Richard Feynman :: biographies biography bio

Richard P. Feynman was born May 11, 1918 to Melville and Lucille Feynman. His father, Melville, never had a chance to endulge his interests in science, so he engulfed Richard in science from a young age. Even at a young age Richard's interest in science and mathematics was extraordinary. He taught himself basic mathematics before entering school. He would also read the Encyclopedia Britannica and he gained much insight into science form that. He even experimented with electronics building his own burglar alarm. At school Richard excelled at math and science. On his own he taught himself trigonometry and calculus. He even won the New York University Math Championship. While his grades in math and science were exceptional, Feynman had poor grades in art, social sciences, and literature. This fact made him less likely to get into the college of his choice. He was rejected from Columbia University, so he went to MIT. While at MIT he changed majors from mathematics to physics after finding the mathematical courses too easy and rigid. He took Theoretical Physics (a graduate class) his second year. Since there was no quantum mechanics courses offered at MIT (a subject that Feynman was extremely interested about) he and a friend taught themselves what they could from the available texts. Feynman received his B.Sc. in 1939 and then moved to Princeton for his doctorate. At Princeton he went on to develop a new approach to quantum mechanics. He made new models of electromagnetics using particle interactions in space-time. He also worked on the Manhattan project while at Princeton. This was a great distraction and slowed the progress of his thesis greatly. In 1942 Feynman received his doctorate. In 1945 Feynman became the professor of theoretical physics at Cornell University. There he devoted himself to teaching and did not do any research. In 1950 he received a job as a professor at CIT (Cal Tech) There he did more work that contributed to the field of quantum mechanics. In 1959 talk at the meeting of the American Physical Society at Cal tech. In this speech he basically sparked the new science of nanotechnology. In 1965 he jointly won the Nobel Prize for physics. His research also led to the theory of 'partons' which later led to the current theory of quarks which are a fundamental part of particle physics. Feynman continued to teach at caltech until his death in 1988. His research and innovation have pushed physics forward over the last century.