Richard Philips Feynman

It's Fact
After the explosion of NASA's space shuttle Challenger in 1986,Feynman was appointed to the council investigating the causes of the disaster.In his usual style,Feynman cut through th bureaucracy and identified the cause of disaster as the failure of an o-ring seal in the un usually cold launch-pad temperatures,even dunking a similar o-ring in a glass of ice water in front of other committee members to emphasize his conclusion.Thereafter Feynman was known as the scientist who displayed what went wrong with the shuttle,by using ice and glass of water.

Richard Philips Feynman
```````````(1918-1988)
~~~~~~~~~The "Jovial" Physicist



Born : May 11,1918 Far Rockway,Queens,New York
Died : Feb 15,1988 (aged 69) Los Angeles
California
Residence : United States
Nationality : United States
Field : Physics
Institutions: Manhattan Project Cornell University,
California Institute of Technology
Notable students : Al Hibbs,George Zweig,Mark Kislinger,
Finn Ravndal,Thomas Curtright
Known for : Quantum electrodynamics,Particle theory,
Feynman diagrams
Notable prizes: Nobel prize in Physics(1965)
Oersted Medal (1972)
Religion : None (Atheist)

Richard Philips Feynman was a scientist of Jewish origin who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 with Julian Schwinger(USA) and Sin-Ltiro Tomonaga (Japanese).Feynman won this for developing independently , quantum electrodynamics, a major theory of modern theoretical physics.


After Einstein's death in 1955 he left a big space in the world of theoretical physics.This was due to Einstein's grate ability to use of mathematics and applying these to problems of modern physics.There were some physicists like Bohr and Lev Landu (both Nobel laureates) who could function in the same way as Einstein.But there was a Physicist who could do physics after his PhD,and it is said that he was the only one who could engage in theoretical arguments with Enrico Fermi, one of the most important creators of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan project.This young physicist was none other than Richard Feynman.


Richard Feynman was a scientist of Jewish Schwinger(USA) and Sin-ltiro Tomonaga(Japanese).Feynman won this for developing independently,quantum electrodynamics , a major theory of modern theoretical physics.Feynman also satisfactorily gave an explanation for superfluidity,the phenomena by which liquid helium having unique property of displaying apparent no viscosity (resistance to flow) at very low temperatures,like near absolute zero(the lowest possibel temperatures in physical theory.)Feynman also contributed to the theory of nuclear interactions with Murray Gell-Mann, another great physicist who won the Nobel prize in 1969.Despite all this achievements in physics he was also a very "jovial" person enjoying playing bongo drums.In fact in the Book series "Feynman Lectures on Physics",he is portrayed in a photo playing bongo drums.Feynman also developed a widelyused pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles,which later became famous among scientists as Feynman diagrams.In addition to his work in theoretical physics,Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing,and introducing the concept of nanotechnology (creation of devices at the molecular scale).He held the Richard Chance Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at Caltech and was the most respected physicist of his time.


Feynman admired the great theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac. Dirac had combined and reconciled the special theory of relativity with quantum mechanics and came up with the idea of anti-particles, and predicted that the electron had a "sister" par-ticle with similar properties of electrons but with the opposite charge. This was called the positron. Although some time later the positron was discovered in an experiment there was a problem with Dirac's theory. It predicted a certain number, known as magnetic mo-ment as equal to one. But later it was found by Experimentally that it was a very small amount larger than 1. This led physicists to come up with theories to explain this flaw in Dirac's theory.


Feynman , Schwinger and Tomanoga working independently came up with the theory known as QED(quantum electrodynamics) which explained the interaction of electrons with light which is a form of electromagnetic radiation, as well as flaws in Dirac's theory. It can explain .almost all phenomena in physics and later ap-plied to problems in chemistry and biology to a very high degree of satisfaction.


After receiving his Ph.D. under John Wheeler, Feynman went to work for the Manhattan project and making of the atomic bomb. It is said that when Feynman was working on his PhD his mathematical knowl-edge was superior to his advisor, Wheeler. Feynman's playful character was evident during his Manhattan period as he mastered the art of pick-ing locks of safes which were used to store sen-sitive information about the atomic bomb. Thus he became a nightmare for security people at Los Alamos. It is also notable that Feynman was the only scientist who dared to look with naked eyes at the explosion of the first atomic bomb without any eye protection. 


Many thanks to: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page  

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