A great companion to Richard Feynman’s book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. His books, or books about him, are a pleasure to read. He was a fascinating guy who was endlessly curious about the way the world worked. He suffered a decades-long battle against abdominal cancer, to which he finally succumbed on February 15, 1988, two weeks after he taught his last class at Caltech. You get glimpses of his childhood, his first wife and her battle with Hodgkin’s disease (and passed while he was in Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project), his father, who instilled in him to inquire how the world worked, his mother who taught him that humor was the highest form of understanding we can achieve, how he became an avowed atheist even though brought up in the Jewish religion, his younger sister, Joan, has a Ph.D. in physics, and much more. You also get to see some of his drawings.

About half the book deals with the Challenger accident on January 28, 1986. Feynman served on the presidential commission that looked into the cause of the disaster. The book explains how the outside temperature impacted the O-rings, but that wasn’t Feynman’s discovery. It was General Kutyna, another member of the commission. He debunks the notion that the president wanted the Shuttle to fly so it could place a call during his State of the Union Address. But there was enough pressure inside NASA for keeping the Shuttle flying—a failure of management underestimating risk assessment—by a thousand times. There’s a lot of detail in this section. You’ll love it if you were a fan of the Space Shuttle missions.

The last chapter is his talk, “The Value of Science,” which is excellent. Some of the profundities:

“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad—but it does not carry instructions on how to use it.” Buddhist proverb: To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.” The key has value, otherwise how can we get into Heaven?

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.

If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.

He’s incredibly quotable, and some of my favorites:

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

Humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come. We humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand. (I would say Hayek and Mises did figure this out. It’s a knowledge problem, the kind of explanation Feynman would have loved).

General Kutyna: “A guy is flying along, looking in all directions, and feeling very safe. Another guy flies up behind him (at ‘six o’clock’—‘twelve o’clock’ is directly in front), and shoots. Most airplanes are shot down that way. Thinking that you’re safe is very dangerous! Somewhere, there’s a weakness you’ve got to find. You must always check six o’clock.”

2023 - listened to the audio version at the prompting of my 93 year old father who loved this and the other Feynman autobiography too. Both are excellent!! So insightful and so fun.

2021-10-25 Just thought of this book, especially the title after seeing a study on how the public loves to "conform" and how the government is using that in nefarious ways with it's propaganda to control our actions. We need more Feynman's. We need more people to read this book and discover their backbone, their own self-worth and critical thinking. Consider the alternatives...

17 Nov. 2017 - I read this about 30-35 years ago and loved it, just after reading the earlier autobiography by Feynman "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman."

Both books were a pure joy to experience. I still have some vivid memories about his humor, quite libertarian personal philosophy and life experiences. He was so good at seeing, then demonstrating clearly, some basic truths that needed telling. See his account, and the historical record, on his part of figuring out what happened to the Challenger spacecraft explosion. You will be amazed at how simple and effective good creative communication can be.

I recommend this book, and it's earlier companion: "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman?" to everyone, especially young people, who need a boost in reasoned self-confidence.

Thank you Ross Overbeek, for investing in me with the earlier book. I am eternally grateful.

"Before I was born, my father told my mother, “If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.” When I was just a little kid, very small in a highchair, my father brought home a lot of little bathroom tiles—seconds—of different colors. We played with them, my father setting them up vertically on my highchair like dominoes, and I would push one end so they would all go down."


Part 1 involved mainly of the scientist in the making with travel experiences during various conferences around the globe. Letters, pictures, arts and intelligent questions and remarks.
When young, Feynman interest in Science took its root because of his father. He taught him to observe and reason things around him, rather than looking. As a salesperson at an okay enterprise with okay reputation his hunger for science is planted in his own son. As Feynman has said, if his father brought science in his life then his mother taught him compassion and laughter. To Arlene, who is responsible behind the book's name.

“It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”


Part 2 NASA and discussion over possible defects of any form. This part has touched my school days of learning mathematics and physics. His whole idea of contributions to science can be clearly seen here.
How would I know that Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on moon actually belonged to the same group Feynman worked in? Of course, because he didn't landed.

The problem in the shuttle space is only a fraction of evidence towards what in NASA.

Being a renowned professor and scientists of that time, he suggested to questions the big shots at higher levels in NASA like the management at the lower levels. He made his effort into fighting the bureaucratic system.

There are lots of loose ends from my side, as my knowledge to Physics in particular is limited. Anyhow, I am glad I took out time to read this book.

I am a big fan of Richard Feynman's unique approach to life and his curiosity for everything he has seen. In fact, Feynman is one of the key inspiring forces in my life responsible for the decision I made of choosing a career in engineering.

The most interesting concepts I learned from this book are how he tried counting while doing other tasks (like talking, reading, etc) to figure out how his brain functions. I have written a more detailed article about how Feynman influenced my life   in this article

very soothing.

