Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life

by Leonard Mlodinow

Book Overview

As a young physicist, Leonard Mlodinow looked for guidance from his mentor, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Drawing on transcripts from their meetings during their time together at Cal Tech, Mlodinow shares Feynman's provocative thoughts and observations. At once a moving portrait of a friendship and an affecting account of Feynman's final, creative years, this book celebrates the inspiring legacy of one of the greatest thinkers...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446692514
• ISBN13: 9780446692519
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 171 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Honest, Entertaining, and Informative

Because this book flows like a well-paced novel, I was easily able to finish it in one day (something I almost never do). In addition to being an excellent storyteller, Mlodinow is very honest and candid in a way that I found sincere and endearing. He describes well the difficulties faced by a talented and promising young adult trying to form his worldview and choose his life/career goals and direction. Many people, not just budding physicists, will be able to relate to this, and indeed I think that is the main value of the book. In the course of the book, he presents some physics discussions and reflections on the philosophy of science/physics, and of course he also provides some information about Feynman (and Gell-Mann), but none of this is in great depth, so it's best regarded as "bonus" material. Overall, I can highly recommend this book to anyone with a little background in modern physics, and some familiarity with Feynman and Gell-Mann's biographies and work. The book is very enjoyably written, so reading it is time well spent. I enjoyed the book so much that I will be checking out Mlodinow's other books also.

A Very Human Tale of Science and Life

I've been a Feynman fan since back in the 60s. I've read most of the popular books about Feynman and by Feynman, as well as some of his technical ones. Although this book's principle character is the author, there are many interesting snippets from the last few years of Feynman's life. This is a very pleasant book. In addition to containing painless discussions on the work of theoretical physicists, it shows that even the greatest scientific giants have their weak points that make them as human as the rest of us. The book is very well written and in an engaging style that makes it difficult to put down. There are a few lessons in there for all of us.

Advice to a Young Physicist

There were plenty of famous physicists in the twentieth century, but none as endearing and downright funny as Richard Feynman. If you have ever read his wonderful memoir _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_, you know plenty about the humorous side of the serious physicist, the man who originated quantum electrodynamics as well as plenty of other accomplishments within his field, to say nothing of playing the bongos. Now there is an unusual memoir, a tribute from a young physicist who came within Feynman's orbit at Caltech in the early 1980s. _Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life_ (Warner Books) by Leonard Mlodinow gives us another snapshot of Feynman, which would always be welcome, but this one is special. Mlodinow was starting up to be an academic physicist, and got to get advice from Feynman on the task, as well as on what is important in life. Mlodinow presciently taped many of the sessions, and got around to transcribing them only recently. Feynman has lots to teach us still, even if we aren't physicists.Part of the attraction of this little volume is that while it is about Feynman, it is also about Mlodinow's discomfort as a whiz kid brought in to work at Caltech. He was glad to get the appointment, but also intimidated. "These people at Caltech might actually expect something of me." He didn't know how to start, and floundered for months, until he decided to talk with Feynman, just down the hall, about what he thought about string theory. "Look," Feynman said dismissively, "If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn't come here asking me. You'd come here _telling_ me." The lesson was, find something you believe in and go to work. In Feynman's view, it wouldn't do to work on just anything. If you weren't working on something beautiful, and something you believed in, then the work wouldn't be fun. And fun was essential: "For me, physics is more fun than anything else or I couldn't be doing it." Feynman isn't the only curious character in this memoir. Next door to Mlodinow's office is another Nobel winner, Murray Gell-Mann who had brought the unifying theory of quarks to subatomic particles. John Schwarz, working alone for many years, finally brings out string theory. Stephen Wolfram appears, before "Mathematica" and his own rewrite of science, to eat a pound of rare roast beef. There is also a good deal of science in the book, a brief summary of where physics stood at the end of the millennium.Mlodinow had a hobby of writing during the time, writing screenplays, which some of his fellow physicists must have thought beneath him. Feynman didn't influence him directly to go into writing, but at least partially because of Feynman's teaching about going after the work that is fun, he wound up writing rather than doing physics. He left Caltech to write an acclaimed history of geometry, and even scripts for _Star Trek_. It is obvious he absorbed the lessons he has generously shared with us in t

To thine own nucleus be true . . .

