"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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weight exactly in between the weight of molecules made with heavy, and molecules made with ordinary, nitrogen a result that could occur if everything divided, including the chromosome molecules. But in succeeding generations, when one might expect that the weight of the chromosome molecules would be onefourth, oneeighth, and onesixteenth of the difference between the heavy and ordinary molecules, the weights of the molecules fell into only two groups. One group was the same weight as the first new generation (halfway between the heavier and the lighter molecules), and the other group was lighter the weight of molecules made in ordinary nitrogen. The percentage of heavier molecules was cut in half in each succeeding generation, but not their weights. That was tremendously exciting, and very important it was a fundamental discovery. And I realized, as I finally got to my office, that this is where I've got to be. Where people from all different fields of science would tell me stuff, and it was all exciting. It was exactly what I wanted, really. So when Cornell called a little later, and said they were setting everything up, and it was nearly ready, I said, "I'm sorry, I've changed my mind again." But I decided then never to decide again. Nothing absolutely nothing would ever change my mind again. When you're young, you have all these things to worry about should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up. It's much easier to just plain decide. Never mind nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again I had the solution to that problem. Anyway, I decided it would always be Caltech. One time someone tried to change my mind about Caltech. Fermi had just died a short time before, and the faculty at Chicago were looking for someone to take his place. Two people from Chicago came out and asked to visit me at my home I didn't know what it was about. They began telling me all the good reasons why I ought to go to Chicago: I could do this, I could do that, they had lots of great people there, I had the opportunity to do all kinds of wonderful things. I didn't ask them how much they would pay, and they kept hinting that they would tell me if I asked. Finally, they asked me if I wanted to know the salary. "Oh, no!" I said. "I've already decided to stay at Caltech. My wife Mary Lou is in the other room, and if she hears how much the salary is, we'll get into an argument. Besides, I've decided not to decide any more; I'm staying at Caltech for good." So I didn't let them tell me the salary they were offering. About a month later I was at a meeting, and Leona Marshall came over and said, "It's funny you didn't accept our offer at Chicago. We were so disappointed, and we couldn't understand how you could turn down such a terrific offer." "It was easy," I said, "because I never let them tell me what the offer was." A week later I got a letter from her. I opened it, and the first sentence said, "The salary they were offering was," a tremendous amount of money, three or four times what I was making. Staggering! Her letter continued, "I told you the salary before you could read any further. Maybe now you want to reconsider, because they've told me the position is still open, and we'd very much like to have you." So I wrote them back a letter that said, "After reading the salary, I've decided that
I must refuse. The reason I have to refuse a salary like that is I would be able to do what I've always wanted to do get a wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things. . . With the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would happen to me. I'd worry about her, what she's doing; I'd get into arguments when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and unhappy. I wouldn't be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess! What I've always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I've decided that I can't accept your offer." Would You Solve the Dirac Equation? Part 5 The World of One Physicist Near the end of the year I was in Brazil I received a letter from Professor Wheeler which said that there was going to be an international meeting of theoretical physicists in Japan, and might I like to go? Japan had some famous physicists before the war Professor Yukawa, with a Nobel prize, Tomonaga, and Nishina but this was the first sign of Japan coming back to life after the war, and we all thought we ought to go and help them along. Wheeler enclosed an army phrasebook and wrote that it would be nice if we would all learn a little Japanese. I found a Japanese woman in Brazil to help me with the pronunciation, I practiced lifting little pieces of paper with chopsticks, and I read a lot about Japan. At that time, Japan was very mysterious to me, and I thought it would be interesting to go to such a strange and wonderful country, so I worked very hard. When we got there, we were met at the airport and taken to a hotel in Tokyo designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was an imitation of a European hotel, right down to the little guy dressed in an outfit like the Philip Morris guy. We weren't in Japan; we might as well have been in Europe or America! The guy who showed us to our rooms stalled around, pulling the shades up and down, waiting for a tip. Everything was just like America. Our hosts had everything organized. That first night we were served dinner up at the top of the hotel by a woman dressed Japanese, but the menus were in English. I had gone to a lot of trouble to learn a few phrases in Japanese, so near the end of the meal, I said to the waitress, "Kohio motte kite kudasai." She bowed and walked away. My friend Marshak did a double take: "What? What?" "I talk Japanese," I said, "Oh, you faker! <strong>You're</strong> always kidding around, <strong>Feynman</strong>." "What are you talkin' about?" I said, in a serious tone. "OK," he said. "What did you ask?" "I asked her to bring us coffee." Marshak didn't believe me. "I'll make a bet with you," he said. "If she brings us
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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Preface The stories in this book we
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He Fixes Radios by Thinking! Part 1
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could act like a microphone, and yo
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whole afternoon to find a burnedo
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For logarithms it was a big L exten
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very sharp knife into the table at