I was enthusiastic about reading this after reading "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman?". The book is divided into two parts "A Curious Character" which deals with the people who influenced Feynman the most; his father and his wife Arline. Arline and Richard were perfect for each other alas their relationship was bitter sweet. Arline succumbed to tuberculosis and passed away at the age of twenty five. It's not all sad though Arline very much enjoyed seeing Richard succeed but made sure he stayed grounded and they both knew how to make what little time they had together count. Sixteen months after her death Feynman wrote this touching letter to Arline. www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/i-love-...

I loved the story about the walks he took in the woods with his father and their discussions about natural phenomena and how things work. Feynman's father was not from a scientific background but ignited a love for the subject in his son.

The second part of the book which I didn't enjoy so much concerned the investigation of the shuttle Challenger disaster. Ailing at the time from cancer Feynman took on this project despite knowing that it would use up his strength and time. I felt the book listed a bit at this point for me and that I was getting bogged down in technical terminology. At the heart of this 'part' is a cautionary tale about the management of large organisations and their internal communication. Even Feynman's investigation was frustrated by the same problems. The organisational culture was expressed by the managerial political dogma versus the technical knowledge of engineers and the break down of communication between the two. Feynman's discoveries are quite the coup d'etat. As he puts it himself in the end "Nature cannot be fooled".

Feynman is an interesting, quirky, man of intellectual integrity, who has a good sense of humour and writes about science in a refreshing and largely understandable way.

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?" is another series of adventures of a legendary physicist Richard P. Feynman, a sequel to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". This time, we witness his teenage and adult life, and his early relationship with his father and wife, which didn't show much in the first book. Furthermore, we take a closer look at the details of his experience working with NASA on a committee to investigate the space shuttle disaster in 1986.

Personally, I think the first part of the book, as usual, is funny in Feynman's ways due to his curiosity of everything surrounding him, but for the second part is a bit not enjoyable to go through since I'm not really into technical stuff involving in engineering, but if you are, you would love it. What attracts me the most is his epilogue concerning the value of science, which was so elegantly and fascinatingly written.

"We are at the very beginning of time for the human race," he wrote. "It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before. It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations."

Maybe a four star book for most but heavy NASA content earned an upgrade to 5 stars from me.

The first half was basically a continuation of SYJMF. It was nice to hear more about his first wife (who died young of tuberculosis) and their relationship - he mentioned her in SYJMF but didn’t go into detail.

The second half was all Rogers Commission to investigate Challenger. He didn’t want to join the commission but his wife said “If you don’t do it, there will be twelve people, all in a group, going from place to place together. But if you join the commission, there will be eleven people — all in a group, going around from place to place together — while the twelfth one runs around all over the place, checking all kinds of unusual things. There probably won’t be anything, but if there is, you’ll find it.” And that’s basically what happened.

It didn’t take long to figure out that it was probably the O-rings. So then he spent the rest of his time investigating the main engines and the computer system, to see if the same organizational systemic problems were there too. The engine had the same issue (engineers thought it was only so reliable, but management was way too optimistic) but the computer programming seemed pretty sound to him (though already on very dated equipment).

It was good to hear his account of his famous O-ring experiment, which involved an early morning trip to the hardware store and then almost not getting his glass of ice water in time during the meeting to make his point! The unsung heroes are his friend on the commission the Air Force general, and Sally Ride, who passed the O-ring information along through the general, though Feynman didn’t even know it came from Sally Ride (or at least made it sound that way).

The final drama was Rogers wanting to add a recommendation to the report saying how NASA should continue to receive support and the how the commission “anticipates impressive achievements to come.” Feynman didn’t want to include it because they had never discussed a policy question like that during their meetings. In the end they called it a “concluding thought” rather than a recommendation and let Feynman publish his own report as an appendix. In it he says NASA “must live in a world of reality in comparing the costs and utility of the shuttle to other methods of entering space… NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

Just more good stuff from my favorite physicist. I can't say I liked this one more than "Surely, You're Joking..." but I do think it humanized him in some ways because a lot of the essays involved other people as much as himself (the essays about his first wife are particularly moving).

This one was doubly cool because it ended with his entire reflection and analysis after serving on a commission investigating the Challenger explosion. This bit offered as much in the ways of spaceship mechanics as it did in the inefficiency of government systems and politics.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

"Every time we talked to higher level managers, they kept saying they didn't know anything about the problems below them... either the guys at the top didn't know, in which case they should have known, or they did know, in which case they're lying to us."

"When I see a congressman giving his opinion on something, I always wonder if it represents his real opinion or if it represents an opinion that he's designed in order to be elected. It seems to be a central problem for politicians. So I often wonder: what is the relation of integrity to working in the government?"

"The same thrill, the same awe and mystery, comes again and again when we look at any question deeply enough. With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries - certainly a grand adventure!
It is true that few unscientific people have this particular type of religious experience. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age."

Segunda parte de la autobiografía de este genio, el físico más importante de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Consta de retazos, de paisajes desconectados entresacados de la vida del autor. Toda la segunda parte se dedica a la participación de Feynman en la comisión de investigación del Challenger. Es un poco más pesado que el primero, pero la primera mitad está muy bien.

Amazing read. Wish I could meet Mr.Feynman in real life. He was surely an interesting person!

I loved epilogue the most!