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Title: Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life by Leonard Mlodinow ISBN: 0-446-53045-X Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 15 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (19 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A decent book and easy read
Comment: "Feynman's Rainbow" is especially for those looking for a nice, easygoing and fun introduction to physics. This was exactly what I wanted, and it was what I got. Mlodinow makes the themes of physics approachable--partly, I think, by only giving you what you need to know for his fleshing out of the characters and pursuits and worldviews (I enjoyed the Greek/Babylonian contrast) of Feynman, Gell-Mann (sp?), himself, and various other physicists. But it's also about life, as you will have deduced from the title. It's nothing soul-searchingly profound--not quite, at least--but it is sensitive and human. I could sympathize with Mlodinow's trepidation at being asked to work at Caltech; the worries and struggles, mostly with himself, to get where he was going--to find out, even, where he was going.
Feynman comes across as a guy you would have liked to meet, if you could stand having your cliches boxed out of you. I did not like so much the passages where Mlodinow gives us his words verbatim. Sometimes I got the ideas behind them and occasionaly liked them -- but they are written in a conversational style which sometimes seemed awkward. But they were, after all, the man's words, and one could not have expected Mlodinow to doctor them I suppose.
Anyway, I recommend this book, but I doubt I will be re-reading it. Though who knows. It was so short, easy, and concisely satisfying, that maybe a couple of years from now I'll give it another go.
Rating: 5
Summary: Physics for the Beach
Comment: "It's supposed to be fun," said the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, speaking of science. The Nobel laureate and emerging cult hero was watching a rainbow at the time and speaking to Leonard Mlodinow, a troubled junior colleague not sure he belonged at Cal Tech, the best physics grad school in the world.
Feynman's life, from his work on the bomb as a junior scientist, to his Nobel Prize, to his emergence as a cultural figure, was a long quest to have fun, to avoid responsibility, to always be working on things he described as "IN-ter-ES-ting." There are few great thinkers, perhaps none, who combined the search for truth and the search for fun as thoroughly as Feynman did.
My first encounter with the legendary Richard Feynman was in the late '70s as an undergraduate. My physics professor informed me that, "If you want to be a physicist, at some point you need to get and read The Feynman Lectures. I will often take one into the woods with me and just sit and read it for pleasure." I went immediately to the Harvard Coop and bought the three large red volumes that reside, always in a prominent place, on every physicist's bookshelf.
Some years later, I was asked to lead a faculty book club discussion of Feynman's zany book of memoirs, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. That this volume and the revered lectures could be the work of the same human being is nothing short of astonishing. How could the clown of Surely You're Joking have also been the genius who wrote The Feynman Lectures?
Leonard Mlodinow's Feynman's Rainbow is a light-hearted look at Feynman through the eyes of a nervous junior physicist intimidated by working at the same school with some of the 20th century's greatest scientists. I read it while sitting in my gazebo, enjoying the first warm day that Boston has seen in a while. It was a delightful experience.
Feynman's Rainbow is about Feynman, of course, and it contains extended quotations recorded by the author in personal conversations. But it is also about Mlodinow and his uneasy experience as a newly hired whiz kid at Cal Tech. Mlodinow did some great work in grad school on "extra dimensions," which continues to be a hot topic. This work got him an especially juicy appointment as a sort of academic free agent. He recounts with dread his department head telling him what this meant:
"You, Dr. Mlodinow ... are accountable to no one but yourself. You may choose to teach if you wish ... or you may choose not to teach. You may conduct research in physics, or ... biology, or in any other field you wish. If you want, you can use your time to design sailboats! We give you this freedom because we have judged you to be the best of the best, and we have confidence that, given the freedom, you will do great things."
Mlodinow felt the enormous pressure of such expectations and recounts with brutal honesty his experiences as he wandered about Cal Tech looking for a great project, a great mentor, something to justify the confidence that had been placed in him. In the course of these troubled wanderings, he spent time in the offices of some truly interesting characters, the accounts of which offer the reader a marvelous insider's look at how science is done at one of the world's premier institutions.
We meet Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant but insecure Nobel laureate who developed the theory of quarks, yet has a continual need to impress anyone with his knowledge of linguistics and other areas unrelated to physics; John Schwarz, who works alone for many years on string theory; and Stephen Wolfram, who eats rare roast beef a pound at a time. We meet a poor soul known as the Gardener, who was given tenure too soon, was unable to do anything of value in physics and spent all his time gardening. But, mainly, we meet Feynman, again and again, as he and Mlodinow chat about all sorts of interesting things, including dying of cancer, which Mlodinow thought he might do and Feynman actually did.
Mlodinow's personal story is, in its own way, every bit as interesting as Feynman's. The dust jacket mentions that he left Cal Tech to write in Hollywood for such high-powered venues as Star Trek: The Next Generation. Reading between the lines of the book, one might reasonably conclude that he continued to come up dry in his search for a project in physics and eventually left to pursue writing, another of his passions.
Feynman's Rainbow offers priceless insights into the culture of science - the cranky, eccentric, very human people who do it, the quixotic way that it is done and the extraordinary passion that is required to do it well.
And, as an added bonus, it is written so well that you can take it to the beach.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not totally disappointed
Comment: This was an easy read however if you are looking to know Feynman, you may be disappointed. In reading the back cover, I expect more about Feynman and less about the author. But I was not totally disappointed, the book was well written and could be digested in one sitting.
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Title: Isaac Newton by James Gleick ISBN: 0375422331 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number by Mario Livio ISBN: 0767908155 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character by Edward Hutchings, Ralph Leighton, Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0393316041 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and the Meaning of It All by Richard P. Feynman ISBN: 0738207950 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0393320928 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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