RICHARD PHILLIPS FEYNMAN

welcome feynman                                     

      feynman  1    2   

Celebrating more than a century of science on U.S. postage stamps 2005

usps.com

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts

Who was Richard Feynman? As a child, not so impressive--he didn't speak a word until he was three. But he mastered differential calculus when he was 15, earned a bachelor's degree from MIT and then a doctorate from Princeton.....
So Feynman, whose hobbies included bongo playing and safe-cracking, and who liked adventure and the untrodden path, determined that he and Leighton would do it on their own. ...
Timothy Lutts - President, Chief Investment Strategist and Editor of Cabot Stock of the Month - cabot.net - 2009

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race

It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems

But there are tens of thousands of years in the future

Our responsibility is to do what we can -  learn what we can

improve the solutions  and pass them on   -  rf

L'integrale feynmaniana

comprende circa 50 volumi di opere autografe o trascritte da amanuensi fedeli, di biografie, agiografie, esegesi e narrazioni infedeli; decine di audiocassette con registrazioni di lezioni, conferenze e qualche a solo ai bonghi; album di immagini del protagonista, dal ragazzino in calzoncini corti, al sessantenne in forma e calzoncini dell'identica foggia mentre parla di nanoscienze. Fino a l'ultima, del 1986, durante una conferenza stampa a Washington. Quasi settantenne, ha davanti a sé ha un bicchiere di ghiaccioli con dentro un pezzo di gomma, sta per mostrare ai giornalisti come mai la navetta spaziale Challenger si sia disintegrata pochi secondi dopo il lancio, il 28 gennaio.
Comprende anche un'opera teatrale, "Un giorno nella vita di Richard Richard Feynman", di Peter Parnell e Infinity, il film di e con Matthew Broderick, una love story sullo sfondo del progetto Manhattan e della bomba atomica, tratta da due libri di memorie, Sta scherzando, Mr Feynman! e Che cosa t'importa di quel dice la gente, ripubblicati due mesi fa da Zanichelli.
www.ilsole24ore.com

THE PLEASURE OF FINDING THINGS OUT - INTERVISTA - VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srSbAazoOr8

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8777381378502286852#

“Yes! Physics has given up. We do not know how to

 predict what would happen in a given circumstance,

and we believe now that […] the only thing that

can be predicted is the probability of different events.”
positanonews.it

Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for Theoretical and Experimental Molecular Nanotechnology
This prize is given in honor of Richard P. Feynman who, in 1959, gave a visionary talk at Caltech in which he said "The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if our ability to see what we are doing, and to do things on an atomic level, is ultimately developed - a development which I think cannot be avoided."  2004
www.foresight.org/FI/2004Feynman.html   

Le nanotecnologie hanno una data di nascita, sono nate prima di tutto nella mente, nelle idee di un noto scienziato, Richard Feynman, che nel 1959 tenne una leggendaria conferenza dal titolo “C’è un sacco di spazio laggiù” in cui introdusse l'ipotesi che dal mondo dell'ultra-piccolo sarebbero potuti arrivare grandi cambiamenti a livello macroscopico. Questa idea, che sembrava molto strana e utopistica, probabilmente diventerà realtà nei prossimi anni e decenni del secolo che stiamo vivendo.
torinoscienza.it

un futuro nanotech
Nanotecnologie, un neologismo come lo è stato Internet agli albori, poi il termine è diventato di uso comune e la Rete è entrata nella vita quotidiana. Accadrà lo stesso per il nanotech?
Si tratta di una nuova scienza di base, che non è confinata in una nicchia di mercato come le biotecnologie, ma è trasversale con ricadute su tutte le industrie. Il paradigma introdotto nel 1959 dal padre-fondatore delle nanotecnologie, Richard Feynman, si basa su una nuova concezione della fisica e della chimica per cui è possibile manipolare le proprietà dei materiali a livello molecolare

(nanotecnologia deriva da nanometro, ossia un milionesimo di metro, ndr).
morningstar.it  

I nanocosi ora trasportano la materia
Un team di studiosi scozzesi è riuscito a creare il primo nanotrasportatore della storia: per il momento, questa microscopica molecola artificiale è in grado di spostare solo liquidi. Tecnologie come questa potrebbero essere le prime luci di una nuova alba: "Abbiamo dimostrato che le nanotecnologie possono essere utilizzate anche nella vita di tutti i giorni", afferma Leigh in una intervista radiofonica rilasciata alla BBC: "Le nanotecnologie avranno sull'umanità lo stesso impatto dell'elettricità, della macchina a vapore o di Internet".
tecnologia intuita nel 1959 dal premio Nobel per la fisica Richard Feynman, la nanotecnologia apre nuovi orizzonti per la manipolazione della materia.
http://punto-informatico.it/ 

feynman - il genio in cattedra  -  di piergiorgio oddifreddi
Quanto a Feynman, era più probabile che il filo del discorso lo perdesse l'uditorio: un famoso fisico confessò un giorno di essere uscito sfinito da una conversazione con lui, a causa della sua velocità di pensiero.
uniba.it

