If you love Richard Feynman you've got to watch this video...
... where Angela Collier will ruthlessly dissect the mythology he built around himself. You probably won't agree with everything she says, and you may hate some of it, but it will still be thought-provoking.
I didn't know about what she calls "Feynman bros": lazy male students who read Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman! and try to adopt the flashy womanizing persona he depicts there, instead of working hard on physics. I can easily believe they exist. So if you know a youngster who likes physics, don't give them that book. Instead do what my uncle did: give them The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
I didn't know these books and indeed every book 'by Feynman' was actually written by his Caltech colleague Robert Leighton or his son Ralph Leighton based on audiotapes of lectures or conversations. I still don't know how much of a role Feynman had in crafting these concoctions.
I *did* know that he once flew into a rage and tried to choke his second wife.
I did not know he was good with children, eagerly answering letters from them, etc. It's nice that Collier points out this good side.
I *did* notice, from his anecdotes, that he put a huge amount of work into trying to seem like a manly man rather than a nerd.
I didn't fully notice that almost none of his anecdotes feature the famous physicists he worked with at the Manhattan Project. Collier points out that this leaves him free to make things up.
I think she overlooks how he eagerly *points out* that he used tricks to seem smart. He explains the tricks to show they're not so hard.
I could go on....
(1/2)
@johncarlosbaez lol I knew to avoid that book purely on the basis of the personalities of those who recommended it to me. Her video was a lot of fun to watch and I too was surprised to learn they were all written by someone else. I wish we could convince her to join Fediverse.
@skotchygut - I enjoyed Surely You're Joking a lot after initially being disappointed that it has no physics in it. That would have been around 1980, when I was in college. I was much less sensitized to sexism at the time, so that aspect of the book didn't make me run away gagging. (As Collier points out, even Feynman warned later translators of the book that some of the anecdotes are obnoxiously sexist!) Thankfully, I was never anything like a "Feynman bro". I was too interested in physics to waste time on such nonsense.
Angela Collier is on the Fediverse, she reached out to me once when I posted about one of her videos. I forget her handle.
@johncarlosbaez @skotchygut Her handle is @acollierastro. She actually posted about the same video here:
https://mastodon.social/@acollierastro/113561183127938307
@johncarlosbaez @skotchygut I don't know that I was aware of the exact sort of Feynman bro Collier describes, but I suspect a big reason for the difference may be that they are probably a lot harder to miss for female physics students (as she describes). Though there certainly were plenty of people who engaged in Feynman hero worship, based around his persona at least as much as his physics.
It seems like there's a dynamic where nerdy folks either lean into being different or want to prove they are actually normal and cool. I think the Feynman worship may be related to the latter impulse, which I definitely did see on display. Maybe I never fully connected the dots.
In the realm of actual physics, I always thought of the Feynman worship as related to a disdain for mathematical rigor, so that also annoyed me. I don't really know to what degree that was just my perception, though. (Maybe she talks about this. I'm only slowly making my way through the video in short sittings.)
@johncarlosbaez @skotchygut I recognize that I'd often productive to pursue a line of mathematical reasoning without nailing everything down rigorously, and in science we have empirical evidence to keep us from straying too far, but I think it is worthwhile to recognize that there is value in rigorous work where it's possible.
@internic - Since I spend my life proving theorems I agree with you whole-heartedly. It's silly for physicists to "disdain" mathematical rigor. If they do that, maybe it's because they ran into some proofs or theorems they had trouble understanding, and decided to ease their feeling of inferiority by putting on a mask of disdain. Or maybe it's because they know how quantum field theory would never have been developed if everything always had to be done rigorously, and made the wrong conclusion that rigor is worthless.
Luckily I no longer feel hurt by their attitude. I take nonrigorous math as an opportunity to prove interesting theorems!
@internic @skotchygut - when I was a young mathematical physicist, Feynman's disdain for rigor both annoyed me and spurred me to loosen up and develop more physical intuition. And that was good, because there's no way you can learn much quantum field theory if you want every step to be rigorous! As Heaviside said:
"The series diverges; therefore we may do something useful with it."