Whenever a person who wants to read about the live of a great man like Feynman the first thing that one wonders is that what made them great. Some people are born great and some become great through their hard work. I think Feynman was both! Even before Feynman was born his father said to his wife that if the baby were a boy then it would be a scientist. Although Feynman’s father was not a scientist but he was interested in how things worked. From early on his father was telling him how things worked but he never pushed Feynman into Science. This greatly helped him in developing his objective nature. Although Feynman had an IQ of only 124 (according to an IQ test that he took in his childhood.) but his methodology was far from average. Later on Feynman went to MIT to pursue his studies. I think everyone would agree when I say that Feynman is one of those people who can't be judged by a mere number.

 When Feynman was fifteen he met the love of his life in a party, Arline. In time they became very intimate and even Feynman’s family liked her. During his work in Los Alamos he learnt that Arline had Tuberculosis, at that time they had not found a cure for tuberculosis. This had a very grieving effect on Feynman and he was unable to do any useful work. He married Arline soon afterwards but went back to Los Alamos. Arline Feynman died on June 16, 1945; seven weeks before Hiroshima. Arline’s death had a lasting impact on Feynman; it left with a sense of loneliness. 

Feynman played an important part in the Manhattan project. He was perhaps the only scientist in the Manhattan project to admit that there was something morally wrong with the development of the bomb. Feynman was working on his doctoral thesis when he was approached by Bob Wilson to work on the A-Bomb. Feynman was hesitant at first but he agreed after thinking about the implications of Germany winning the war. While at Los Alamos Feynman had the chance to meet big shot Physicists of his time like Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann etc. In the words of Hans Bethe Feynman was not only a great scientist but also a clown. He used to crack safes at Los Alamos and he would quite legitimately go in the technical area with his pass, he had found a hole in the barb-wire and he would crawl out of the hole and then again go to the main gate leaving the military people baffled. He was the only man to see ‘Trinity’ directly. After the bomb was dropped Feynman believed that the world was not going to last very much longer. 

In the late 1940’s Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichiro Tomonaga independently developed a coherent theory of Electrodynamics. At the same time Feynman developed the famous Famous “Feynman Diagrams”, a powerful way to handle the complexities of particle physics. In 1965 Feynman received the Nobel Prize for Physics along with the other two physicists. The theory of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is one of the most accurate theories in the history of Science; the theory agrees with experiment more than 14 decimal places. Feynman did not want to receive the prize because he thought that the theory was its own prize but accepted it because had he refused it he would had gotten greater publicity. He was very conscious of being famous, and he liked people to know who he was. In the words of Danny Hills, “Richard genuinely didn’t care about the Nobel Prize; he didn’t go around bragging about it. But in another sense, I think it was very important because it gave him the credentials to be “kooky” --- to be crazy.” 

Of the many things Feynman “go away with,” the most famous was probably his passion for drumming and that was not all. Feynman was notorious for doing crazy things. Feynman liked going to topless bars and there he would draw the portraits of those women. Times once reported, “Bottomless Helps Nobel Physicist With Figures.” Feynman watched those girls while solving complex equations of Physics and he told a Court Jury in California, “When my calculations didn’t work out I would watch the girls. Feynman had a liking for ‘out of the ordinary’ places and especially the hard to reach places. Feynman liked to be socially irresponsible. He never accepted an administrative job. He had a bet with Viktor Weisskoff that he would not get into an administrative job in ten years. Feynman won the bet in 1975.

 What set apart Feynman from other physicists of his time was his ability to visualize things. According to Feynman we look for a new law by the following process: “First, we guess! “Whenever he encountered a problem in mathematics he did not refer to the textbooks, he would work from scratch and develop his own mathematics. As a teacher Feynman was just great. His students described his lectures as Chinese meal. Feynman applied the same methods of encouragement to his children that his father had applied to him. Feynman’s son Carl eventually became a computer scientist but his daughter Michelle was not the scientific type. 

Feynman was also the father of Nanotechnology and Quantum Computing. In a historical scientific paper in 1954 entitled “There is plenty of room at the bottom” Feynman proposed the idea of Nanotechnology. Late in the 1960’s he set a reward of $1000 for anyone who would construct an electric motor 1/64^th inch big, that prize was claimed in 1968. Later in 1984 in another landmark lecture he gave the idea of Quantum Computers. He was also part of the committee that was to look into the causes of the Challenger disaster. Feynman hated politics so he was reluctant at first but once this responsibility was put on his shoulders he was really into it. It was Feynman who got on the right track in solving the riddle of the cause of the Challenger disaster. In a press conference he demonstrated with an experiment, which he thought of during the break in the conference, that the rocket went down because the O-rings froze. 

An interesting and rather amusing event towards the end of Feynman’s life was his quest for Tuva. Tannu Tuva was a country in Asia and is now a part of Russia. It all began one day Feynman was just sitting around with Ralph Leighton. He asked Leighton about Tuva (At that time Leighton was taking geography classes), but he thought that Feynman was just kidding. Feynman then looked it up in the encyclopedia and then he remarked, “Any place whose capital is KYZYL had to be interesting.” Hence started the world’s most famous quest for Tannu Tuva, “Tuva or Bust!” was Feynman’s motto. Initially Feynman and his friends tried to go to Tuva but they could not get permission from the Soviet government. They thought of different schemes, some of them even outlandish like going to the Mongolian-Soviet border where a ‘throat singing’ contest was held every year. During the same period an exhibition of Tuvan artifacts was being held in Sweden. Feynman suggested that they go to Sweden as ‘Museum people’ (Another one of those Feynman terms!), so he got in contact with one of the museums and it was arranged that they would go to Tuva as if they are ethnologists. It took some time to get permission from the Soviet government but it was too late. The letter arrived a few days after Feynman’s death. However Ralph Leighton went to Tannu Tuva to fulfill Feynman’s dream.

 Feynman had awaken to the realities of life after Arline’s death and in a way he was perhaps ready for it more than any person he knew. When he was hospitalized just before his death, he knew that it was all over for him. Being a scientist he confronted the harsh reality of death with an objective eye. Feynman’s puzzling last words were, “I would hate to die twice.” Feynman died at age sixty-nine, at the UCLA medical center on Monday, February 15, 1988, at 10:34 p.m. After Feynman’s death Danny Hillis saw him in his dream, he asked Feynman, “Hey, Richard! How come you are talking to me? You are dead!” and he replied, “Oh well. At least we won’t get interrupted this way!”