INTERVISTA  -  PIERGIORGIO ODIFREDDI 

Al giornalista Drosnin, ateo e abituato alla ricerca dei fatti, invece la matematica fa nascere il serio sospetto che esista un Dio…
Se non si è professionisti della matematica, è facile fraintendere fatti che magari dal punto di vista matematico sono banali, o per lo meno spiegabili. Faccio un esempio, che non è legato a questo libro, ma che è molto significativo. La moglie del fisico Feynman morì giovane di cancro. Proprio in un libro dove parla di religione, Feynman racconta di essere andato in ospedale e di avere chiesto a che ora fosse morta. E di avere poi notato che l’orologio della stanza si era fermato proprio a quell’ora. Un’altra mente avrebbe dedotto da questo un intervento soprannaturale, oppure una coincidenza significativa, nel senso di Jung. Lui che era un fisico però ha cercato di vederci chiaro ed è venuto a sapere dall’infermiera che quando la moglie è morta, lei non riusciva a vedere bene l’ora e così aveva staccato l’orologio dal muro, e l’aveva poi rimesso a posto. Questo movimento lo aveva evidentemente bloccato, visto che era un vecchio orologio. Ecco come un fatto banale inserito in una situazione emotivamente tesa poteva essere interpretato in maniera mitologico-mistica. Ma Feynman aveva gli strumenti per non farlo.
Tiziana Lanza            http://www.nwo.it  

....La cultura scientifica, sostiene Feynman, altro non è che l'applicazione sistematica del dubbio. Procede per prove ed errori, con un approccio ipotetico-deduttivo. Non riconosce alcuna autorità a priori, i suoi risultati sono sempre provvisori. Le sue certezze, fino prova contraria. Insomma, la cultura scientifica, anche se portata avanti da scienziati dotati di tutte le umane debolezze, è la palestra del pensiero libero. ......

.....La seconda lezione che ci regala Feynman è di tipo etico. .......Quando si tratta di applicare una nuova conoscenza, anche se si tratta di conoscenza di tipo scientifico, l'onere della scelta tocca sempre e unicamente alla società nel suo complesso. Ciò non toglie, sostiene, Feynman che la società, quando deve scegliere, farebbe bene a dotarsi di un metodo scientifico: dubbio sistematico e ragionamento ipotetico-deduttivo.....

.......terza lezione che ci offre Feynman è di umiltà Intellettuale. Viviamo in un'epoca in cui varie scienze si trovano all'apice dello sviluppo e, comunque, in un'epoca che vanta più scienziati di ogni altra epoca precedente. Di più. Viviamo in un mondo che, dando un approccio dì tipo scientifico alla propria capacità di innovazione tecnica, ha trasformato il mondo più di ogni altro secolo precedente. Tuttavia non possiamo certo definire la nostra come un'epoca scientifica. La grande maggioranza della popolazione ha scarse conoscenze di tipo tecnico-scientifico e, soprattutto, ha una scarsa attitudine ad applicare il metodo del dubbio sistematico e del ragionamento ipotetico-deduttivo.
In questa situazione è illusorio e persino ingiusto tentare di imporre alla società una cultura priva di pregiudizi ideologici. Gli scienziati possono svolgere, al più, un'opera maieutica. Ma in definitiva occorre che la società scopra da sé i valori scientifici e del dubbio.

Per prova ed errore.....

