Gell-Mann was upset by Feynman's account in the book of the weak interaction work, and threatened to sue, resulting in a correction being inserted in later editions. [171] This incident was just the latest provocation in decades of bad feeling between the two scientists. Gell-Mann often expressed frustration at the attention Feynman received; [172] he remarked: "[Feynman] was a great scientist, but he spent a great deal of his effort generating anecdotes about himself." [173] The Feynman Lectures on Physics is perhaps his most accessible work for anyone with an interest in physics, compiled from lectures to Caltech undergraduates in 1961–1964. As news of the lectures' lucidity grew, professional physicists and graduate students began to drop in to listen. Co-authors Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, colleagues of Feynman, edited and illustrated them into book form. The work has endured and is useful to this day. They were edited and supplemented in 2005 with Feynman's Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics by Michael Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton (Robert Leighton's son), with support from Kip Thorne and other physicists. Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality. [62]

Pines, David (1989). "Richard Feynman and Condensed Matter Physics". Physics Today. 42 (2): 61. Bibcode: 1989PhT....42b..61P. doi: 10.1063/1.881194. You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing." The other was his senior thesis, on "Forces in Molecules", [34] based on a topic assigned by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by the paper to have it published. Its main result is known as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem. [35] Brown, Laurie M. and Rigden, John S. (editors) (1993) Most of the Good Stuff: Memories of Richard Feynman Simon & Schuster, New York, ISBN 0-88318-870-8. Commentary by Joan Feynman, John Wheeler, Hans Bethe, Julian Schwinger, Murray Gell-Mann, Daniel Hillis, David Goodstein, Freeman Dyson, and Laurie Brown Wellerstein, Alex (June 6, 2014). "Feynman and the Bomb". Restricted Data . Retrieved June 10, 2023.As a child on Long Island, Feynman is clearly highly intelligent and curious—qualities clearly encouraged and nurtured by his parents. He goes on to excel in his study of Physics at MIT and Princeton. Well, don’t get carried away, chief, because you stagger across the finish line like a spastic newborn giraffe doing The Butterfly and conduct a violent emesis of nutrients from both ends while pissing at right angles the entire time (don't try this). At this moment, a man comes trotting by your (geometrically peculiar) fetal form. His steps are springy and there’s a curious clinking noise that accompanies his gait. He’s got a mischievous grin and intelligent eyes. He doesn’t appear to be sweating and his breathing is relaxed. How curious, you think. At least you beat one person in this podiatric blasphemy. “You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.” You offer your cryptic condolences to the stranger as he sails past you with a good natured laugh.

Oral history interview transcript with Richard Feynman on 4 February 1973, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives – Session V Peat, David (1997). Infinite Potential: the Life and Times of David Bohm. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-40635-7. OCLC 1014736570. When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral calculus. [24] Before entering college, he was experimenting with mathematical topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation. [25] He created special symbols for logarithm, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the derivative, to remove the temptation of canceling out the d {\displaystyle d} 's in d / d x {\displaystyle d/dx} . [26] [27] A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his last year in high school he won the New York University Math Championship. [28] His habit of direct characterization sometimes rattled more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart). [29] Near the end of his life, Feynman attempted to visit the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in the Soviet Union, a dream thwarted by Cold War bureaucratic issues. The letter from the Soviet government authorizing the trip was not received until the day after he died. His daughter Michelle later made the journey. [195] Feynman, Richard P. (1974a). "Structure of the proton". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science (published February 15, 1974). 183 (4125): 601–610. Bibcode: 1974Sci...183..601F. doi: 10.1126/science.183.4125.601. JSTOR 1737688. PMID 17778830. S2CID 9938227.

About the Author(s) of “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

Feynman, Richard (March 5, 1966). "Richard Feynman – Session III" (Interview). Interviewed by Charles Weiner. American Institute of Physics. Archived from the original on August 9, 2016 . Retrieved June 19, 2016. Oral history interview transcript with Richard Feynman on 4 March 1966, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives – Session I Feynman, Richard P. (1998). The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist. Reading, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing. ISBN 0-7382-0166-9. Feynman, Richard P. (1942). Laurie M. Brown (ed.). The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics. PhD Dissertation, Princeton University. World Scientific (with title "Feynman's Thesis: a New Approach to Quantum Theory") (published 2005). ISBN 978-981-256-380-4.