Victor Sonkin. Open palm

Open palm
Richard Feynman. Of course you're joking, Mr. Feynman!

Victor Sonkin

Date of publication: September 8, 2000

My wife’s grandfather , a world-famous physicist, once told us: “You need to have an open palm. As soon as it clenches into a fist, a person loses the ability to learn and enjoy new things. This is old age.”

Nikita Alekseevich himself remained with an open palm until his last day. Looking at my parents, grandparents, senior colleagues - and lately, more and more often at my peers and myself - I begin to understand what a difficult effort this is.

Almost no one can escape the illusion that in our better days the snow was whiter and the girls more beautiful and that what we were taught was the only correct doctrine. The ridiculousness of these beliefs becomes obvious only when meeting people of a different, higher breed, who at any age retain curiosity and youth of spirit. People like Nikita Alekseevich or Richard Feynman.

Richard Feynman is an American theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize laureate, participant in the atomic bomb project, and founder of quantum mechanics. I don't know what it is, but they say that a new generation of computers - not so much a generation as a new race - will soon completely change the world around us and our ideas about it; these computers will be built on the principles predicted by Feynman.

Feynman's book, subtitled "Adventures of a Curious Type," is his memoir, not written down, but spoken in conversation with a close friend. It is clear from them what a fiery passion physics was for the author. When talking about physics, Feynman completely forgot about etiquette and subordination (that’s why Niels Bohr and Einstein could only discuss their new ideas with him - the rest of their colleagues only looked obsequiously at their mouths). He describes the process of making a discovery ( “it was the only moment in my life when I knew a law of nature that no one else knew” ) - how he wandered around, talking to himself, how he drove away his innocent girlfriend so that the thought would not escape . A candid and authentic depiction of a creative process of this magnitude is perhaps unparalleled in the literature. In the final chapter, Feynman talks about the responsibility of a scientist - not to society, not to colleagues, but to himself and his science; and from all his memories, serious and playful, it is clear how far these are not empty words.

They say that a talented person is talented in everything. Feynman seemed to set out to prove this controversial statement. Arriving in Brazil to lecture on physics, he meets a group of local musicians, learns to play the frigideira , and their orchestra wins the annual competition at a street parade in Rio de Janeiro. Fascinated by drums, he and a musician friend record an accompaniment for a ballet troupe - consisting exclusively of drums! √ and their performance receives second place at a prestigious competition in Paris. Unable to draw anything other than pyramids, he took up pencils and paints, and soon art connoisseurs were buying up his paintings with might and main. At the same time, in “foreign” areas, Feynman always acts incognito or under a pseudonym - he is completely uninterested in being a physics professor who has learned to draw; he wants to be appreciated simply as an artist. His skeptical position on this issue is fully expressed by the quotation from Samuel Johnson that he quotes: “If a dog walks on its hind legs, what amazes us is not that it does it well, but that it can do it at all . ” Feynman didn't want to be that kind of dog.

What Feynman took on jokingly, he very soon brought to a point that for many professionals would be the crowning achievement of a long-term career. Out of curiosity, he went on his summer vacation to work under James Watson, one of the discoverers of DNA, and soon he was reading a report on his research to biology professors at Harvard University. All this seems incredible; but Feynman does not show off anywhere, he boasts casually and good-naturedly and laughs at himself no less than at others.

And he knew how to laugh at others. Almost half of the book is devoted to his good-natured pranks. For example, while working in the top-secret Los Alamos laboratories, he acquired a taste for opening safes and made fun of his colleagues (the crowning achievement of his safekeeping career was the simultaneous opening of three safes with all the US nuclear secrets). Finally, he went to a major military commander and said: “General, tell all employees to close empty safes. If the safe is open, its code is almost defenseless . ” The general’s resolution was predictable: “Never let Feynman near your safes . ”

Feynman's character is best expressed by the southern word "bad." A womanizer without bragging, a braggart without pomposity, a joker without malice, an original without bores - in a word, he is the most charming memoirist of all possible. Feynman did not take anything for granted (after reading an article about the phenomenal sense of smell of bloodhounds, he began to test his own and found out that humans have a slightly worse sense of smell, only we do not use it). Feynman hated pompous fools (the description of an “interdisciplinary conference” where the logic and common sense of the narrator cannot stand the battle with the “intellectuals” - this is a real tragicomedy). Feynman was open to any new experience (if this experience did not threaten to “damage the thinking mechanism” - that’s why he gave up alcohol and did not try drugs), to any new knowledge. From his childhood, when he “fixed radios with the power of his thoughts ,” until old age he remained with an open palm.

Such people have one thing in common. They terribly irritate those around them. This irritation is based on elementary envy (we are getting old, and he, the bastard, is still a boy!), but envious people always mask their true feelings with some lofty considerations. I remembered this recently when I came across two stupid and ignorant reviews of Gaspar’s “Records and Extracts.” And he regretted that Feynman did not meet on his way a humanities scientist of Gasparov’s type and level. Firstly, then he, Feynman, would have had his say in philology. And secondly, they, as two augurs, would have someone to laugh at together.

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Web presence

Feynman's memoirs, as I said, are more of an oral genre than a written one. Therefore, their translation into Russian turned out, unfortunately, somewhat clumsy and not nearly as charming as the original. In Moshkov's library there are two large fragments of this book under different headings - one translated by Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences M. Shifman, the other without indicating the translator.

A large collection dedicated to Feynman is called " Some Funny Things ". This text was compiled by certain Alan Carter and Colston Sanger, and translated into Russian by Sergei Kozlov (and it seems that it was a computer). First sentence: "For anyone who wants to bring the power of a mapmaker to the workplace, studying the life and work of physicist Richard Feynman will prove very useful. He told stories . " Despite these wonders, you can find some interesting information in the text if you have enough patience.

But I read this joke a long time ago, probably in Science and Life. In Feynman's book it is told somewhat differently.

V.P. Smilga, a theoretical physicist, tells “ Ten Stories about Mathematicians and Physicists ” - mentioning Feynman more than once or twice.

A brief biography of Feynman can be found on the Nobel Committee website. State Research Institute Both the Los Alamos and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pay tribute to their former employee in the form of web pages and collections of links .