Richard Feynman Edit

(1918-1988, United States)  People | Physics  | Genius

( fr ) Feynman was a keen and influential popularizer of physics in both his books and lectures, notably a seminal 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a three-volume set which has become a classic text. Known for his insatiable curiosity, wit, brilliant mind and playful temperament, he is equally famous for his many adventures, detailed in his books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, and in books about him, such as Tuva or Bust!. As well as being an inspirational lecturer, bongo player, notorious practical joker, and decipherer of Maya hieroglyphs, Richard Feynman was regarded as an eccentric and a free spirit. He liked to pursue multiple seemingly independent paths, such as biology, art, percussion, and lock picking. Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was 'half-genius, half-buffoon', but later revised this to 'all-genius, all-buffoon'.