Notes on Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

I recently listened to the audio version of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman. It was a wonderfully personal, detailed, and amusing account of many of Feynman's famous stories. The book reminded me of several people I know in my own life that bear remarkable resemblances to him; it's curious how certain scientists and nerds can be similar.

The book covered some of the stories around the major parts of Feynman's life, starting with his childhood, through his time in working on the atomic bomb, through his winning of the Nobel prize, and on to include his many adventures and misadventures with music, women, Brazil, and lock-picking. His stories were all written in a direct, matter-of-fact tone, the content of which was quite funny. Through the book, I ended up learning a decent amount of history, physics, philosophy, psychology, and about women, strippers, lock-picking, and Brazil. Not bad for one book....

Introduction

• Stories about his life and work
  
• Mischief big part of his personality
  
• Hated pretention
  
• Urge to solve puzzles from young age
• Born in 1918
• Went to MIT
• Then to Princeton
• Worked on Manhattan Project
• Married several times
  
• Finally went to Caltech
• Built science lab for radios when was 11
• Lots of mischief at home
  
• Built burglar alarm to catch parents
  
• Repaired radios by thinking
  
• Has persistence
  
• Can't ever leave a puzzle unsolved
  
• "Puzzle drive"
  
• Learned all puzzles in existence
  
• Joined algebra team in high school
  
• Has to see answer in a flash
  
• Invented problems and theorems
  
• Made up own trigonometry before learned in school (also Taylor series)
  
• Made up own symbols for math
  
• Fixed typewriters for fun
  
• Had odd jobs during Depression
  
• Several inventions in kitchen when worked as cook (but got in trouble for them as they didn't work as planned)
• Innovation is a difficult thing in the real world
  

Part 1: MIT

• Joined Jewish fraternity
  
• Not religious at all
  
• Didn't know how to be social
  
• Hazing rituals
  
• Study-ers and socializers taught each others
  
• Never good at sports
  
• Doesn't judge people by look (enjoyed dancing with deaf girl)
  
• People's knowledge can be very fragile
  
• Some people "learn," but can't apply what they know
  
• Learn out of rote memorization (Brazilian physics education)
  
• Liked to play jokes on waitresses
  
• He's usually very honest, even when joking
  
• Loved to listen to Italian radio for melodic language
  
• Had to go through humanities classes
  
• Wrote on topics of interest to him in humanities papers
  
• Astronomy and philosophy
  
• Analyzed own dreams and perceptions
  
• Studied self while falling asleep
  
• Could somewhat control dreams
  
• Dreamt in color
  
• Did chemistry magic shows
  

Part 2: The Princeton Years

• Very formal social conventions and dress
  
• Cyclotron experiments
  
• Got hypnotized, and it worked
  
• Sense of knowing he can not go along with hypnosis but going along anyways; isn't that hypnosis?
  
• Sat around various tables at dining hall to learn from philosophy and biology groups
  
• Learned biology and phages
  
• Gave talk to Einstein
  
• Wanted to be practical, not cultured
  
• Understands theorems by making up examples in his head
  
• Interest in mind readers
  
• Experiments with ants
  
• Carried magnifying glass around
  

Part 3: Feynman, the Bomb, and the Military

• Wanted to make contribution to country
  
• Loved to tour Bell Labs
  
• Got job but left to join military
  
• Worked on mechanical computer using gears
  
• Worked on radar
  
• Smelled bottles and books and realized that human smell can be about as good as a bloodhound's
• Los Alamos from below
• Manhattan project
  
• Wasn't famous
  
• Fright over Hitler building bomb before us
  
• Started to work immediately on bomb calculations (separating uranium isotopes)
  
• He was theoretical; others experimental
  
• Had different box of tools than others from the textbooks he read as a kid; differentiating under the integral
  
• Started building Los Alamos laboratories
  
• Wife had TB
  
• Had to go to Albequerque
  
• Beautiful scenery
  
• Studied and debated with others
  
• Letters got censored
  
• Liked to expose security flaws in system around him
  
• Repaired mechanical hand calculators
  
• Used IBM card machines
  
• Wife died from TB
  
• Was prepared for the death
  
• Cared more for work and solving problems and was able to cope
  
• Von Neumann: don't have to be responsible for world around you; went on walks with him
  
• Saw Bohr
  
• Worried more about physics ideas, not about pleasing others
  
• Saw bomb explosion test
  
• Had made plutonium
  
• Went to Cornell to teach
  
• Learned to pick locks
  
• Bad paper document security at Los Alamos
  
• Kept breaking locks to show that they were no good
  
• Took his new combo lock apart to understand how to break it
  
• Learned to brute force combo locks in 4-8 hours
  
• Had to amuse himself somehow
  
• Picked last 2 numbers from people's safes all the time when visited people's offices
  
• Must close safe doors immediately after open and take something out (don't leave open)
  
• Broke all 9 safes containing all secrets of atomic bomb (for fun)
  
• All safes had one combo: math constant e
  
• Only way to solve a safe is with patience
  
• Brute force reduction methods
  
• Opened 2 safes cold with psychological methods (meaningful dates, etc.)
  
