Here's a brilliant speech given some decades ago by Richard Feynman who perceived a change in his lifetime of the type of thinking labelled as science. I think it is very prescient of what we see now -
Cheers, Mike.
Howdy.
I read the speech by Feynman. _He looks like some sort of character from Star Trek in those photos :-)
But, I heard he was a genius and wrote a series of textbooks that are
still highly valued today.
I also read Tullio’s article about Amaldi which was interesting.
There is a book written by a Feynman's friend and colleague, Freeman J.Dyson, "Disturbing the universe" which gives a lively picture of Feynman as a young scientist, besides treating many interesting arguments, all physics related. I enjoyed it very much. The first half of the XXth century was a golden era for physics. Now the excitement seems to have passed to biology and astronomy.
Tullio
But, I heard he was a genius and wrote a series of textbooks that are
still highly valued today.
I'm an unabashed Feynman fan. He gave a series of undergraduate lectures at Caltech in the early 60's that were recorded and later massaged into 'The Feynman Lectures On Physics'. It's a quite impressive three volume set. I have editions printed in the late 70's. A number of thinner paperbacks have smaller selections from those lectures, and others he wrote specially.
Vega.org has streaming video lectures recorded from his visit to New Zealand in the late 70's, which give a better sense of the guy and his work. He was becoming quite ill then however, and died of quite rare malignancies probably triggered by radiation exposure during WW2. He was a junior whiz-kid at the Manhattan Project, and by doing much clever mathematics ensured the bang and not a fizzle. He actually wrote the manual on safe storage and handling of nuclear material. Like many veterans of that effort he had his demons and guilt about what they had created.
You can listen to him giving lectures too ( Audible.com ), but it requires some patience and foreknowledge of the topics for some excerpts. My choicest one is a classic explanation of symmetry in nature that culminates in a warning about greeting left handed aliens ( nerd gag : they might be made of anti-matter ).
Otherwise he won the Nobel in 1965, shared with two other theorists, for contributions to calculational methods in quantum mechanics. He was invited to join the inquiry into the Challenger disaster. There he played a key role in teasing out the problem of the O-rings, and presented it in a way that drove a bulldozer through all the bulldust that NASA officials were saying. He began his investigation by going to the Cape and talking one-on-one with the range safety officer, thus completely bypassing all the NASA hierarchy! He really annoyed most of NASA's management, who had other agenda .....
He was not born into any particular social or scientific pedigree - Far Rockaway near New York - and just shone intellectually. There is a film ( 'Infinity' ) about his caring for his wife Arlene Greenbaum who died from tuberculosis when he was doing the Manhattan Project.
Like many geniuses he fits no pattern other than his own, showed integrity and judgment beyond his years and was an utterly brilliant and honest thinker.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Who knows..I think there actually is hope and we don't even have to think about it as individuals. Our human nature and natural selection will take care of things.:-)
Otherwise he won the Nobel in 1965, shared with two other theorists, for contributions to calculational methods in quantum mechanics.
Cheers, Mike.
That was quantum electrodynamics. Its creation is detailed in Dyson's book, who deserved too a Nobel prize for having demonstrated the equivalence of Feynman's approach to that, more standard. of Julian Schwinger and Sin Itiro Tomonaga. who received the prize with him. But a Nobel prize cannot be given to more than three individuals, The solution was found by Dyson in a bus trip from Albuquerque, where he had accompanied Feynman in a car trip, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was to attend a seminar by Hans A.Bethe, I still remember my Greyhound bus trip from St.Louis to Los Angeles and back passing through Albuquerque. No plane trips, then. It took 60 hours each leg.
Tullio
Here are the Feynman Lectures, courtesy of Bill Gates: Feynman
But you need Silverlight to see them. I only have Moonlight on my Linux box, so
"Sorry, your browser is not compatible". Thanks, Bill.
Tullio
Artic ice is thinning, says
Artic ice is thinning, says NASA:
Artic ice
Tullio
RE: Here's a brilliant
Howdy.
