2. Michelle Feynman — The Quotable Feynman & His Van
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2015
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman (1918–88) was a towering scientific genius who could make himself understood by anyone and who became as famous for the wit and wisdom of his popular lectures and writings as for his fundamental contributions to science. The Quotable Feynman is a treasure-trove of this revered and beloved scientist's most profound, provocative, humorous, and memorable quotations on a wide range of subjects edited by his daughter, Michelle Feynman, who will discuss her father's life and legacy. In addition, physicist Seamus Blackey will bring Feynman's van, newly restored and recently featured on The Big Bang Theory, so you can get your photograph taken with the famous vehicle featuring Feynman diagrams. Order The Quotable Feynman from Amazon.
Our special guest at this salon will be: Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, physicist and author of Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life and The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations |
| 0:10.4 | with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time. |
| 0:17.0 | You know, there was a story where somebody was working on something quite hard you know and and he told my father a little bit about it and a physics problem and he went home and you know kind of cranked the night away, came back and said, |
| 0:36.0 | okay, so here's what I'm thinking, you know, and like caught up to where he was at that moment. |
| 0:41.1 | And the guy said, it's taking me six months you know like you did that and |
| 0:45.8 | stop right here in one night you know so humbling or maybe frustrating |
| 0:52.2 | perhaps Leonard how did you humbling or maybe frustrating. Perhaps. |
| 0:54.0 | Leonard, how did you meet, Feinman? |
| 0:56.0 | Well, how I met was when I got a job at Caltech and I had recently graduated, got my PhD, |
| 1:02.0 | and that was my first job in physics and I guess as is still |
| 1:06.4 | true today, Feynman was of course the idol of all physics students. |
| 1:11.0 | And here I find out that my office is going to be two doors down from him. |
| 1:14.0 | Oh, really? What year was his? |
| 1:16.0 | Oh, it was like last year. |
| 1:18.0 | Yeah, I guess you were. |
| 1:20.0 | Can't tell? |
| 1:21.0 | It was like 1981. |
| 1:25.0 | And so how I first met him was I think I just got the courage to go knock on his door and it was really surprising to me that it was that easy, you know, to go in to see someone like fine |
| 1:39.7 | I mean at Berkeley I had interactive Nobel Prize winners, |
| 1:43.4 | but he was thought of by us as on a higher level, |
| 1:48.4 | as I'm sure his progeny is also. |
| 1:50.0 | And so, you know, it was a little, I was very nervous and, but it was just, you |
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