Feynman, Richard (1918–1988)

Feynman the Physicist

After Feynman completed his PhD, he obtained a faculty position at the University of Wisconsin– Madison, but he was persuaded by his mentor Robert Wilson to join the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. program to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He was assigned to Hans Bethe's theoretical physics division, where he oversaw the human computational group and contributed to the development of mathematical equations, most notably the Bethe-Feynman equation used to calculate the explosive yield of nuclear fission weapons. Feynman observed the Trinity atomic bomb test with enthusiasm, but after seeing the devastation caused by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, he became depressed over the possibility of the complete destruction of civilization.

Due to his contacts from working on the Manhattan Project, when the war ended, Feynman had offers to join several prestigious research universities. He chose to follow Hans Bethe to Cornell University and taught theoretical physics while working on a variety of physics problems, most notably those of spinning objects. While his research during this period was somewhat eclectic, his equations for predicting speeds across rotating objects would have a direct bearing on his Nobel Prize–winning work in quantum electrodynamics.

By 1951, the cold Ithaca, New York, winters had convinced Feynman that a move to a milder climate was in order, and he accepted a position with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. His most notable research there included additional work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics (for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965), a functional path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and a model of the weak decay of neutrons. He also played an important part in developing the first massively parallel computer system and promoting nanotechnology research.

The final years of Feynman's life were marked by his involvement as part of the Rogers Commission investigating the Challenger disaster of 1986. He was dismayed to learn the National Aeronautics and Space Administration management team often misunderstood the safety data presented by contractor engineers working on the shuttle program and was shocked to find that they would take these misunderstandings as evidence of the mission's safety. Feynman found many other egregious misuses of safety information, leading him to recalculate the mission managers' often-cited shuttle safety factor of 1 in 100,000 to a much more sobering (and accurate) 1 in 100 to 200.

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