example is the obelisk claimed to mark the center of Asia (inscribed in Russian, Tuvan and English), which he called their Holy Grail after seeing its photo in 1980 [pp. 35-36]. That obelisk was the third generation making such claim, with the first generation actually located on the gardens of a quay of Kyzyl where the Great and Little Yenisei tributaries join forming the Yenisei river. Built in 1964 and refaced with granite in 1984, that obelisk is now gone, replaced by a new one with Scythian motifs in 2014. A number of people helped in a greater or lesser degree during this quasi stereotypical California-'80s dream adventure. And no-one surpassed Glen Cowan in that help. Fluent in Russian, he was finishing his B.S. in Physics at UCLA in 1981 when he appears in chapter 3, and continues to do so in the rest of the chapters playing an active role. In the narrative, their campaign takes a greater impulse after he joined it while pursuing a Ph.D. at Berkeley (at the time of this writing, he is a professor of Particle Physics at RHUL, and contributed to the ATLAS experiment [Higgs boson] at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN). Cowan provided the indispensable capability to read and write in Russian that the campaign lacked; he contributed with ideas and suggestions; he went with Leighton on trips to Russia and Sweden; and he was one of the members of the group (Feynman, Leighton, and their wives) twice scheduled to travel to Tuva in trips that ended up being cancelled. A much criticizable aspect of this book is the *petty* treatment that Cowan ultimately received from the two people that he had helped so very much. In spite that he could not but mention Cowan frequently in the book, Leighton is rarely as enthusiastic in recognizing the help as would be reasonably expected towards a doctoral student giving pro bono assistance for so long. Except for a minimal in-passing mention, Cowan vanishes in the 14-page epilogue and in its "Reflections 2000" addendum. Leighton apparently considered more relevant to gossip about the French rabbit-fur coat a member of the Russian delegation got for his wife. I consider deplorable that Leighton mentions Cowan [i] only *once* in his website Friends of Tuva (inactive as of 2014), a site described as "the central clearing house of information and Tuva-related merchandise" on the alt.culture.tuva newsgroup of Usenet, and [ii] *not at all* in the new site carrying Feynman's surname. Just as bad is Leighton's 2018 blog piece 'Searching for Tuva: Before the internet and now', where the robust manifold participation of Cowan is pettily minimized as "we recruited a linguistic wizard named Glen Cowan to help." Oh, come on. Quite more appalling in this respect was Feynman himself in his speech at the opening of the USC's exhibition "Nomads of Eurasia" (as edited by Leighton in Appendix B of the book) and in the video interview made for BBC TV Horizon "Feynman : The quest for Tannu Tuva (1988)", in both of which the role of Cowan is never mentioned, despite it can reasonably be argued that without Cowan the exhibition and the subsequent invitation to visit Tuva would have hardly come to fruition, if at all. Besides the ingratitude, the video is inescapable proof that Feynman knew Cowan was involved in the Tuva campaign since it shows, at time 26:12 and 26:28, photos of Cowan, Feynman, and Leighton standing next to Leighton's car with a TOUVA license plate. Given that this is a historical book sensu stricto, and Feynman mostly only pops in and out the story, it is important to contrast its narrative with what Feynman says about the story in the BBC video. That is not easy, as he nearly always uses a broad brush while Leighton often slips into pointillism. But it is clear, however, that Leighton's narration in pp. 85-87 disagrees with Feynman's narration. Feynman ambiguously mentions --as if it were coming from him and Leighton-- the idea to take a photo of him making it look like he is pushing the car (see time 26:03 of the video, and p. 86 of the book), and send it to their friend Ondar in Tuva. Leighton's narrative, however, acknowledges it was Cowan's idea to take photos of them with Leighton's car plate to send to Tuva, and adds that: [i] Cowan advised against sending the false photo; [ii] it was the photo at time 26:28 in the video, where all three are standing next to the car, the one that was sent to Tuva; and [iii] it wasn't sent to Ondar but (as also originally planned by Cowan) the Tuvinskaya Pravda newspaper in Kyzyl, along with a Lunar New Year greetings note written in Russian by Cowan that was published with the picture by the newspaper. That Cowan is a peer in the campaign is clearly established by the greeting note, a part of which can be seen in the photo at time 26:28 saying in Russian: "We, [the] residents of the state of California Ralph Leighton, doctor Richard Feynman and Glen Cowan [...]." Though Leighton's narration sometimes suffers from irrelevant tangential skids, more often than not it is entertaining in that it highlights oddly byzantine Cold War policies and Soviet delusions (as well as hints of vestiges of seemingly McCarthyist pre-1992 fears of looking like a USSR sympathizer, exemplified by unnecessarily defensive explanations of why someone would read Pravda or want to visit a place in Russia). In the book, Leighton and Cowan are the primary architects of the Tuva campaign edifice that consumed so much of their time, while Feynman has a sidekick role in a whimsical pursuit of secondary importance to him given events in his life at the time, which conflicts with the commanding role he paints for himself in the 1988 BBC video. Readers who worship Dick Feynman's anecdotes about himself will likely see The Chief's hand behind the actions of his associates and will enjoy the book. But readers who --despite admiring Feynman's creative scientific work, and (in these days of experimentally unbound theoretical physics) his insistence on rigorous experimental testing of hypotheses-- are not indiscriminate devotees of his anecdotes, particularly those focused on emphasizing his own high opinion of his brilliance, might evaluate the book in a different light. Not recognizing people whose results of significance are useful to ourselves is tantamount to appropriating their work. And this is what occurred in Feynman's video and, in lesser degree, in Leighton's mentioned writings. This brings back memories of complaints heard from some Feynman's (ex-)collaborators, like Murray Gell-Mann, on Feynman taking too much credit for some ideas developed together with others. --

