“Surely you’re Joking Mr. Feynman” is a semi-autobiographical book
by the American Physicist Richard P.Feynman. Dick Feynman,as he is known ,was
passionate about Physics and was widely popular for the “Feynman Lecture
Series” . Ok…while this is the
introduction of Feynman,the scientist, the book ““Surely you’re Joking Mr. Feynman” is certainly about the whacky
side of the Physicist . Feynman describes his real life adventures ranging from
his child hood experiments in his lab to his experiences in Brazil where he learnt
to play the Samba music!!!
Following is the one such adventure
that we could least expect from any Nobel Prize winning physicist…Back in the
the 1940’s when “The Bomb” was being developed in Los Alamos, every person involved
in the Secret Project were given a Safe
so that the documents are protected. Feynman decided to prove the Military, which
was doling out the safes, to be wrong. He found how the safe worked by ripping
apart his own safe!!! And he started understanding the patterns behind the code
that people use depending on who they are. The result was: If Feynman would
want any document, he would walk into the person’s room when they are not there…Crack
open the Safe and walk away with the document !!!
In another instance, Feynman was in
Brazil on a year long assignment at the Center of Physical Research. In Brazil,
after his day’s work was over at the University ,Feynman would
change over to a clothing that you cannot associate a professor with and would
sneak out of the hotel to join the Samba music playing band. Feynman played “frigidiera”…a
type of drum played with metal stick as part of the band.This was in
preparation for the Carnaval where
the different band of Rio would walk on the streets playing the band.All of his fellow band
players never knew that the “Americano” player (Feynman) was a atomic physicist
until the day of the carnaval,when the band walked past the University where
Feynman worked!!!.
The above two incidents are just
the sample of what the book is all
about. Feynman talks much more in this entertaining book about his escapades in
Las Vegas, his Biology lecture at the Harvard & of course about his true
love, Physics.