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and be more relaxed, and vice versa
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One time I danced with a certain gi
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same waitress all the time. I notic
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"Cut it out, Feynman; this is seri
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could find. Before I tell you what
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observations were made while I was
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I decided there must be an "interpr
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company. His father was the one who
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we could do. Our process was pretty
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out of me, because I didn't like fo
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In the Princeton cyclotron lab they
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When it was time to get up and go o
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and animal, are made of little bric
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some other experiment. I said, "Hel
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We figured if we could get rid of t
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do?" I said I didn't know, and he s
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always something I could find in th
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Atlantic City, where they had vario
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though it was a microscope of forty
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lowing" it occurred. I followed eig
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I asked the Bell Labs if they would
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the fuse won't burn! I decided that
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that he wanted to try to develop. H
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Mexico," the man says, "Oh, so all
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meantime, what instructions go down
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said, "No codes." So I wrote back t
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I looked at it and said, "That look
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people that I wanted were there, an
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different where you go first t
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concentrate on this one. So they st
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it was very difficult. Now, us
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was radioactive. It was plutonium.
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One guy tries to make something to
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Everybody was amazed. It was comple
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it appeared, depends on the same li
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Hoffman is just the kind of guy to
Page 87 and 88: mathematical constant?" "Oh, no!" d
Page 89 and 90: of little cubbyholes that contained
Page 91 and 92: himself! So I turn around, and sure
Page 93 and 94: "No. Do you?" "Well, I'm keeping an
Page 95 and 96: partly in the strength of our futur
Page 97 and 98: have any room either. I say to the
Page 99 and 100: answered the questions. Everything
Page 101 and 102: around faster than the wobbling. I
Page 103 and 104: ar, with all its "temptations," and
Page 105 and 106: level. . . "Excuse me, sir," I say,
Page 107 and 108: I liked to imitate being drunk, so
Page 109 and 110: you been?" At this moment the guy t
Page 111 and 112: "What?" "That's right," he said con
Page 113 and 114: After that, I tried to do those thi
Page 115 and 116: He was completely washed out, and l
Page 117 and 118: Monday, at the latest. I got all up
Page 119 and 120: The people from the airlines were s
Page 121 and 122: The boss said, "Where're you from?"
Page 123 and 124: eaches, where most people felt thei
Page 125 and 126: super: He answered everything nifty
Page 127 and 128: y first learning to pronounce the l
Page 129 and 130: Certainly, Mr. Big! I used to cross
Page 131 and 132: We were eating breakfast in the din
Page 133 and 134: "That must have been it," I said. I
Page 135 and 136: some kind of big pain, and it start
Page 137: the two piles of hay, with the extr
Page 141 and 142: hotel. I pushed open the doors and
Page 143 and 144: "Well, yes. . ." "Hoompf." And that
Page 145 and 146: something like, "May I observe your
Page 147 and 148: in fact, a prediction on top of wha
Page 149 and 150: "The one from SoandSo's book."
Page 151 and 152: government, or else I can't talk in
Page 153 and 154: et Jerry that he wouldn't be able t
Page 155 and 156: at the paper. Don't take your eyes
Page 157 and 158: She told me this story: She and her
Page 159 and 160: were these fluorescent colors on bl
Page 161 and 162: they came back and bought it. So th
Page 163 and 164: with the artists from time to time
Page 165 and 166: understand," and everybody else wou
Page 167 and 168: way to understand ethical problems
Page 169 and 170: families all the time, so that if a
Page 171 and 172: that they called "new math," and si
Page 173 and 174: awful! All it was was a game to get
Page 175 and 176: then there was something else. And
Page 177 and 178: one. Then the question came up, "Wi
Page 179 and 180: I got that shock about three or fou
Page 181 and 182: had been brought up by my father ag
Page 183 and 184: She turned to me and said, "Oh! You
Page 185 and 186: astronomy. *When I was a young prof
Page 187 and 188: After the colloquium at UCLA Profes
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So the fella who'd been talking to
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andleader said, "Geez! Who was that
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who had come out at the beginning o
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"This is the place," the receptioni
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my way down again. At first it took
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external to the internal psychologi
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people with commonsense ideas are i
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think to laymen. For example, I was
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to have such a policy in teaching
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