Richard P. Feynman

A man with an extraordinary personality and cleverness.

He was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. A great teacher. He continually surprised his colleagues with his nonconformist approach to life and to his job.

He worked at Los Alamos for the U.S.Government at the construction of the first atomic bomb. Later he found a new way to formulate the Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Electrodynamics through the Path Integrals. He used the most original and personal approach to the understanding of the physical laws and recognised the importance of the visualisation for the understanding of the physical phenomena and for the scientific divulgation. The diagrams created by Feynman that carry his name: the famous Feynman's Diagrams, are the result of successful research of visualisation of the complex events of Quantum Electrodynamics.

In 1965 he won the Nobel Prize for Physics (with Tomonaga and Schwinger) for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics

".... I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I do not know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask 'why are we here?' I do not have to know an answer. I do not feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which it is as far as I can tell. It does not frighten me."

"... on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics. I believe that is probably because we respect the arts more than the sciences."

Feynman's last words:
"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring"