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

I got that shock about three or four times, being an idiot and not catching on right
away. When I was invited to Berkeley to give a talk on something in physics, I prepared
something rather technical, expecting to give it to the usual physics department group.
But when I got there, this tremendous lecture hall is full of people! And I know there's not
that many people in Berkeley who know the level at which I prepared my talk. My
problem is, I like to please the people who come to hear me, and I can't do it if everybody
and his brother wants to hear: I don't know my audience then.
After the students understood that I can't just easily go over somewhere and give a
talk to the physics club, I said, "Let's cook up a dull­sounding title and a dull­sounding
professor's name, and then only the kids who are really interested in physics will bother
to come, and those are the ones we want, OK? You don't have to sell anything."
A few posters appeared on the Irvine campus: Professor Henry Warren from the
University of Washington is going to talk about the structure of the proton on May 17th
at 3:00 in Room D102.
Then I came and said, "Professor Warren had some personal difficulties and was
unable to come and speak to you today, so he telephoned me and asked me if I would talk
to you about the subject, since I've been doing some work in the field. So here I am." It
worked great.
But then, somehow or other, the faculty adviser of the club found out about the
trick, and he got very angry at them. He said, "You know, if it were known that Professor
Feynman was coming down here, a lot of people would like to have listened to him."
The students explained, "That's just it!" But the adviser was mad that he hadn't
been allowed in on the joke.
Hearing that the students were in real trouble, I decided to write a letter to the
adviser and explained that it was all my fault, that I wouldn't have given the talk unless
this arrangement had been made; that I had told the students not to tell anyone; I'm very
sorry; please excuse me, blah, blah, blah. . . That's the kind of stuff I have to go through
on account of that damn prize!
Just last year I was invited by the students at the University of Alaska in
Fairbanks to talk, and had a wonderful time, except for the interviews on local television.
I don't need interviews; there's no point to it. I came to talk to the physics students, and
that's it. If everybody in town wants to know that, let the school newspaper tell them. It's
on account of the Nobel Prize that I've got to have an interview ­­ I'm a big shot, right?
A friend of mine who's a rich man ­­ he invented some kind of simple digital
switch ­­ tells me about these people who contribute money to make prizes or give
lectures: "You always look at them carefully to find out what crockery they're trying to
absolve their conscience of."
My friend Matt Sands was once going to write a book to be called Alfred Nobel's
Other Mistake.
For many years I would look, when the time was coming around to give out the
Prize, at who might get it. But after a while I wasn't even aware of when it was the right
"season." I therefore had no idea why someone would be calling me at 3:30 or 4:00 in the
morning. "Professor Feynman?"
"Hey! Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?"
"I thought you'd like to know that you've won the Nobel Prize."
"Yeah, but I'm sleeping! It would have been better if you had called me in the