faculty.rmwc.edu uniba.it

RF was one of the most brilliant physicists of the past century; his work with quantum mechanics is practically unparalleled and resulted in his receiving the Nobel Price in Physics in 1965. Two years before that even, he gave a series of three lectures at The University of Washington in Seattle. The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist contains those three lectures, and anyone with even a passing interest in Feynman, or science, should grab a copy of it.…..
The book is divided into sections, one for each lecture. The first is entitled The Uncertainty of Science and deals largely with the acknowledgement that few things in scientific study are set in stone, as it were, and that such an acknowledgement is freeing, not frightening. Uncertainty, he insists throughout his talks, allows for creativity and improvisation; it creates the necessity for invention. New ideas can only come from uncertainty, and living with that lack of “absolute” knowledge is in fact a comfortable and beautiful thing.
The second lecture, The Uncertainty of Values, ranges from a discussion of technological advances to politics to religion; it is the broadest of the three and yet Feynman details exquisitely what his thoughts are on all of the subjects. Although an atheist himself, he does not malign religious belief as scientists are often accused of doing (sometimes rightly); instead he acknowledges that religion could provide a useful moral code, which is something science cannot do. Science, he says, will answer the question of what will happen should A or B take place, but religion can answer whether or not it should.
Feynman’s final lecture is entitled This Unscientific Age –not, he says, because science was not progressing, but because it was not the focus of the age (as the ancient Greeks had an age of heroes, or the religious Middle Ages). He describes what he means by a scientific age, and describes unscientific age in which he lived. In this lecture, he jokingly undermines all of his own authority, and again discusses religion, American politics and the ways in which science is useful in addressing both of those arenas of thought and activity.
The lectures capture Feynman’s speaking in a way few other books could; each pause, each mid-sentence change is detailed. It’s quite an experience to read a transcription of the way he talked; although he mentioned to his family that he disliked speaking because he never felt that he spoke “grammatically correct,” he was a captivating, amusing and elucidating speaker. Despite the fact that he was far more intelligent than most of the people around him, he could relate to anyone easily and kindly. 46 years after they were first given, Feynman’s lectures still have a strong emotional and intellectual impact, and will be sure to leave a lasting impression on anyone who reads them.
examiner.com - 2009

"Feynman [is] one of the century's premier intellectual optometrists:     After only a few minutes, he adjusts your mental vision so that previously fuzzy concepts stand out in stunning clarity."    

Washington Post Book World, in a review of Six Not-So-Easy Pieces

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988) was one of the most famous and most beloved physicists of all time. His many contributions to physics earned him the Nobel Prize; his iconoclastic outlook on life and his many curious adventures earned him the status of an American cultural icon. .........  

www.2think.org

physical units
For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is inthe idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
The Character of Physical Law (1967) R.P. Feynman.
Before I begin the lecture [on spacetime], I wish to apologize for something that is not my responsibility: Physicists and scientists all over the world have been measuring things in different units, and causing an enormous amount of complexity. As a matter of fact, nearly a third of what you have to learn ¹ consists of different ways of measuring the same thing, and I apologize for it. It's like having money in francs, and pounds, and dollars... with the advantage over money that the ratios don't change, as time goes on.

att.net
For example, in the measurement of energy, the unit we use here is the joule (J), and a watt (W) is a joule per second. But there are a lot of other systems to measure energy. There are at least three different ones for engineers, which I have listed here.²  The physicists do something else when they want to talk about the energy of a single atom, instead of the energy of a gross amount of material. The reason is, of course, that a single atom is such a small thing that to talk about its energy in joules would be inconvenient. But instead of taking a definite unit in the same system (like 10^-20  J), they have unfortunately chosen, arbitrarily, a funny unit called an electronvolt (eV), which is the energy needed to move an electron through a potential difference of one volt, and that turns out to be about 1.6 10^-19 J. I am sorry that we do that, but that's the way it is for the physicists.
The chemists also talk about the energy per atom. Since they don't use the atoms individually but large blobs of them, in cans and barrels, they've chosen a certain number of atoms as a unit. This number of things is called a mole (mol), and it is 6.023 10²³ objects. The more precise definition, which is now correct or soon  will be, is that one mole of carbon-12 atoms has a mass of exactly 12 grams. A mole is just a certain number of things. So, instead of giving the energy per atom, the chemists give the energy per mole. It's good, therefore, to know how much energy is a mole of electronvolts. In other words, if each atom had one electronvolt of energy, a large number of atoms would have a reasonable amount of joules, namely 96500 joules per mole. Incidentally, a mole of electrons has a total charge of 96500 coulombs (C); these numbers are equal for a reason you have to figure out.
Now, there is an additional unit that the physical chemists use, the kilocalorie per mole (kcal/mol), and 23 of those is an electronvolt per atom.
Finally, unfortunately, you have another system for measuring masses. The mass of an atom, from a chemist's point of view, is given by the mass of a mole of these atoms. For example, the mass of carbon-12 is called 12 "atomic mass units" (u), because a mole of carbon-12 "weighs" 12 grams (or rather "has 12 grams of mass"). One atomic mass unit represents one gram for every mole of objects, one gram per mole. We can measure that in electronvolts also. "You can't measure mass in electron volts!"  Sure you can, because of the relation E = mc²  ...