These reviews are longer than this book, which is 171 pages long and written by a physicist who later became a writer for "Star Trek." It's about discovery. Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann each had a different approach to physics, and a different way of looking at the world. In the end, Gell-Mann taught Feynman string theory because, despite his love for theory, Gell-Mann's instincts had led him to recognize that theory's potential when everyone else thought of it as a joke, while Feynman's instincts, unerring in so many cases, had in this one instance, apparently, been wrong. The rivalry between Gell-Mann and Feynman, and their apparent reconciliation at the end of Feynman's life, embodies the narrator's personal struggle and that conflict's eventual resolution. Unsure of his abilities, seeking a problem on which to work, Mlodinow learns that, in both physics and life, you find your path by heeding, not "customs and rules," but your own internal voice. That voice may lead to a "big picture" such as a unified field theory, or to the physics of a rainbow or a mental voyage on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Yet all discoveries, both large and small, scientific and uniquely personal, come about as the result following your passion. Mldodinow asked Feynman: what problem should I pursue? Feynman taught him that the answer to this question was one that he had always already known. This book does not take one hour to read: it takes two. Both of them are worth it.

A mixture of affection and respect for a scientific giant

Author and physicist Leonard Mlodinow shares his experiences as a young post-doc at the California Institute of Technology, where he had an office just up the hall from Richard Feynman, in this candid and funny memoir. Feynman - who, when Mlodinow showed up at Caltech, was already living with the cancer that eventually took his life - was an inspiration to the young physicist, who first discovered an interest in physics when while working at a kibbutz in Israel. An old copy of Feynman's book The Character of Physical Law was part of the kibbutz's small library, and it helped Mlodinow decide on his next step - a Ph.D. in the sometimes strange field of particle physics. When the newly minted Doctor's thesis caught the attention of some of Caltech's faculty, Mlodinow found himself offered an unusually plum position on Caltech's faculty. While at Caltech, Leonard struck up an acquaintance with Feynman, even coaxing the opinionated, occasionally cranky genius to commit his thoughts to cassette tape in a series of interviews. What might have turned into an abstruse version of Tuesdays With Morrie set in the halls of elite academia becomes - thanks to Mlodinow's courage in including himself as a player in the story, and through the graces of Feynman himself, who had little patience for mentoring or moralizing - a cleanly direct exploration of career anguish and punctured hero worship that ripens into a true affection. It's also about more than Professor Feynman: the book takes his attitudes and his reflections to heart (none more so than the pure and concentrated pleasure Mlodinow observes Feynman taking in the small details of everyday life), but Mlodinow makes room in his account for a small cast of characters that broaden and enrich the story by providing context, contrast, and unexpected sympathies. When the young post-doc, fretting over the physicist's version of writer's block, takes his stoner buddy Ray to a physics lecture, only to run into both Feynman and Murray Gell-Man, Feynman's (mostly) friendly rival and counterpart on campus, Mlodinow forgets to worry about his stalled professional arc from brilliant post-doc to Next Big Thing, and sweats instead over what Ray might come out and say to the touchy, curmudgeonly Grand Old Man of physics. Naturally - and behind young Leonard's back - the two strike up an instant rapport. Mlodinow's sometimes prickly encounters with Feyman's secretary and self-appointed watchdog are a hoot, as are the passages in which Leonard (and we, his readers) meet the various chaps all up and down the hallway - Constantine, a flashy sort with a fabulously glorious actress girlfriend and a penchant for panache and adventure, John Schwartz (yes, that John Schwartz, the fellow who came up with string theory), and one unnamed chap who, mired in limbo with no Big Idea to pursue, seems to spend his hours tending to a small plant nursery in his office. Young Leonard fears that he will end up a mirror image of this last, whom