• Befriended locksmith slowly
  
• People don't bother to change from default safe combo
  
• Got medical exam from psychiatry before working at GE; failed psychiatry screening
  
• Liked to play tricks on people

Part 4: From Cornell to Caltech

• Likes teaching in order to feel like he's contributing
  
• Likes thinking of answers to student questions, improving how to teach
  
• Taught at Cornell mathematical methods for physics
  
• Tried to be more dignified
  
• Went to social dances
  
• Put a lot of thought into lectures
  
• Felt burnt out, no ideas
  
• You have no responsibility to live up to what others expect
  
• Liked playing with physics, inventing things for own entertainment
  
• Play with physics whenever want to
  
• Worked out equations of dishes wobbling
  
• Effortless playing with things that were interesting
  
• Diagrams that he won Nobel Prize came from this playing
  
• Learned to entertain himself in Chicago bar
  
• Learned to stay in bars without getting drunk
  
• Accidentally got patents for obvious ideas on nuclear ideas (assigned to government for $1)
  
• Used his $1 to buy cookies
  
• Likes to imitate being drunk even when not
  
• Realized useless to buy girl drinks; don't get anything from it
  
• Got lessons from MC
  
• Under no circumstances be a gentleman; don't buy anything until ask if girl will sleep with you
  
• Must disrespect
  
• Never buy drink
  
• Must ask explicitly
  
• Did mental math by tricks but got lucky
  
• Memorized logs and e tables
  
• Abacus allows you to not know basic arithmetic
  
• He knew lots of approximation methods
  
• Decided to take immersion class to learn Spanish and go to South America
  
• Taught physics classes in Rio and went to beach in afternoon
  
• Learned new customs
  
• Got married again and divorced because of lots of arguments
  
• Learned samba drum, joined samba school
  
• Succeeded in learning frigideira instrument well
  
• In Brazil, students memorized rather than actually learned concepts
  
• Visited Las Vegas
  
• Loved beautiful girls
  
• Spent a lot of time talking to showgirls
  
• Visited Sunset Strip
  
• Hated snow in Ithaca
  
• Loved Caltech and the weather
  

Part 5: The World of One Physicist

• Would you solve the dirac equation?
  
• Lots of physicists in Japan came for conference
  
• Wanted to stay at Japanese style hotel
  
• Slept on floor, no chairs
  
• Japanese bath
  
• Analyzed physics by constantly applying examples in his head
  
• Different words in Japanese for same concept, varying by politeness
  
• Felt like always was behind in physics and struggled in understanding new concepts
  
• Studied beta decay, parity law violations
  
• Didn't want to give public city college talk if had to give more than 13 signatures
  
• Learned to draw and studied art
  
• Feeling of awe in science and glories of universe
  
• Drew nudes
  
• Every woman worried about her looks no matter how beautiful
  
• Sold some of his drawings
  
• Did physics and drawings at strip clubs
  
• Sold art and commissioned portraits
  
• Is electricity fire? (Jewish Sabbath rules debate)
  
• Didn't like interdisciplinary conferences
  
• Joked about Sabbath goys with rabbis
  
• Judging books by their covers
  
• Joined curriculum commission to rate math books
  
• He was the only one who actually read all the books
  
• Books were written horribly with tons of mistakes
  
• Averaging length of emperor's nose when no one has seen him (bad crowdsourcing)
  
• Publishers bribed book reviews all the time
  
• Didn't want publicity and attention from getting Nobel Prize
  
• Didn't want reception to celebrate
  
• Brought up to not like royalty
  
• Thought Prize was pain in neck; wanted to be taken straightforward
  
• Learned about Mayan math in Mexican honeymoon
  
• Cracked Dresden Codex himself for fun
  
• Liked beating drums for fun
  
• Played music for SF ballet
  
• Couldn't read music though
  
• Studied altered mental states
  
• Loved to think and didn't want to ruin the machine (brain)
  
• Went into sense deprivation tank to experience hallucinations
  
• Learned that memories stored according to location of where experienced memory
  
• "Cargo cult science" = bad science
  
• From Caltech commencement address
  
• Esalen baths to study mysticism
  
• Must have scientific honesty
  
• Must disclose all facts even those that invalidate your cause
  
• Complete opposite of advertising
  
• Must not fool yourself
  
• Must publish results and advice no matter what result was