It is useful to know how much energy corresponds to the consumption of one atomic mass unit of material:

That turns out to be about 931 million electronvolts (MeV). Incidentally, the rest mass of a proton is 938 MeV,

while the rest mass of an electron corresponds to 0.511 MeV. The number 938 differs from 931, because a

proton has a mass of about 1.008 amu.
I am sorry about the confusion produced by all these systems of units. I left out, obviously, a large number of different things. For example, when measuring luminous   energy, the lumen (lm) is used, which corresponds to about 1.5 mW of power in the "most visible" light, around 5500 A (Angströms). It's all very annoying, but don't worry about it now. When you need to measure light, just look up in a book what a lumen is.
That's an unfortunate fact that we measure things in a whole series of different kinds of units. This causes a lot of confusion.
It's too bad, but I have already apologized, and there is nothing else I can do...
Richard P. Feynman (1961)
att.net

Richard Feynman

was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York. By age 15, he had mastered differential and integral calculus. In 1936, he attended MIT, and took every physics course offered. Later he went to Princeton for graduate studies. His interests in subatomic physics, he embarked on a lifelong quest to clarify the mathematics of a subatomic world. Feynman finished his Ph.D., and married his longtime sweetheart, ArlEne Greenbaum. She was already very ill with tuberculosis. In 1942, Feynman was asked to go to Los Alamos. Hans Bethe made the 24 year old Feynman a group leader in the theoretical division. Feynman worked on estimating how much uranium would be needed to achieve critical mass.

He developed many experimental devices to test his hypothesis without blowing up Los Alamos. When Oakridge ran into safety problems while separating uranium it was Feynman who devised procedures to protect the staff from radiation poisoning. ArlEne passed away on June 16, 1945. After the war, he followed Hans Bethe to Cornell University. It was here that Feynman developed a simple notation to describe the complex behavior of subatomic particles. This notation became known as Feynman Diagrams.

In the 1950s, he moved to Cal Tech. In 1965, he, along with Julian Schwinger and Shinichiro Tomonaga, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for work in quantum electrodynamics. Feynman's popular lecture series was published in "The Feynman Lectures". The personal side of Feynman was captured in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? Feynman is also known for his work on the Space Shuttle Challenger accident investigation. He shocked the world by demonstrating the failure of the O-rings.

Feynman died February 15, 1988  at the age of 69,  from several rare forms of cancer.

atomicarchive.com

His inquiring character was first formed by his father, who taught him that knowing the names of things wasn't the same as knowing them. The resulting independence of mind is then firmly ratified by his first wife, Arlene, the most wonderful person in this wonderful book. She and Feynman fall in love while in high school and agree to marry. But while they are engaged, Arlene is diagnosed with a fatal disease that they both know will kill her within five or six years. Feynman marries her anyway, against the wishes of both families, and loves her passionately till the end. She clearly deserves his devotion. It was Arlene, in the hospital in Albuquerque, who sends her husband pencils engraved, "RICHARD DARLING, I LOVE YOU! PUTSY." Feynman confesses to being embarrassed to use them at Los Alamos. You see, there are all these famous scientists and. . . . Incredulous, Arlene says, "Aren't you proud of the fact that I love you?" And then, without a pause, adds the words that Richard Feynman came to live by, long after Arlene was dead: "WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?"
washington post - 2005

Richard P. Feynman

was born in New York City on the 11th May 1918. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained his B.Sc. in 1939 and at Princeton University where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1942. He was Research Assistant at Princeton (1940-1941), Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cornell University (1945-1950), Visiting Professor and thereafter appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (1950-1959). At present he is Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
Professor Feynman is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the National Academy of Science; in 1965 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, London (Great Britain).
He holds the following awards: Albert Einstein Award (1954, Princeton); Einstein Award (Albert Einstein Award College of Medicine); Lawrence Award (1962).
Richard Feynman married to Gweneth Howarth, had a son, Carl Richard (born 22nd April 1961), and a daughter Michelle Catherine (born 13th August 1968).       From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1963-1970.

Richard Feynman died in 1988.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html

Richard Phillips Feynman  

1918-1988   Physicist, Nobel Laureate Caltech Professor of Physics, 1951-1988; Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1965.  

Physicist Richard Feynman won his scientific renown through the development of quantum electrodynamics, or QED, a theory describing the interaction of particles and atoms in radiation fields. As part of this work he invented what came to be known as "Feynman Diagrams visual representations of space-time particle interactions. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, together with J. Schwinger and S. I. Tomonaga, in 1965. Later in his life he became a prominent public figure through his association with the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the publication of two best-selling books of personal recollections. Richard Feynman served as Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech from 1951 until his death.

Papers, 1933-1988. Feynman's correspondence, course and lecture notes, talks, speeches, publications, manuscripts, working notes and calculations and commentary on the work of others are all included in this extensive collection.

www.search.caltech.edu

  feynman  1    2 

altri autori