Skip to content
Wellsprings
Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman

1918 CE1988 CE · Queens

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". He is also known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and the parton model. Feynman developed a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams and remains widely used. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to the wider public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with having pioneered the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard C. Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time. Feynman was a keen physics popularizer through books and lectures, including a talk on top-down nanotechnology, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" (1959) and his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961–1964). He delivered lectures for lay audiences, recorded in The Character of Physical Law (1965) and QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985). Feynman also became known through Ralph Leighton's collections of his anecdotes, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) and What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988). Leighton covered his dream of travelling to Tannu Tuva in Tuva or Bust!. He has been the subject of several biographies, starting with Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

Adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

See Richard Feynman’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →

Stop 1 of 7Born

Queens

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

See other sages who lived in Queens

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Richard Feynman’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Richard Feynman’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

No works attributed in the corpus yet.

Related figuresPaul DiracFreeman DysonSuggested by shared subject matter, not a documented teaching relationship.