karn@thumper.bellcore.com (Phil R. Karn) (02/18/88)
Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate and member of the Rogers
Commission that investigated the Challenger accident, passed away
Monday night from cancer.
Some time ago I read Feynman's autobiography ("Surely you're joking, Mr
Feynman!") and developed an instant liking for him. I had always hoped
to meet or hear him speak in person some day.
We need many more people like him. People who are unafraid to think for
themselves and to publicly proclaim the emperor to be without clothing
whenever it becomes necessary. The world is a better place because of
Richard Feynman.
Phil Karnrod@venera.isi.edu (Rodney Doyle Van Meter III) (02/20/88)
I know this isn't really the appropriate newsgroup for this, but I can't resist because the man touched my life so deeply in such a brief period. Sorry it's so long, and yet there's so much more that ought to be said, mostly by people who new him better than I did. Feynman was known affectionately around the Caltech campus as God. His "Lectures on Physics" are referred to as the Bible. There are many bright people on the faculty there, but none have influenced the life of the campus to such a degree. His excellent teaching skills, genuine interest in people, and personality contributed to this. Everyone who knew him liked him. His unorthodox, irreverent attitude toward anything and everything and his unusual manner of seeing things made him unique among all the individuals I have ever met (and I've met other Nobel laureates). I have never met an individual whose intelligence shone as brightly as did Feynman's. He had a way of looking at the world which went beyond everything we are normally taught. Equations were not crutches to him as they are to so many of us. We hide behind them when we're uncertain where we're headed, hoping something will fall out which will enlighten us. To Feynman, they were a natural way of expressing what he already understood. The clarity of his vision went well beyond physics. It extended to whatever topic caught his fancy. In his last few years, he became interested in computer science. What might have come out of that incredible mind in the next few years, we will never know. He had already laid the theoretical groundwork for a quantum mechanical computer. (I'll digress just a bit: A calculation is made by shifting around a single electron in appropriate patterns. The result is read by checking your result bin (sort of an electron trap). If the electron shows up, the answer is yes. If it doesn't, the answer is no. Unfortunately, in the QM world, things are never 100% certain. You improve the certainty of your answer by either increasing the amount of energy you put into the process at the start, or by waiting longer for your answer. So you can run your computer without any power at all, but then you have to wait forever to be certain of your answer. The math is very complex, but that's a simplistic view.) I was a student in a class Feynman was teaching on the potentialities and limitations of computers. He had (no surprise) a different view of logic, von Neumann machines, etc. One reason his view was so different and his understanding so deep (and his teaching so good) was that he insisted on figuring everything out for himself. He would read a researcher's conclusion, then work it out himself to see whether or not he believed it. Then when he taught, he made it sound clear and simple. Yet it never was that easy for us... Unfortunately, in January of that year the Challenger accident occured. He was dragged away to Washington to spend many months telling people what took him only a few days to figure out. He returned for visits, though, and kept us appraised as best he could. He saw many thingswrong with NASA, and wanted to correct them all. Unlike some of the career bureaucrats on the panel with him, he would say anything to anyone. He was the only commission member who actually talked to the people who put the whole system together. Without his input, the commission might still be muddling around, trying to figure out what happened. He was active in his home community and was involved, when he had the time, with student drama productions. His interests were many, including travel, painting, and music. He also took a warmhearted interest in his students. His lectures on physics (for that matter, his lectures on ANYTHING) will always stand out as a model against which poorer teachers will be compared. His personality, on the other hand, invites no comparison. He was a man alone, perhaps in all the world, in many ways, and anyone whose life he touched will never forget him. Richard Feynman, we will miss you. --Rod