Genius: The Life And Science Of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, c. 1992.

Genius: The Life And Science Of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, c. 1992. BFEY.

I've read this book before, or at least parts of it. I'm going through it again to follow Feynman's path across America's great universities.

It started with a crystal radio.

Born / raised in Far Rockaway. 

NYC public schools. Public School 39.

1936, freshman at MIT.

1939, Princeton. "The apostle of Niels Bohr at Princeton was a twenty-eight-year-old assistant professor, John Archibald Wheeler, who arrived the year before Feynman, in 1938.

1943, Los Alamos. It started in Chicago, the project's temporary center, domain of Enrico Fermi and his atomic "pile" -- graphite bricks and uranium balls assembled into a lattice on a university squash court -- was chain-reacting. Wilson sent Feynman as his emissary to get all the information he could.

Left by train to Chicago, 1943. Returned to Princeton to brief Wilson, the update of "the bomb" as of the winter, 1943.

Wife Arline died in 1945, right at the height of Los Alamos events -- back to NYC to arrange for cremation; then returned to Los Alamos. Bethe ordered Feynman back to Far Rockaway to rest -- Feynman was breaking down --  overwork and death of the love of his life.

Stayed in Far Rockaway for several weeks but returned July 15, 1945, after Johnny von Neumann called his house the day before. By air, Feynman reached Albuquerque at noon, the next day July 15, 1945.

To what extend was that date chosen with regard to Feynman's return?

Cornell: for physics as an enterprise within American culture there were two eras: one ended and the other began in the summer of the atomic bombs.  BT and AT, Trinity, July 16, 1945.

Great, great chapter. Feynman arrived in the dead of night before the start of classes in the fall of 1945.

Ithaca.

Fall of 1946, Freeman Dyson arrives at Cornell. British, mathematician to join the physics department. Twenty-three (23) years old.

Feynman diagrams.

After four years at Cornell, Feynman growing restless (arrive 1945 + 4 years = 1949).

Caltech, Pasadena. 1949. Charged with rebuilding an obsolete-looking physics program. An old Los Alamos acquaintance, Robert Bacher, tracked Feynman down.

By far the longest chapter, starting on page 281 and ending on page 428 (147 pages in a book whose narrative was 438 pages;  33% off the book.