A
CURIOUS CHARACTER
True
or False Quiz About Richard Feynman
The anecdote
below (adapted from the book 'Richard Feynman - A Life In Science' by John
and Mary Gribbin ) is typical of the hundreds (thousands ? ) that are well
known to admirers of the legend that was Richard Feynman.
In the
early 1960's when quasars had just been discovered, the eminent astronomer
Fred Hoyle gave a seminar suggesting that quasars might be supermassive
stars. Feynman (an acknowledged authority on the quantum theory and not
as far as anybody knew in gravitational theory), immediately stood up and
said no*, that such a body would be gravitationally unstable. It turned
out that Feynman had worked out his own theory of supermassive stars, a
fully rigorous treatment with General Relativity, some years before purely,
it seems for his own amusement.It ran to more than a hundred pages of work
but he had simply never bothered to write it up for publication. He had
satisfied the only audience that he really wanted to impress......
himself.
* Hoyle
suffered a similar humiliation at the hands of Stephen Hawking ,(then a
PhD student) , concerning the expansion of the universe.
If you
want to enter the world of Feynman then check out the great website
www.feynman.com
where there
are loads of anecdotes (and more !) about arguably the most towering intellect
of the twentieth century.
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