Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #304855 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The iconoclastic American physicist Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for solving a sub-atomic puzzle using home-brewed methods once dismissed as ludicrous. But Feynman arguably did science an even bigger service through his iconoclastic persona, which gave the lie to the view that all scientists are gauche, boring and obsessive. As first revealed in his brilliantly entertaining autobiography Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman!, Feynman was a wise-cracking genius with a penchant for topless bars, bongo-drums and winding people up. And he was obsessive--not about one narrow question, but about the whole puzzle of how Nature works, from the spin of an electron to the spin of wobbling dinner-plates. Since his untimely death from cancer in 1988, many books based on articles by or about Feynman have appeared. So what does The Pleasure of Finding Things Out add ? It's touted as a "greatest hits" volume--and it's a fair description. This well-chosen collection allows newcomers to see what all the fuss surrounding Feynman is about, from his work on quantum theory to his safe-cracking exploits during the Manhattan Project. But newcomers and long-standing Feynman fans alike will enjoy the newly-reprinted material, especially a 1979 magazine interview which includes fascinating insights into how a brilliant mind tackles Nature's mysteries. For once, a science book that lives up to its name, giving much pleasure from finding out more about this genuine scientific hero. --Robert Matthews

Book Jacket
"Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough" says Richard P. Feynman in "The Smartest Man in the World", one of the many priceless pieces in this collection of Feynman's best short works.

Here we see Feynman as he was a brilliant physicist who consistently rejected authority, wholeheartedly embraced the value of doubt and whose infectious sense of curiosity infused everything he did. This wide-ranging collection includes uproarious tales of Feynman's early student experiments (with himself, his socks, his typewriter, his fellow students); his youthful experiences on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II; his famous report on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster; two seminal lectures on the future of computers and nanotechnology; stories of safecracking and plaguing US censors with talcum powder and tales of the physicist as a child--how his father delighted in showing him the world and how he, the young boy, took great pleasure in "finding things out".

Enlightening, absorbing and always entertaining, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is Feynman at his best.