For nearly 50 years, until his death in 1988, aged 70, Richard Feynman's discoveries lay at the heart of the development of modern physics. Always controversial, Feynman (whom a colleague described as being like a combination of Groucho Marx and Alfred Einstein) was a key physicist from his days as part of the atom-bomb-making team at Los Alamos in the early 1940s, until his discovery of the reason for the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster 40 years later. This book combines Feynman's life-story with an account of his thought and its context.
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Review:
If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read.
From the Inside Flap:
hor of the national bestseller Chaos, a wonderful journey into the life and times of one of the most interesting men of science.
Richard Feynman's life encompassed the most important discoveries and changes in science in this century. As a boy he tinkered with radios and as a scientist he looked at all things from an unusual and unique perspective. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize, was an eccentric and hard-driven perfectionist -- a genius indeed. Feynman's career touched on every area of modern science: from the Manhattan Project to quantum mechanics, to the Space Shuttle Commission. Beyond the importance of the physicist, we learn of a man whose emotional demons made him all the more human. In the hands of gifted writer James Gleick, Richard Feynman is a man worth knowing.
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- PublisherLittle Brown
- Publication date1992
- ISBN 10 0316903167
- ISBN 13 9780316903165
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages532
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Rating