The book was as expected... It is a book.

Very Feynman, and what a dedicated biographer!

This story is principally about the author. Feynman actually died prior to journey which the author describes. Nonetheless, the tale he tells about getting travel permission from foreign governments is interesting.

This is a great book about one of the greatest American scientists of the 20th century. It has alot of information about cold war era issues surrounding the adventures of Mr. Richard and his close friends. I highly recommend it for anybody interested in science, geography, or just looking for a good book to fill some time.

What a story!! Such a long time to keep at a dream! Richard seems like a very unique adventurer--so sorry to learn he never physically made it to Tanna Tuva.I never did understand if he was able to hear the Tuvan throatsingers live. Was it after his death that Ralph Leighton connected with Kongar-ol Ondar?Great adventure and during the Cold War years--I was a teen in the 60's--I remember some of that.

I read many books about Feynman, but this is different. I could understand him a little bit better; how passionate, how curious, how obsessive (in a good way of course!)overall what an interesting man he was.... I adore him all the more. In addition, I learned about Tuva, centers of the continents! throat singing, Esalen and many more things too..... I love the book.

If you have never read anything by Richard Feynman (or don't even know who he was), with help from Ralph Leighton, you have missed something wonderful. I became a "groupie" at age 50?? or so reading about Tuva and all the excitements the two of them had along the way. A very special read is waiting for you.

Ralph Leighton was a friend of Richard Feynman for years. They were already good friends when Ralph recorded conversations with Richard - these led to 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!' and 'What do YOU care what other people think?' (Incidentally, two of the best books I've ever read)In this book, Ralph Leighton tells the story of how he and Richard got hooked on a little country called Tannu Tuva, a Soviet republic nestled neatly between Mongolia and Siberia (for those who know Dick Feynman from other books, the reason is suitably surreal!). This was in the mid-80s, when Americans showing a keen interest in Soviet culture were not encouraged!It's a light read - very little science is mentioned - but it's also quite fascinating in the extra dimension it adds to Feynman's irrepressible character, and in the ingenious ways Ralph and Dick find to circumvent the incredibly bureaucratic travel policies (both of America and Russia!). Ralph comes up with a foolproof plan to get them to Tuva (which IS ingenious), but unfortunately, this only serves to demonstrate how some people who are capable of incredibly complex reasoning processes are totally flummoxed when it comes to things like bureaucracy and politics - which patently don't respond to reasoning!The book is very much 'In the spirit of Feynman', rather than 'About Feynman' - he only crops up in a few places himself - but that pretty much sums it up. It's a fitting final chapter in the life story of Richard Feynman, typified by a desire to discover new things - whether that be a new law governing subatomic particles, a new way of cracking safes, or a new country he'd known nothing about previously!If you're a fan of Feynman (and if you read my other reviews, you'll know I am), then this is a fitting and poignant final tale.

Mr. Leighton deep friendship with R. Feynman results in an intimate style of writing. Their attempt to reach Tuva, land of their dreams, is truly full of passion. Culturally enriching and funny: you will feel like you're about to go to Tuva with mr. Feynman and his amazing friends. Everyone should read this book: you can't help but become a true Friend Of Tuva afterwards!

Now I'll have to write a little spoiler here for the sake of those who, like me, want to read a 1st hand accounts on a journey to Tuva : Feynman never gets there !!! The whole book is about how he and Leighton and some other guys have been struggling to organize their trip to Kyzyl during the days of the Cold War. It is interesting nevertheless, but the title is misleading if you're waiting for descriptions of the vast open spaces, the throat-singers, shamans, wrestlers and herdsmen.The 1st third is even kind of thrilling, but the thrill fades out as one understands what the book really is about.

Sehr nette Einstimmung für meinen ufenthalt in Tuva. Sollte man gelesen haben, bevor man sich auf die Reise in diese immer noch sehr schwer erreichbare Region macht

Amazing book! Amazing guy! It proves that the mind is a place by itself. But what a mind! Read it!