I can’t remember precisely how I first came across Richard Feynman, but I’m pretty sure it was reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman.
Later, I’d see one of the best hours of Horizon ever made in Christopher Sykes’ The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
But aside from a couple of other documentaries, and famously his part in the Rogers Commission Report into what happened to Space Shuttle Challenger in the tragic accident of 1986 (a tragedy that I vividly remember John Craven’s Newsround covering live at the time). He demonstrated the brittle nature of the material used in the O-rings.
This book gathers together much of his correspondence, which makes for fascinating reading. I didn’t know that Feynman married his first wife despite her already having contracted TB – something that was to kill her. Feynman was, at the time, working at Los Alamos on “The Bomb”.
Feynman was a very particular individual in that he took principled stances about certain things – for example, not travelling to the USSR to attend conferences since they didn’t allow their own scientists free travel to the West. That said, there’s a very funny sequence of more and more desperate letters to various Federal agencies requesting advice on whether he should go to the first conference he was invited to. The slow wheels of bureaucracy meant that he barely got an answer in time.
Feynman also had a massive interest in how science, and physics in particular, was taught. That’s why his books are still read today.
Thoroughly recommended, with few letters covering really technical subjects and ably edited by his daughter.