Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman

Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman – James Gleick ****

Richard Feynman was both one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century (what the heck, one of the greatest scientists ever!) and was also a complex and not always likeable character.

This fat biography isn’t Gleick’s best book, but it does make a better job of integrating the story of Feyman’s life and scientific work than the competing volume by John and Mary Gribbin which tends to alternate chunks of history and chunks of science. Gleick makes you work harder to understand what’s going on, but on the whole it’s worth the work.

He’s less successful when he gets all philosophical – for instance the rather tedious section where he tries to analyse genius. (He will also get up the nose of plenty of readers by dismissing, for instance, Mozart’s genius. I’m not that fond of Mozart’s music myself, but can’t fail to recognise the genius of someone who could go to the Sistine Chapel and hear Allegri’s amazing Miserere (the chapel choir’s secret weapon at the time) once, then write it down later note perfect. Gleick misses the point that the man’s genius was about more than knocking up a good tune which might later fall out of fashion. But this book isn’t about music, so enough said.

What comes across superbly in this book is something that hasn’t really been shown in any of the other Feynman books we’ve covered – a real feeling for the slow (and sometimes frustrating) build of a theory, rather than being presented whole and complete.

As was the case with Gleick’s biography of Newton, this book really isn’t enough on its own. It’s well worth coupling it with at the very least Feyman’s superb tales (well improved though they may be in) in Surely You Must be Joking Mr Feynman – and if you’re feeling brave also Feynman’s book QED that will really explain one aspect of the science that Gleick can only hint at. It may also be worth reading the Gribbin book to get a rounder picture, but if you are only going to read one popular science biography of Feynman, this is the one.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on

Roger Highfield - Stephen Hawking: genius at work interview

Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are

Splinters of Infinity - Mark Wolverton ****

Many of us who read popular science regularly will be aware of the 'great debate' between American astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis in 1920 over whether the universe was a single galaxy or many. Less familiar is the clash in the 1930s between American Nobel Prize winners Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the nature of cosmic rays. This not a book about the nature of cosmic rays as we now understand them, but rather explores this confrontation between heavyweight scientists. Millikan was the first in the fray, and often wrongly named in the press as discoverer of cosmic rays. He believed that this high energy radiation from above was made up of photons that ionised atoms in the atmosphere. One of the reasons he was determined that they should be photons was that this fitted with his thesis that the universe was in a constant state of creation: these photons, he thought, were produced in the birth of new atoms. This view seems to have been primarily driven by re

Search This Blog