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

"Well, yes. . ."
"Hoompf." And that's all he said to me during the whole dinner! So that wasn't
much encouragement.
The next day I gave my talk and explained all about liquid helium. At the end, I
complained that there was still something I hadn't been able to figure out: that is, whether
the transition between one phase and the other phase of liquid helium was first­order (like
when a solid melts or a liquid boils ­­ the temperature is constant) or second­order (like
you see sometimes in magnetism, in which the temperature keeps changing).
Then Professor Onsager got up and said in a dour voice, "Well, Professor
Feynman is new in our field, and I think he needs to be educated. There's something he
ought to know, and we should tell him."
I thought, "Geesus! What did I do wrong?"
Onsager said, "We should tell Feynman that nobody has ever figured out the order
of any transition correctly from first principles. . . so the fact that his theory does not
allow him to work out the order correctly does not mean that he hasn't understood all the
other aspects of liquid helium satisfactorily." It turned out to be a compliment, but from
the way he started out, I thought I was really going to get it!
It wasn't more than a day later when I was in my room and the telephone rang. It
was Time magazine. The guy on the line said, "We're very interested in your work. Do
you have a copy of it you could send us?"
I had never been in Time and was very excited. I was proud of my work, which
had been received well at the meeting, so I said, "Sure!"
"Fine. Please send it to our Tokyo bureau." The guy gave me the address. I was
feeling great.
I repeated the address, and the guy said, "That's right. Thank you very much, Mr.
Pais."
"Oh, no!" I said, startled. "I'm not Pais; it's Pais you want? Excuse me. I'll tell him
that you want to speak to him when he comes back."
A few hours later Pais came in: "Hey, Pais! Pais!" I said, in an excited voice.
"Time magazine called! They want you to send 'em a copy of the paper you're giving."
"Aw!" he says. "Publicity is a whore!"
I was doubly taken aback.
I've since found out that Pais was right, but in those days, I thought it would be
wonderful to have my name in Time magazine.
That was the first time I was in Japan. I was eager to go back, and said I would go
to any university they wanted me to. So the Japanese arranged a whole series of places to
visit for a few days at a time.
By this time I was married to Mary Lou, and we were entertained wherever we
went. At one place they put on a whole ceremony with dancing, usually performed only
for larger groups of tourists, especially for us. At another place we were met right at the
boat by all the students. At another place, the mayor met us.
One particular place we stayed was a little, modest place in the woods, where the
emperor would stay when he came by. It was a very lovely place, surrounded by woods,
just beautiful, the stream selected with care. It had a certain calmness, a quiet elegance.
That the emperor would go to such a place to stay showed a greater sensitivity to nature, I
think, than what we were used to in the West.