I read the speech by Feynman. _He looks like some sort of character from Star Trek in those photos :-)
But, I heard he was a genius and wrote a series of textbooks that are
still highly valued today.
I also read Tullio’s article about Amaldi which was interesting.
Bill
There is a book written by a
There is a book written by a Feynman's friend and colleague, Freeman J.Dyson, "Disturbing the universe" which gives a lively picture of Feynman as a young scientist, besides treating many interesting arguments, all physics related. I enjoyed it very much. The first half of the XXth century was a golden era for physics. Now the excitement seems to have passed to biology and astronomy.
Tullio
RE: But, I heard he was a
I'm an unabashed Feynman fan. He gave a series of undergraduate lectures at Caltech in the early 60's that were recorded and later massaged into 'The Feynman Lectures On Physics'. It's a quite impressive three volume set. I have editions printed in the late 70's. A number of thinner paperbacks have smaller selections from those lectures, and others he wrote specially.
Vega.org has streaming video lectures recorded from his visit to New Zealand in the late 70's, which give a better sense of the guy and his work. He was becoming quite ill then however, and died of quite rare malignancies probably triggered by radiation exposure during WW2. He was a junior whiz-kid at the Manhattan Project, and by doing much clever mathematics ensured the bang and not a fizzle. He actually wrote the manual on safe storage and handling of nuclear material. Like many veterans of that effort he had his demons and guilt about what they had created.
You can listen to him giving lectures too ( Audible.com ), but it requires some patience and foreknowledge of the topics for some excerpts. My choicest one is a classic explanation of symmetry in nature that culminates in a warning about greeting left handed aliens ( nerd gag : they might be made of anti-matter ).
Otherwise he won the Nobel in 1965, shared with two other theorists, for contributions to calculational methods in quantum mechanics. He was invited to join the inquiry into the Challenger disaster. There he played a key role in teasing out the problem of the O-rings, and presented it in a way that drove a bulldozer through all the bulldust that NASA officials were saying. He began his investigation by going to the Cape and talking one-on-one with the range safety officer, thus completely bypassing all the NASA hierarchy! He really annoyed most of NASA's management, who had other agenda .....
He was not born into any particular social or scientific pedigree - Far Rockaway near New York - and just shone intellectually. There is a film ( 'Infinity' ) about his caring for his wife Arlene Greenbaum who died from tuberculosis when he was doing the Manhattan Project.
Like many geniuses he fits no pattern other than his own, showed integrity and judgment beyond his years and was an utterly brilliant and honest thinker.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Who knows..I think there
Who knows..I think there actually is hope and we don't even have to think about it as individuals. Our human nature and natural selection will take care of things.:-)
The Struggle for Coexistence
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
RE: Otherwise he won the
That was quantum electrodynamics. Its creation is detailed in Dyson's book, who deserved too a Nobel prize for having demonstrated the equivalence of Feynman's approach to that, more standard. of Julian Schwinger and Sin Itiro Tomonaga. who received the prize with him. But a Nobel prize cannot be given to more than three individuals, The solution was found by Dyson in a bus trip from Albuquerque, where he had accompanied Feynman in a car trip, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was to attend a seminar by Hans A.Bethe, I still remember my Greyhound bus trip from St.Louis to Los Angeles and back passing through Albuquerque. No plane trips, then. It took 60 hours each leg.
Tullio
For those who want to learn
For those who want to learn more about the life of Richard Feynman, a must have are the two books:
Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!
and
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Bikeman
Going back to the thread's
Going back to the thread's title here is another bad news:
New Scientist
Tullio
Here are the Feynman
Here are the Feynman Lectures, courtesy of Bill Gates:
Feynman
But you need Silverlight to see them. I only have Moonlight on my Linux box, so
"Sorry, your browser is not compatible". Thanks, Bill.
Tullio
Time to throw some fuel back
Time to throw some fuel back on the fire :-)
Aussie Geologist says global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Global+warming+religion+First+World+urban+elites/1835847/story.html
Aussie Geologist says global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites
Sorry_I can seldom make these links work.
I blame global warming.
Bill