
Photo: Copyright Tamiko Thiel 1984 / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Feynman is the rare genius I would recommend to people who do not care about physics. The Nobel-winning work on quantum electrodynamics secured his place in history, but his real gift was treating curiosity as a way of life — picking locks, playing bongos, refusing to pretend he understood things he did not. The Feynman Lectures still read like someone thinking out loud with total honesty, and his warning about cargo cult science gets more relevant every year. What I admire most is his allergy to prestige; he wanted understanding, not authority. Decades after his death in 1988, he remains the best argument that rigor and playfulness are the same trait.
Overview
Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga "for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED), with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles".
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Richard Feynman
- Name (Japanese)
- リチャード・P・ファインマン
- Reading
- りちゃーど・P・ふぁいんまん
- Born
- May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Taurus / Horse
- Origin
- Queens, New York, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- physicist / quantum physicist / inventor / writer / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Far Rockaway High School
- University
- Princeton University
Awards & achievements
- 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics
- 1972 Oersted Medal
- 1973 Niels Bohr International Gold Medal
- 1954 Albert Einstein Award
- 1965 Foreign Member of the Royal Society
- 1979 National Medal of Science
- Fellow of the American Physical Society
- 1962 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!” | — | |
| Notable work | The Feynman Lectures on Physics | — | |
| Notable work | Feynman diagram | — | |
| Notable work | Feynman–Kac formula | — | |
| Notable work | Hellmann–Feynman theorem | — | |
| Notable work | Cargo Cult Science | — |
6. Links
Physicist — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.